I use Notion to organize my whole life including my job, side hustle, personal stuff, and home. Even students like to use Notion as a student operating system to get their life and studies organized.
I hear you—these seem like big words, but they’re not.
When it comes to creating content, Notion is often the go-to tool. Its capabilities, however, stretch way beyond a simple content calendar.
You can leverage Notion databases, relations, templates, and advanced building blocks to create a content machine that delivers high-quality blog posts like a content factory.
Read on to find out how to create your content machine in Notion.
Notion is an all-in-one workspace. It has been among the pioneers of the all-in-one tools, and not without a reason.
Here’s why Notion is the best tool for content creation:
You can use the shortcut key Cmd + P (Ctrl + P for Windows folks) to search your entire account and quickly find what you’re looking for.
You can use all kinds of sorters, filters, rollups, and relations in Notion databases to surface what you need, when you need it, even from different databases.
You can use linked databases to gather and surface information from larger databases.
You can open multiple tabs to focus on your writing.
Let’s see the content machine in action.
Creating a content calendar in Notion is boring stuff. But creating a content machine is way more exciting.
My content machine builds on Adam Enfroy’s content assembly line method.
No surprises here; my Notion content machine leverages relational databases and templates within those databases.
There’re three core databases:
Keyword database
Content calendar
Guest post database
Let’s figure out how they work together.
I use this database to collect, organize, and leverage my keywords. The majority of data come from my SEO tools, RankIQ and Ubersuggest.
Here’re the properties of my database:
This is at the heart of my content machine. My content calendar houses all my content.
Importantly, my content calendar doesn’t hold my content ideas. (At least not many of them.) When a new content idea pops up in my head, I use my task manager to jot down the ideas.
This is much easier than entering data into a Notion database.
Let’s see the properties:
In my content calendar, I created multiple templates for different kinds of content. For example, I’ve a dedicated template for the versus-type posts.
Each template contains different checklists that help me come up with powerful headline ideas, structure and write my post, and upload it to my WordPress site.
These checklists serve as the oil to my content machine and help me work more effectively and adhere to high standards.
My third database serves a single purpose: to gather, organize, and leverage information for writing quality guest posts. The content of my guest post lives in my content calendar.
Database structure:
You can save 2 sec per minute if you’re using shortcut keys instead of your mouse. This is more than one hour over a week.
In Notion, there’s a shortcut key for pretty much everything.
Here’re some of my favorite ones for writing:
At first, it may feel intimidating, but over time it becomes automatic, and you’ll find yourself often in the flow.
And the best thing about Notion is that WordPress likes it. All your formatting and styling will be preserved in the WordPress editor, even the blockquotes.
Pro tip: If you wonder if there is a shortcut for something, use the slash command: type “/” followed by the style or block you’re searching for.
This approach to content creation needs a big effort upfront, but once you get the ball rolling, things get much easier. Plus, your content will heavily benefit from the templates, structure, and fluidity that your Notion content machine offers.
Nothing must be set in stone. I often tweak and update my databases and templates when I hear something useful and actionable from the content and SEO industry.
Cover photo by Patrick Fore on Unsplash