Blogging Pointers

Blogging productively (which just happens to be the name of a new category here on Blogging Pointers) is paramount for professional bloggers, especially those who have more than one blog, or more than one author on a particular blog. Readers of Blog News Watch might be familiar with my “SCANTS” system, blogged about here. Basically, that was a “blog fodder” management system I hacked together using ScribeFire and Stikkit. That system works, mind you, but it lacked a certain elegance. So, I moved on to Notebook, which was elegant, and robust (not to mention it allowed for more substantive note-taking), but it was hard-drive-housed, so when I changed computers, I no longer had access to my trusty “blog book.”

Now, I think I’ve found the Holy Grail - an elegant, online, free, and robust solution that allows for multiple blogs, a self-designed folder management system, active hotlinks, and task management functionality. It’s called RustyBudget, and it’s a new online tool designed specifically to help bloggers keep an organized handle on their blogs, by managing upcoming topics, tasks and authors. Even better - it’s free for up to two authors (a fee applies for third author addition).

Here’s how it works:

1. You sign up for a free account.
2. Once registered and logged in, you create budgets - these would normally be the name of your site, but if you have a very complex site, you might want to create separate budgets for separate areas - one for articles, perhaps, and one for your blog. My budgets are each titled after my blogs, respectively so my budgets are The Inspired Solo, Blogging Pointers, Blog News Watch, The Fibro Follies, etc.
3. Now, you’ll set up folders for each of your budgets. If you have more than one author, you might want to create a folder for each blogger. Or one per category, or group of categories. Perhaps you’ll want one for series ideas, or one per major series. In addition to creating folders for series and for pillar content, I also created one folder in each budget called “Grab Bag.” (I’ll explain that in a moment.)
4. Once your folders are established (with their own permission levels and color-coding), you can start to add notes to each budget’s folder as you wish. For instance, I’m planning to create and host a carnival at Fibro Follies, so I added a “Carnival” folder to that budget in my account. Then I created several notes, outlining the next steps - create a submission form at blogcarnival.com, post about the carnival at my blog, collect submissions, etc. I can add notes and URLs, and later check the item as completed, too.
5. Now the really handy part: bookmarklets. You can create a bookmarklet for any folder in any budget, drag it to your link bar, and voila! Just drag a URL to your bookmarklet and it’s automatically added in as a topic. I created bookmarklets for each budget’s “grab bag” folder, and now adding topic ideas couldn’t be easier. Just drag and drop - and when I’m ready to organize and make notes, I simply go to the budget page, and process the new tasks as a group.

You can see some short, well-made demos of the RustyBudget process and features at the site, and a list of budget features as well.

So far, RustyBudget definitely fills the need. I’ll keep you posted.

Technorati Tags: RustyBudget, managing multiple blogs, blog productivity