How do you organize your content

[LadyL08]

If you write a lot of articles do you save each article with a unique file name, save a group by the date you write them, or just write, copy to directories or website and then delete the draft copy? Do you keep track of which ones are submitted to where and which ones are on your website?

[Karen Newton]

Hi Lynne,
I typically organize by project into individual folders. Underneath a project folder I would have another folder named articles. When I'm first starting out I might just save my articles directly to the articles folder (all in individual file names, appropriately named by keyword).

Once I start accumulating more articles and actually utilizing them, I'll create subfolders for various things such as "article directories", "web 2.0 sites", "my blog/site".

Sometimes I also record the article title and usage details in a spreadsheet depending on how many articles I'm dealing with.

Karen

[MichaelHiles]

Word 2007 integrates with Atom and MetaWebLog, so I can use it as a live content editor. I draft my blog entries and articles, saving the document with the SEO optimized title as a filename (dashes or underscores between words). Then I publish to whatever blog site I am writing for right within Word. The files get saved in My Documents in a tree for each site, broken down by category subfolders. The date gets saved as the file date, so no need to worry about sorting by date.

Windows Indexing Services provide me with the nice searching... as well as the ability to integrate with Sharepoint Portal Services in the enterprise environment, OneNote, etc...

[Chris Kent]

Lynne, I use a free outline software called "Keynote".

It is amazing and I use it for everything. Writing articles, writing ebooks, research etc.

It basically allows you to organise data into a tree structure and easily move it around with a few keyboard or mouse clicks. All of this is wrapped up into a single file:

Tranglos software: KeyNote

[Chris Kent]

Lynne, I use a free outline software called "Keynote".

It is amazing and I use it for everything. Writing articles, writing ebooks, research etc.

It basically allows you to organise data into a tree structure and easily move it around with a few keyboard or mouse clicks. All of this is wrapped up into a single file:

Tranglos software: KeyNote

[Aljiro]

Greetings everyone. Sadly I haven't organized my content yet and now I am having a hard time. :s Oh well my bad. I will try to get organized.

Thanks guys.

[Alex Taylor]

I have an "Articles" folder. In there I have a handful of other folders, each focused on a broad keyword. And tnen in each of those I have the articles. I save each article as the keyword phrase it's going after.

[itsliz]

Whatever you do, make sure you organize them BEFORE it gets out of hand You don't want to end up staring at a list of hundreds of articles one day, and not know which ones went where, and whether all of them have been distributed yet. (spoken from experience!) Gets even more confusing when someone else is distributing the articles for you.

I now have a very detailed organizing process. Broken down into folders, labeled by category and date, and also, once an article has been posted somewhere, the file name is changed so the beginning of the article file name has an abbreviation of where and when it was distributed.

[LadyL08]

I'm trying to write 100 articles this month so I am afraid of ending up with a mess and not knowing what is going on.

I think I will let my website do most of my storing and organizing. I eventually want all of my article directory articles on my website after doing some type of rewriting. I figure most of the time I will be looking at an article on my website wondering where it originated.

I have my website laid out in different directories for subniches. My content pages are labeled by the keyword. At the end of the article I will put a key code that tells me what the article is.
O - original
PK - PLR with keyword changes and minor revisions
PE - PLR rewritten for EZA
E - straight from EZA to website
ER - EZA rewritten for website

This will allow me to get content for visitors on my website right away using PLR with keywords I choose. Then I can eventually get around to rewriting and submitting to directories. If a visitor is directed from article directory to website, they might see the same keyword but the article is modified so they stay interested.

I may end up with combinations like PER: PLR rewrite for EZA, then modified for website. The keywords stay the same but perhaps the article gets picked up both places because it's different.

[jetsetwilly]

Out of interest, I'm designing a website that will allow people to store all of there articles in an order of there choice and submit direct to any wordpress site they own.

An article analyser is also available that will recommend keywords for each article a user writes. Plus other tools like an article log which keeps track of everything you do with each article.

I'm hoping people will go with my site as I think that organising yourself in im is often overlooked.

What do you guys think? Is it a potential viable project?

[LadyL08]

If you had it up, I would look at the site right now. I like the idea of keeping track of each articles and what was done with it. As someone else posted, this can easily be done in a worksheet, but not everyone can use Excel or other worksheets.

It would also be nice to keep track of websites that people recommend. I always right them down but never remember where I wrote the name or exactly what it does.

[dsmpublishing]

I had folders everywhere and i have an articles folder and inside it i organise it by year and week for each type i.e. ebay, twitter etc and that way i can find them quickly and easily when i need them.

I also store an awful amount of my info on excel as it is very handy to refer back to.

[Samuel Lee]

Everyone has a different way of doing things for sure, and typically when organizing its best to sort individual projects into individual folders. Then within or underneath each project folder you can have your own "articles" folder for article content, separating each article by filename. As your articles grow in content, its a good idea to develop sub folders for the various sources of where they are, be it article directory sites or your own webpage site. You can always keep a good tally on your articles by developing a spreadsheet in excel to have records of where your articles are at present as well! Hope this assists!

[lacraiger]

organize them by category so you can go back and rewrite them. one article can be rewritten a minimum of 10 or so times.

[Dexx]

Organizing them into separate folders is what I used to do, with a text notepad document in each to keep track of what each contained and when it was submitted.

Though there are definitely easier ways to save yourself time

[dearaewi]

My organization system has always been pretty basic; a main article folder, then sub-folder for each main topic, then further break them down as needed into sub-sub folders.

I haven't turned it into rocket science but there are time I do wish I would have added more info. I really like some of the ideas here and hopefully will be able to implement to get even more organized. Organization is definitely a time saver and there never seems to be quite enough time

Deanna

[Dexx]

haha, Agreed!

[jayden.fellze]

I organize them with dates, so that I can keep track of my work and especially my time.

[Kevin AKA Hubcap]

Originally Posted by Karen Newton

Hi Lynne,
I typically organize by project into individual folders. Underneath a project folder I would have another folder named articles. When I'm first starting out I might just save my articles directly to the articles folder (all in individual file names, appropriately named by keyword).

Karen

I pretty much do the same as Karen.

[GlynisG]

I use folders for each product I promote and sub-folders with articles, graphics, links etc. Works for me.

[Chris Kent]

I see that you guys use folder structures etc. You should really check out KeyNote. It has been voted as "pricelessware" on several occasions i.e. freeware that is really good!

You can replicate this tree structure and easily move items around with a few clicks and save it all under one file.

For example, I have one file for my articles, one file for each product I'm writing, one file for my list emails etc.

[Karen Newton]

Do you have a link for this KeyNote software? I'm searching on Google but I think I'm coming up with a different software...
Karen

UPDATE:
Did you mean this:
http://www.tranglos.com/free/

Interesting, might have to try it out!

[Chris Kent]

Hi Karen, yep that's the one!