With the continued resurgence of blogging, I love and appreciate the enthusiasm many bloggers have put into helping newcomers adopt this medium; from writing guides on choosing the right blogging platform, to blog posts with unfeigned encouragement reminding writers to forego perfectionism and write from the heart. Write like a human.
To accomplish all that, it does help to have the right tools and workflow. You can have it as simple as can be (open your blogging platform's CMS, start a new post, type away and hit publish), or depending on your requirements and skill set, have it as complex as you can handle. 🤪
Robert Birming has recently been exploring why he and others write and how they do it. He has been diligently curating a list of bloggers sharing their blogging workflows. I have been following along and discovering the different methods and tools bloggers have adopted to help them write and publish to their sites. I hope many others join and share the workflows and tools they use to create and publish blog posts.
In the spirit of sharing, here is my current blogging workflow and tools:
🛠️ Tools & Services
Hardware: Mac mini + Apple Studio Display, iPad Pro (2022 M2) & iPhone 15 Pro Max
Software: Apple Notes, Ulysses, Dark Noise (Important to set the mood to concentrate)
Blogging Platform: Ghost
Fuel: Coffee & Music if not using Dark Noise
📥 Capture and Editing
All organic blog post ideas with their accompanying summaries are captured using Apple Notes on whichever device I happen to be using at the time. For linked posts, I highlight the portion of the article I wish to quote, bring up the share sheet to add the quoted snippet with its link, my initial thoughts, and save to my Ulysses ‘Linked’ draft folder.
All writing and editing are organically done using Ulysses. I proofread and attempt to correct all grammar and styling to the best of my ability. I cross-check my editing using Ulysses’ ‘Revision Mode’ feature, which additionally checks for spelling and grammar. I used to copy the text into Grammarly for extra clarity checks. Ulysses now has an Advanced Text Check using LanguageTool, an online service which offers spelling, grammar and consistency checks, which now removes the need to use Grammarly since they both offer the same service — one less step and helps maintain simplicity.
🌐 P.O.S.S.E.
Post On Own Site, Syndicate Everywhere.
Once all editing is done, the next step is to publish and distribute to the socials, which is all done through the excellent EchoFeed. I have it currently set up to post new entries to Mastodon and Bluesky, with Threads being worked on as of writing this.
And that’s it. I’ve kept the workflow as simple and streamlined as can be. It’ll be interesting to see with plans to turn this blog into more of a website hosting different mediums how the workflow setup will evolve over time, so this entry will be a good throwback in the future.
Happy Blogging. 👨🏿💻
