Using Trello In my Blogging Workflow

I find it quite a bit of coincidence that as I am preparing to ramble about integrating Trello into my blogging workflow the Trello blog publishes a post describing the way they use Trello for their editorial calendar. Of course they go into things in more depth than I plan to, and their process is a bit more detailed than mine since I’m just a solo blogger but it’s real weird that they picked July 31st for their piece.

In any case, I started using Trello this year for a number of things. First, at work we started using the tool to keep track of software development tasks and the current state of product testing and release. This is what turned me on to the tool and it’s use in a process workflow. And for work we are using a basic Kanban style workflow.

Kanban

Kanban is a tracking and scheduling system that was developed in Japan based on the cards that were used to track production in factories over there. With the focus on Just-In-Time manufacturing it became important to ensure that you had enough parts of the correct type at difference phases of manufacturing. You didn’t want too few or too many or else the process would get bogged down.
Translated to a software design schedule as I use at work, we wanted to make sure that features and bug fixes were tracked from initial requirements to development to testing to release (or a basic flow like that). While this works pretty well in my day job, I decided it sounded like a neat idea to try for my blogging workflow so I set up a few different kanban boards to see how they would work.

Editorial Calendar

The first Trello board I tried out was an editorial calendar for Beyond Tannhauser Gate. I could keep track of post ideas in one list, move the idea (card) to a “planning” board when I wanted to start working on it, then onto an “outlining” board when I was building an outline for the post (As I mentioned in a previous post, I usually outline in MindManager so this is where things would head when the card got to this board). As expected, after outlining, the post goes to the “writing” board and so on until it reaches the “scheduled” and “published” lists.

It’s all pretty straightforward and by using Trello I am able to see how many posts (cards) I have in each of the various parts of my workflow. This allows me to focus my activities. If I want to do all outlining in one sitting or if I am more in a idea generation mood, all I have to do is look at that particular board and I can see the 3–5 items I need to outline or the 10 items I want to brainstorm. By having multiple ways of approaching the ideas and posts I think it helps me get around writersblock.

Track Comic Reading, My Pull List, and Gaming

As an editorial calendar it’s easy to build the different silos of activity that a post goes through, but I have also branched out into other areas related to blogging.

I use Trello to track comics from my Pull List to Purchase, from Reading to Reviewing. It makes things real easy to see the phase I’m in with all the comics I want to read and when it comes to a graphic novel, I can track each individual issue in a simple manner. I even have a list that keeps track of the issues of a story that haven’t been published and their expected release date.

Trello also makes it easy to take notes and apply labels or categories to cards so I was able to use it to plan out my Comic-Con schedule. Each panel I wanted to attend got it’s own card with the room it was in and time. I also notated the size of the room and listed what panel was before and after it so I had an idea of how difficult it would be to get in. With things laid out in Trello I was able to identify conflicts and set priorities so that I feel this was one of my best planned Comic-Con experiences in the 25 years I’ve been going.

I planned so well I really only missed 2 panels that were top priority – one was only because the tickets were given out randomly and the other was because my blood donation went longer than expected.

Closing Thoughts

With all these various uses, I’ve really come to trust Trello a lot. I use it for work, blogging, gaming, and reading and I can even see using it to track social media since I really have no process in that area yet.
Right now with my workflow I kinda use Trello as the overseer since it tracks things as they move through whatever process I’m focused on. And as I gather ideas in Evernote, outline them in MindManager, write up a post about them in Scrivner, and review them in Drafts, Trello is tracking everything and ensuring that I don’t miss a step.

Give it a try…this one has a pretty comprehensive free tier that works great.

Blaugust 2019 Day 1 | Using Trello In my Blogging Workflow