Using Drafts In my Blogging Workflow

I’ve been using the Drafts iOS app for a long time, almost as long as I’ve had my iPhone and the app was available. It’s gone through multiple iterations and I really like where it’s at right now.

Along with Evernote, MindManager, and Scrivner I use Drafts every day for blogging. I also use it to dictate my daily to-dos into so that I can dump them into Evernote once I get to work. It’s really useful when I’m on the way to work and I really don’t have to worry about Drafts messing up, it always syncs with my iPad and from there I load things to my PC. It’s really been a go-to app for me and using it for blogging was a no brainer. Originally, before Scrivner, I would write my initial draft in the app but since I add more steps to my workflow, I’ve delegated Drafts as my final stop before moving things into wordpress. This allows me to do final touch ups and verify that the post is ready to go.

Final Draft

The biggest use I find for Drafts right now is as a final weigh point before I move into WordPress and actually post. Drafts is where I finalize my draft getting headings set up and examining the post for places to locate images or YouTube video.

Moving text into Drafts is as simple as cut and paste and once there I use the Markdown feature to see the general layout of what my post will look like without images but with headers, bold, italics, etc.

Markdown

The Markdown feature of Drafts is a great way to see how things are gonna layout in WordPress when I finally bring the post over there.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve found typos or mismatched or malformed HTML tags because Drafts lets me look at how the post is laid out. In this post alone, I’ve found 5 typos and I’m not even done with it.

Basically, Drafts is the last stop before I fire up WordPress to get the post on the interweb, and it prevents me from making a lot of mistakes along the way.

Dictation

Another way I tend to use Drafts, on my iPhone in particular, is for dictation. With the blank slate note taking that Drafts offers and the ease of transferring from iPhone to iPad, I like dictating notes into the app. Sure, I have a 30 second (or so) limitation with Siri but it seems most of my rambling comes in less than 30 second chunks.

What I find cool about dictating into Drafts is that it’s easy to transfer those thoughts anywhere since Drafts integrates with tons of other apps. I can send the note to Evernote, Omnifocus, Trello, email, set up a reminder, or throw it over to Fantastical or google. It’s really a well connected app which goes a long way towards the reason why I use it all the time.

Closing Thoughts

Like Evernote, I was using Drafts before I started blogging but it has fit into my workflow nicely. As the final stop before I turn things over to WordPress, I feel I’ve gotten pretty good at spotting flaws when I’ve got a draft open in the app and fixing issues is straightforward and easy. Coupling that with the ease of dictation and I’ve got another app that I would be lost without whether I blogged or just wanted to get things done in my life.

I definitely recommend you give Drafts a try since it’s a fairly simple tool that can be used in a variety of workflows without much effort.

Road to #Blaugust2019 Day 4 | Using Drafts In my Blogging Workflow