Hey Humans,
some of the best learning experiences come from reflection. Since I'm new to the world of content creation, I want to take some time and reflect on how I create a blog post.
What are my tools?
Notion
My writing is done in Notion. Notion is an all-in-one workspace that lets me plan my tasks, write down notes and articles, and organizes everything in databases. I don't exclusively use it for writing, I really manage most of my daily life with it. I keep track of all my projects, my journals, recipes, reading and listening notes, and my task- and travel-planning in there but it also acts as an inbox for articles, podcasts or videos I want to check out later.
Microsoft To Do
Everything that I can't get into Notion in the heat of a moment is added to my Microsoft To Do List. I have it synced across my phone, tablet, and notebook - so wherever I catch a thought, I should be able to capture it. I have different lists for different projects or events. Once in a while I go through them and send them over to Notion, to either write down my notes or create an actionable task on it.
DeepL
As I'm not an English native, I sometimes use DeepL if I'm having trouble finding the right words. This is the most effective and accurate translation tool I've seen so far.
My Workflow - Where to start?
1. Pick an Idea
Most of my ideas pop up through the day, while I'm in the bathroom, when I go to bed - usually when I'm doing something else than writing. To turn this from something annoying to an upside, I created a Database where I capture all potential blog post ideas. This always gives me something to start from, even if I'm not feeling creative on a particular day. Have a look:
2. Build a Structure
If I haven't already added anything to the idea, I will start from scratch. I try to ask some questions to myself, such as:
- What am I writing about?
- What does the reader need to know first if the topic is new to her*him?
- Is it a service? How does it work?
- What are the upsides or downsides?
- Is there a project or organisation behind it, which I should could further explain?
- Is there anything else knowledgeable?
- What's my personal opinion on it?
With that, I try to form some headlines that build the first article structure.
3. Research
After that's done, I will take the questions and headlines I have just written down, and try to answer them for myself. I need to make sure I know what I'm writing about. When it's about a project or service, I will usually start browsing the project's website and look if they have any official documentation accessible. Most of them will have a wiki and some developer or user docs online.
The next step usually is to head over to Presearch, and search the web for the topic, plus some additional keywords. I try to stay off Google best as I can.
4. Draft
Normally I'll go over the article from top to bottom, and write some bullet-points or short pieces of sentences into each section to outline the article. This way I can see if my structure makes sense before wrapping everything up into interconnected sentences. When I'm stuck at one part of the article, I just switch to the next headline, and continue over there.
5. Do some more research...
Where was I stuck with my explanations? Did I get everything right so far? As I'm no expert, I make sure to double-check everything I've sketched out. Most of the time I still have some questions left. In that case I will hop onto a discord server related to the topic or try to contact the project on Twitter for more information. The blockchain community is crazily good connected, and usually I get my questions answered within only a couple of hours.
6. Connect the dots
Now it is time to make this post an experience worth reading. I swap around the last pieces of the article, until everything makes sense. Broken up sentences are finally connecting into a storyline you can follow, with your questions being answered along the way.
To make it more accessible I do some screenshots, and look for a media kit or licence free images to visualize the written content.
7. Proof-read
Sometimes I get excited while writing about a topic, so I just type along. To make sure no errors have slipped into my piece, I proof-read every article before I publish it. When I'm feeling unsure, and if I'm lucky, I also have my girlfriend read over it again. She's an English teacher, so she definitely knows better than me.
8. Transfer the post to Publish0x & publish!
Time to finalize! I'll copy paste the whole article from Notion to the Publish0x editor. Most of the time, my previous formatting is transferred, so I will only have to fix some line breaks or headlines sizes. After adding the graphics, a thumbnail, some tags and the links to my resources to the article, it is finally time to publish and give myself some credit. Ok..., one last check if the spelling is all correct. Done!
About me
I'm a freshly started content creator, but I'm here to stay and share my process and progress. I post about beginner-friendly topics, create easy tutorials, and cover projects that are trying to fix broken systems. I hope you enjoyed the content so far. Let me know if there is anything, you want to know more about. Also - what tools are you using?
I would be more than happy if you would also follow me on Twitter or Medium. Thanks for sticking around, and see you next time!
You can support me by using one of my referral links below. You have my word that I only advertise projects I believe in.
Binance (10 BUSD, if you deposit & trade 50$)
Cake DeFi (30$ in $DFI after you deposit $50)
Coinbase (10$ in Bitcoin after you buy or sell 100$ worth of crypto)
Publish0x (earn $iFARM and $AMPL for reading articles)
Presearch (Google-Alternative that pays you for searching the web. Get 25 $PRE for signing up.)
Ledger hardware wallet (I can't offer you a benefit on this one, but this is definitely the safest way to store your coins & token)
