Using Trello to Manage Blogging

I do enjoy blogging. Really I do. The problem seems to arise with having to blog on a schedule. As much as I would like to just write when the mood strikes me, to paraphrase Gurney Halleck from Dune, "Mood? What has mood to do with it? You blog when the necessity arises — no matter the mood! Mood's a thing for cattle or making love or playing the baliset. It's not for blogging."

In order to keep my newly invigorated writing on task, I'm applying my considerable business process background to the challenge and configuring a system to assist with the tracking and execution of blog articles on a consistent schedule.  Since I'm a "reformed project manager" (as I care to identify myself often) I turned to a style of tool with which I am quite familiar...the Kanban board.  One of the best implementations of a Kanban board I have found to date is the web application, Trello.

To begin, I created a board in Trello specifically for tracking my article ideas and acting upon them. This requires five lists for the cards on the board:

The five lists I use for publishing

The five lists cover article ideas, drafts, editing, publishing, and metrics tracking for follow up.  Any new idea is first created as a card on the New Ideas list.  When the new idea is captured, a label is applied to indicate where the article will be released.  Note this isn't for social media sharing but rather the actual home of the article.  (I write for LinkedIn as well as The Idea Pump so it is important to put the right content in the right places.)

Assign a tag for tracking

When work begins on the draft of an article, I just drag the article card from the New Ideas list to the Drafts list.

Drag from New Ideas to Draft

Since one of the important parts of consistent content production is the adherence to an editorial calendar, I assign the due date for the next list to the article card for tracking purposes.

Adding a due date to a card

By following this process I should be able to move articles through on a timely manner and keep my content production schedule moving smoothly.  Only time will tell...