BBP 126: Notion Hacks for Bloggers with Krystianna Pietrzak

Shownotes:

In this episode of the Blogger Breakthrough Summit podcast, KPshares expert tips on customizing a blog post database within Notion, transforming it into a personalized command center for bloggers. She dives into using various properties to streamline blog management, from organizing categories to tracking affiliate programs and post updates.

KP’s practical advice promises to simplify the often chaotic blogging process, ensuring that essential information is readily accessible and manageable. Her insights are especially valuable for bloggers aiming to enhance their workflow and maintain an organized approach to content creation.

Synopsis

Here are three steps to customize a Blog Database.

Step 1: Customize Your Database View

To start, you may want to display only the information that’s essential for each post. Click the three-dot button, select properties, and you will see a list with little eyeball icons.

Click on any icon to hide that information from the main database view. For instance, if you don’t need the category to show, simply hide it. The beauty of this feature is that even if it’s hidden in the main table, you can still view it in the specific blog post detail page.

Step 2: Customize Post Templates

The next step is to customize your post templates. This is where you will define your categories, affiliate programs, and even update statuses. For example, I categorize my posts based on locations, primarily within the United States. Each state gets its own category, and I also have a general category for international posts.

Additionally, KP keeps track of the various affiliate programs I engage with. Each blog post can include multiple affiliate links, allowing for a comprehensive overview of partnerships.

Step 3: Using Templates Effectively

Here’s a quick look at one of my post templates in Notion. It includes fields for post categories, affiliate programs, keywords, ranking, and a URL field for easy access.

To edit your template, click the blue arrow next to the post template option and hit edit. This allows you to create a structured format that will autofill whenever you add a new entry.

Bottom Line

Customizing your blog post database in Notion is like setting up your personal command center. With everything you need organized and accessible, your blogging workflow is bound to improve.

Tools and Resources Mentioned

• Notion

Related Content

• Why ClickUp is the Best Blog Management Tool

Transcript

[00:00:00].17] – Liz Stapleton

Hey there, and welcome back to another episode of the Blogger Breakthrough Summit podcast, where I share snippets from the annual Blogger Breakthrough Summit.

[00:00:13].12] – Liz Stapleton

I’m your host, Liz Stapleton. And last week you got to learn about Asana from Carrie Wulf. But if Asana didn’t sound quite right for you, then this episode from Krystianna’s session might be the answer. Today we’re going to make your life a whole lot easier by showing you how to customize your blog post database in Notion. Got your coffee ready? Let’s jump right in.

[00:00:31].06] – Krystianna Pietrzak

So the first thing to do is if you decide that for each of your posts, you do want all of this information, but maybe you don’t want all of it showing, what you’ll do is click this little button with these three dots, and then you’ll hit properties, and you’ll be greeted with a little list that looks like this. You’ll see all these little eyeballs. Essentially, all you have to do is click on one if you don’t want it to show in this actual database anymore. Let’s say maybe you no longer want to have the category here, you can just go ahead and hide it. The cool thing is if you’ve hidden it in the table, if you come over here and actually open up that specific blog post, you’ll still be able to see the category in here. Really, all you’re going to customize right now is everything at a bird’s eye view. If you decide you want to add something back in, you could just turn that back on and you can actually drag it up to wherever you would like it. Alternatively, if you decide there are any that you like 100% know you don’t want at all, this is also where you can go ahead and delete them.

[00:01:27].19] – Krystianna Pietrzak

You can come in here and just right-click and hit delete property and it will fully delete itself. So next, you are going to want to go ahead and customize your post templates. And this is where you will actually add in all of those different categories and all of those different elements that we talked about back in step four. So some things you can update during this time is your post categories and your affiliate programs, as well as any statuses if you need them. So just to briefly go over it, when it comes to post categories for me on my database, what I like to do is make them location-based. I blog mostly about the United States. What I’ll do is I’ll make different categories for each of the different states. Then if I do ever do anything on another country, I will have a country category. You can also just easily match these up to the same categories you use on your own blog, if that helps. For affiliate programs, I actually go through and add all of the different affiliate programs that I use, which I’ll show you in the next slide. And then for statuses, I actually use statuses in order to track if I’ve updated a post or not, because I try to update my posts every six months.

[00:02:38].12] – Krystianna Pietrzak

So here is what one of my post templates actually looks like with a post that I’ve added into my own personal Notion database. So you can actually see it in action. You’ll see up here we have the post category, and this is again where I would just put the location for affiliates. Again, like I mentioned, I’ll go through and add all the different affiliate programs I’m in. If I know that it’s through a certain place, like Travel Payouts, I’ll write an abbreviated version. This is Travel Payout to Discover Cars. I have it set too so that I can multi-select. If there is multiple affiliates in a post, I can go through and check them all off. Then same with the post category if I ever have to. For Keyword, this is pretty basic, just where I write the keyword out. I do have a Pins one right now because I was recently going through and making sure that all my posts have new pins directly in the post. I added a checkbox just so I could track that. Then I also have this ranking one because I recently I also went through and was tracking all my rankings with all of the updates that have been going on.

[00:03:33].16] – Krystianna Pietrzak

And that’s just so, again, I can track how rankings are doing. For Status, this is how I keep track of if I’ve updated a post or not. So I have statuses for not Started, In Progress, and Updated. And then URL is pretty self-explanatory. This is just where I go ahead and put the URL in for the blog post, just in case I ever really easily need to grab it. So now I’m going to briefly go over how to add those in Notion into your templates. Okay, so now we are back in Notion. And what you’ll want to do this time is actually click on this little blue arrow and you’ll see a option that says post template. And what you want to do is hit these three dots and click Edit. And basically what this is doing is editing a template in the database. So now any time you go to add a new one, you will actually get created with a card that looks like this. It’ll have everything that you’re adding directly into that template for you to fill out.

[00:04:24].12] – Liz Stapleton

And that’s it. Customizing your blog post database in Notion is like setting up your personal command center. You’ve got everything you need exactly where you need it. So go ahead, give it a try, and watch your blogging workflow transform. Thanks for tuning in, and stay tuned for more tips and tricks to make your blogging journey smoother and more fun. Until next time, happy blogging.