How to organise your blog & business using Trello

Organise your blog and business even better with the free site Trello!

Do you sometimes feel like ideas, to do’s resources and the rest of your blog and business is all jumbled and disorganised?

Trello is a free site that can help you organise anything and everything!

Trello is a site that is based on scrum tactics used by bigger companies to run teams and projects. While I am not familiar with the exact scrum rules I still really enjoy this site for its many tools and options.

I have mentioned this site before when I was talking about sites for more productivity.

When I was writing it all out there I thought it might be helpful to get an inside on the may options of this site and how you can use them for your blog and business.

I am not an organised person at all and I can not for some reason keep my schedules together. But with really I can just braindump everything and anything and then organise it.

The basics

Boards

When you are starting you make and account and on your account you can make different boards. The boards are like a kind of real-life pinboard where you will keep everything from a project or topic. You can create multiple ones and title them and even change colour in the menu (in the top right the corner.)

Boards can be shared with other for when you want to work together!

Lists

Trello has an amazing system where you can make different lists for different categories.

Some organisations ideas; 

• Todo, doing, done
• Now, later, feature
• Business, Blog, Other

You can just simply try out something and later you can always change the name, add another list and move them around if necessary.

On every list, you can make cards. Cards are basically like a kind of sticky note where you just write an idea , topic or to do. After you have made them you can move them around different lists and if you are done don’t forget to archive it so it doesn’t clutter up your board.

The cards

After you have made a card it will open and there you can add comments, links and images. Especially the images are super handy to make them stand out on you board.

Seeing your email marketing image that you want to change is easier then reading “change email marketing image” on a board that is full of cards.

Card are great for example blog posts, you can add you initial thoughts, you can add any reference link that you use so you don’t lose it. If you make graphic in advance you can keep them here as well.

The possibilities are almost endless!

Optimising for you blog; the calendar

This is one of my favourite non-obvious features. When you go to show menu there is an option called power-ups. When you click it, it gives you the three free options available. My favourite is the calendar.

It is super simple to use and I personally use it as an editorial calendar, not just for my blog but also social media and business. When you save a card you can add a due date in the “add” menu next to the comment section. If you have filled in a due date the card will appear on your calendar. After it is there you can easily change the due date by dragging the card to another date. You can add a specific time and multiple cards to one date.

You can also add cards right on the calendar itself while also adding it to a list.

For example; You can upload graphics you want to share on social media but you have yet to schedule them. Or you need an overview of what you are sharing when. Simply make the card with the images attached and give them the due dates on the days you want to share them.

If you do this for everything you will have a perfect editorial calendar.

Plus, removing your editorial calendar from WordPress if you are still using that will ensure more space.

Checklists;

My second favourite option is adding checklists to cards. You can make to-do lists for items in your to-do lists. It is just amazing to me. Again this feature is in the “add”menu on your cards.

Here is the most amazing thing. Say you follow a system while writing a blog post, you always do the same thing but you like having a checklist?

You can write that chick list in just one card and from there on you can always import it to other cards. Then you can still add extra items for if this blog post requires something extra.

Plus in your checklists, you can still order your items by dragging them up or down. It is a great way to get a grip on bigger projects without having to make a million little cards cluttering your board.

Organising cards

So you have written down quite some ideas and now you need to organise your cards ones again. This is my final favourite feature; colour coding.

You ca label any card with more than one colour label. Plus you can name any colour label so you don’t forget where it stands for. The label appears not just above the card when opened but is also visible as a thin coloured stripe in the full lists view. Even on the calendar, you can see the colour.

You can label your cards for like blog posts, social media items etc.

After you have colour coded them you can always find cards with the same colour by going to the menu in the right top corner and using the filter. Here you can also find cards that are due today, this week, this month etc.

I even use trello cards to keep illustration ideas and resources so I can draw them when I have time.

Want to know how the pro’s are using trello? I just found out that even Elle and company design use trello and they wrote an amazing post on exactly how they use it! (this is some serious organisation going on!)

Bohoberry, another one of my favourite bloggers, uses it as a blog editorial calendar as well.

Final things

I can never resist to just mention a few more options that I have been loving ;

• You can add stickers to cards if you want them to stand out more. (and they are cute, I have been adding stars and hearts to almost everything)

• If you want to remove cards you can archive them, you can even archive entire lists.

• In the menu, you can find your archived items under the more tab (and send them back if needed)

• If something is due you can see so by the mini clock on the card.

• You can also email things to your board for if you are on the road

• If you have something all planned out you can print out the board for a more physical reminder!

I have also found this amazing blog post highlighting some other great tips and features that I didn’t even know about!

So this was my full guide to using trello to organise your blog and business. I think Trello is amazing as not only a to do and organisation site but also to use as an editorial calendar.

I think it is al about finding a system that works for you! Don’t get discouraged if your boards start to look a bit messy, it is just part of the creative flow.

I look forward to finding even more great uses for Trello.

Let me know if you are using Trello and if so; any other tips to share?

(If you need any help, you can always ask me!)