I read a couple of posts, at Notes, links and conversation & What Is New, asking how people create and manage blog content. I thought I’d share how I use a combination of tools for this.
Revision 26–02–2006: Added map to the extended post
First get an idea for a post!
Posts start out in many ways but some, like this one, are inspired by other blogs. Often people ask how & where I find stuff on the net but the truth is thanks to RSS it finds me.
RSS Bandit is the tool that lets me monitor literally hundreds of blogs daily. You subscribe to the content feed at blogs you find interesting and from then on RSS Bandit checks for new content.
It scans all the feeds in a few seconds returning only what is new since the last visit. You can then scan multiple blogs in one seamless “newspaper view”. Posts can be flagged for review, read in the newspaper view or in built in browser tabs (Sorry Firefox fans, only Microsoft I.E. is used for these internal views)
So I get an idea, what next?
I forget it, well I would without a tool to capture it. Regular readers will not be surprised to find I use MindManager to capture ideas before they disappear. I have a very simple structure that allows me to easily manage:
Drafts: Posts actually being worked on for posting, likely to be seen soon!- Ideas: Everything that may, or may not, become a post. Sometimes these are never progress to being a post or several merge to become one topic. Sometimes they sit for weeks, months but they can be reviewed in a glance
- Resources: This folder has my own frequently used content like logo's etc
- Posted: This folder has local archive copies posts and images.
- Comments: I keep links to posts, at other blogs, where I’ve recently commented for easy review.
- Legend: Isn’t normally there but shows the MindManager markers used to record rough progress and which blog the post/idea may be for!
This simple resource centre gathers the information I need to create a post.
If it’s simple why bother using MindManager?
This shows the current state of the Blog Draft topic (click to enlarge). You can see the simple structure can manage lots of content but it’s easy to see in a glance where things are at.
I also use the MindManager Research Assistant to gather information related to the post topic.
The post map topic conveys a lot of detail. This one has map markers showing its nearly finished & is for my CAD blog. The r/h icon (shown as selected) is a link to the posts draft file and you can see links to related websites and local resources like the images created for this post. All this was easily created by drag & dropping content from the browser or explorer and any resource is just one click away.
So what next, I haven’t created or posted any content yet?
My actual post composition tool is BlogJet, an off-line editor, which allows posts to be written without relying on the on-line blog editor. You can also save drafts at any stage as a local file. This makes it easy to create a long post, like this, over several editing sessions.
BlogJet has a WYSIWYG interface that allows “no code” adding of images, URLs, Text colour, bullets, smilies, even adding files, podcast (audio) to create rich content with little hassle. If you want to hack code it has an editor tab for that also!
Once the post is complete just hit post and BlogJet manages the TypePad login, uploads the post and any related content seamlessly. BlogJet works with a myriad of blog hosts so it’s likely to work with your existing blog. It can even submit the same post to multiple blogs/accounts/services in one operation.
I mentioned ActiveWords, what does that do?
Throughout this whole process and in every application ActiveWords assists with launching applications, navigation, text substitution and access to files. It just makes everything easier!
Summary & Map;
Note: The map embedded in this post requires the free IE Mindjet MindManager Viewer Control from http://www.mindjet.com/viewer_blog/
Download this MindManager map – Blog_Draft.mmap (37.2K)
NOTE: The file extension may change to Blog_Draft.zip when you download the file. Just rename the file to Blog_Draft.mmap then open with MindManager.
