Suppose you are the content manager for a product-based company and are responsible for creating and managing content across funnels and channels. Managing all the content ideas, deadlines, and workflows can be overwhelming and time-consuming.
Using Notion for content planning can be a game-changer. Using Notion features, you can quickly generate content ideas, create a content calendar, outline your content, write first drafts, collaborate with your team, and track your content workflows for your Notion website, all in one place.
This can help you streamline content workflows, save time, and deliver high-quality content, all while meeting deadlines.
Here are six ways you can use Notion for content planning:
1. Brainstorm content ideas
Generating new and relevant topic ideas is challenging, especially when you create content for many communication channels like search engines, social media platforms, newsletters, etc.
Finding new content avenues gets even more complex when you need to create different types of content like blog posts, product-based content, landing pages, eBooks, videos, etc. With so much going on, it’s easy to hit a rut where suddenly, you don’t know what else to write.
This is where Notion AI can come in handy. You can use Notion AI to brainstorm content ideas by simply asking it to suggest brand-relevant topics or themes.
You can take it a step further by asking Notion AI to create a content plan. For example, if you plan to build authority for a new topic, you can ask Notion AI for the right topics to cover and how to sensibly link them with each other to create the perfect pillar-cluster structure.
2. Create a content calendar
Now that you have a list of content ideas, it's time to get them to life. The faster your idea generation to publish process, the quicker your content generates leads. The best way to streamline your workflows and make content work for you is by using a content calendar.
To create a content calendar, simply create a Notion database with all your topic ideas. Make sure you add at least one Date property. Notion will automatically arrange your content types in a calendar based on the assigned publish dates in the content task properties.
Here is what your content calendar may end up looking like.
It is recommended to add all relevant properties to each content task — not just the due date. Make sure you include information about who writes the draft, reviews it, and designs it before publishing the page. This makes it easy to see what content is scheduled to go out and plan accordingly.
3. Outline content
Before writing the article, it is essential to structure your ideas. The more you research at first, the less time you take to write. An outline covers all the important points so you do not miss out on any later. They also help you present them in a logical sequence.
With Notion AI, you can generate a content outline in no time. You can feed through the prompt, the primary keyword, the target audience, the intended word count, and other finer aspects. Notion will account for every input in the prompt and create a near-perfect outline. This can inspire more ideas that you may not have thought of otherwise.
Once you have the outline draft ready, you can modify it to align with your specific needs. You can add or remove sub-headers, change the order of subtopics, or even group ideas.
To store your outline in Notion, you can create a toggle block within your content task — the one that sits in your content calendar. The toggle block will allow you to hide or show your outline. You can also use another toggle block later to store your draft content so you can keep everything in the same place.
4. Write first drafts and build on them
Coming up with the first draft is often the hardest part of the writing process, especially when the writer has hit a rut. But with the right motivation, the writer can find new ideas and get the first few words in.
With Notion AI, writers have a whole new support system to break writer’s block. It writes whole blocks of grammatically correct text that only needs minor edits to make it more relevant to the niche or your website.
You can specify the tone of choice and the audience you target in your prompt to customize the output to your requirements. You can command it to be informative, friendly, or professional. You can even change the tone later with another prompt! It’s that fast and easy.
Further, Notion AI supports multiple languages - you need not hire a translator to target a non-English audience.
The first draft, as you will notice, usually sounds very robotic, plus it may not represent your brand too well or align with its tone. You must modify it to create unique content that aligns with your brand. But it is still easier to use Notion AI than write content from scratch.
Notion AI can help you save time, effort, and the investment required to hire writers.
5. Create and Track content workflows with Kanban view
With its visual layout and easy-to-use interface, Kanban view enables teams to manage their content projects seamlessly. It allows you to create custom columns for each stage of your content creation process, allowing you to easily visualize progress and identify bottlenecks. This makes it easy for you to prioritize tasks and ensures that your content is delivered on time.
To set up the Kanban view in Notion, type ‘/’ where you want to insert the view, and from the list of blocks populated by Notion, select Board View. Add tasks to the board and create the columns, assign the Status property type to each of them. Notion will create as many columns as the unique entries in the property type.
Here’s what the Kanban view looks like:
The column headers - Create Brief, In Progress, Under Review, etc. are all entries to the Property type. You can drag and drop tasks from each property type into the other when their status changes.
Access this guide to learn how to create the different types of database views in Notion, including the Kanban view.
6. Create a content dashboard
A content dashboard provides a centralized summary of all your content-related activities, metrics, and data, helping you see the bigger picture and optimizing your content strategy when required.
For example, an article with a high engagement rate but a low conversion rate needs a better call-to-action (CTA) button to attract more clicks. You need to be able to identify these opportunities quickly and bank on them.
Notion dashboard can make it easy to do that. It is highly customizable, Notion also offers many dashboard templates that make it easy to get started.
You can share the dashboard with your team so that everyone is aware of where you stand and what distance you are yet to cover.
Here's what your dashboard might look like:
Here’s how you can create the perfect Notion dashboard for your team.
In this article, we covered six different ways of using Notion for planning content. You can truly take your content to the next level by creating a website on Notion. With Super, you can create a professional website in no time.
