Get Rid of the Clutter

There was an interesting post made yesterday over at Weblogtools Collection about developing post ideas and how a new WordPress plugin might work to make note keeping and idea seeding easier and faster for bloggers.

And while the posting itself was a good read, as often happens the real gems (for me at least) appeared later in the comments of others.

So, I thought I’d share here some of the methods and tools I personally use for coming up with ideas and warehousing clips of data for later use or citing in posts, since I’m involved with so many blogs in several different genre I’ve had to create a fairly comprehensive, yet quick and easy system for this.

I’ve also just added a new tool to my toolbox, that I found thanks to Michael’s comment on the Weblogtools Collection post, and I’ll give my impressions on that too.

First, my #1 tool for post idea developing right now is Google Reader. I’m subscribed to over 350 blogs and news sites and without Google Reader I’d be in trouble trying to keep up with all of them.

But what really makes Google Reader shine (for me as a blogger) is the search capabilities. Even though I may have just skimmed over a piece in Reader several months ago about “widget glue”, if I’m creating a post on that topic today a quick search will bring that piece and any others related to my idea right up for me.

If you’re subscribing to lots of feeds in your field or area of interest–and as a blogger you should be–then it’s like having a massive and constantly growing library at your fingertips.

Of course, I also like to take notes from pieces I read in Google Reader whenever they strike me as something I might be interested in writing about later myself.

For note keeping, I used to use Yellow Legal Pads. That’s not some nifty software title, I mean actual pen and paper. The problem is I’ve been doing this stuff for years and have 5 whole shelves on my bookcase devoted to just the notes I’ve made during that time. Yellow Pad after Yellow Pad of unorganized notes scribbled on unnumbered pages.

So, I eventually began looking for a digital solution that would be neater and could be indexed for searching, and started using Evernote.

Evernote is great. It’s quick, clean, easy to use and makes everything you clip to it searchable. But, it’s limited, even for paid Premium users, so if you’re a big note taker (as I am) there’s a risk of running out of space and upload allowance each month.

However, I mentioned discovering a new tool from that post yesterday and it’s going to help me ensure that I don’t have those allowance worries with Evernote going forward.

The tool is called Zotero and it’s a Firefox add-on (also works in Flock), that does a very similar job to Evernote, just without a lot of the graphical bells and whistles.

Simply, it’s a research tool that lets you make notes from any web page (including your web based email clients) and store them, organize and analyze them, tag them, and basically save them in whatever way best suits your needs for later use.

I’m still new to Zotero myself, and it took a few minutes to get a feel for the interface and ways it works, but once I did I realized how powerful it really is, and that it alone could serve my needs (if I didn’t like the GUI of Evernote so much).

Now, what I’ve done is split the various projects that I do most of my note clipping/taking for into groups, and moved several of those groups from Evernote and to Zotero. This ensures that I won’t have to worry about hitting my limits with Evernote, and it actually better organizes my personal project workflows for me.

One other data warehousing tool I use is the Web Clipboard feature in the Flock browser for saving media that I might later want to link to or embed in a posting. I began using this before I started using Evernote, which can hold some media files, so I’ve continued using it out of habit.

All of the tools I’ve just mentioned are for data storage and mining. They allow you to make and keep notes or media as you browse the web, and that helps me to find ideas and sources for future post developing as a blogger.

But, I also wanted to share some tools I use for adding value to my blog postings as well, because just having an idea isn’t enough, you need to flush it out into something worth reading for your visitors, and it helps if you can present it with media and link to additional resources or related stories for readers who want to go beyond your posting on the topic.

For all of this I use 2 tools, and both are free services, one with a Firefox plugin (that also works in Flock) that allow me to pull media content that’s under the Creative Commons license (though sometimes the licenses aren’t completely clear) and links from sources on the web that are related to the posting you’re writing.

The first is Zemanta and it’s one of the coolest services I’ve ever used as a blogger. It offers images, related blog postings and news stories related to your post–that update as you write–that you can embed or link to. All of which adds value for your readers and visitors.

The second, called Apture, isn’t really a browser add-on but rather a simple piece of Javascript that you paste into your blog template, and it then allows you to add content from a library of articles, videos, images, Wikipedia, maps and etc. just by highlighting words or phrases in your post and picking what they link to. And what’s really cool is the links don’t take visitors off of your blog, they appear as small pop-ups (that look like thought balloons) and just sit there adding value to your content for your readers.

These simple, easy and free tools all help me in finding, saving and using content from all over the web to develop blog posting ideas with, and they save me a ton of time. I hope they’re of use for you too.

Image Source: stock.xchang user Scyza

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