How Notion Can Become Your Content Planning Sidekick

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The blank page. That blinking cursor. The vast expanse of white space waiting to be filled with words. 

For content creators and bloggers, getting started with writing can sometimes feel like standing at the base of a towering mountain, wondering how to take the first step towards the peak. 

  1. Where do ideas come from? 
  1. How do we organize those ideas into coherent articles and videos? 
  1. How can we systemize and streamline creating content, week after week?

This is where Notion comes in. Notion is a versatile workspace that can be molded and customized for nearly any purpose imaginable. With some clever Notion templates, we can transform this flexible platform into a robust system for ideating, planning, drafting, and publishing content. 

In this post, we’ll explore some of my favorite Notion templates for supercharging creativity and streamlining content production as a blogger, YouTuber, podcaster, or any other type of content creator.

Seed the Creative Process with Inspiring Templates

Staring down the blinking cursor on a fresh document, it’s easy to feel uninspired. The key is to first prime the creative pump before trying to churn out paragraphs. 

Notion templates can provide guiding frameworks to jog inspiration and give shape to nascent ideas in your mind. Here are a few of my favorites:

SEO Starter Kit

SEO should be top-of-mind for any creator publishing content online. This template helps formulate ideas optimized for search from the start. 

It prompts you to fill out key SEO details like focus keyword, related keywords, target search intent, and seed ideas for an SEO-friendly headline. Building content around core keywords lays a strong SEO groundwork.

SEO Content Brief

The SEO Content Brief template is gold for collaborating with writers or developing your own database of ideas.

This template neatly organizes all the information a writer would need to draft strong, on-brand content: Focus SEO keywords, target audience and buyer personas, types of content that perform well, suggested topics, content guidelines, and more.  

Content Creation OS

This template stimulates ideation by providing formulas for different types of content, like the anatomy of viral posts or the essential elements of a captivating video essay.

By laying out iterative frameworks, the Content System sparks new angles on topics to explore and guides structure from the brainstorming phase.

Schedule Your Creative Flow with Editorial Calendars

Consistency is key for building an audience and generating traction with your content. 

But finding the motivation to keep cranking out content week after week can be tough. This is where editorial calendars come to the rescue.

Editorial calendars, also called content calendars or publishing schedules, map out everything you plan to publish across channels over a set timeframe. Getting your ideas organized into a visible schedule makes the creative process feel far more manageable.

Here are two Notion editorial calendar templates that combine creativity with organization:   

YouTube Content Creation Kit

From idea generation to production scheduling, this template tackles the entire video creation workflow. 

It includes idea prompts like video styles to experiment with, drumming up video topics around trending keywords using Google Trends integration, and mapping out sequences or series. 

Then, it allows you to prioritize ideas and slot them into a publishing schedule, along with pre-production checklists for each video.

Blog Planning Calendar

Blogging regularly is challenging. This template breaks down the process into achievable steps:

  • Discover post ideas centered around keywords.
  • Schedule blog posts across categories over the next several weeks.
  • For each post, include word count targets, focus keywords, and craft thoughtful headlines.  

Seeing your ideas collide with deadlines provides essential structure. Pair this calendar with templates for outlining posts, and suddenly cranking out 8 blogs a month feels totally possible!

Measure Performance to Guide Content Improvements  

Creating content isn’t a “set it and forget it” endeavor. The most successful creators constantly evaluate what content resonates with their audience and iterate based on those insights.

These Notion templates help quantify which topics and styles are performing best and worse:

Blog Earning Calculator

Monetize your blog with affiliate links or ads? This template compiles monthly earnings reports to reveal your highest earning posts over time, calculated based on metrics like clicks, CTR, conversions, and commissions.

Identify whether long posts, list posts, or beginner guides capture more clicks and conversions to double down on that style of content.

Google Analytics Dashboard

Connecting your Notion workspace to a Google Analytics account for your site or channel lets you monitor performance data right within your notes. 

This template visualizes metrics like pageviews, bounce rate, referral traffic sources, and more through linked data summaries and charts. Dive into the numbers to learn what content to amplify.  

Get Creative with 100s of Pre-Built Templates

The templates highlighted above offer frameworks to facilitate nearly every aspect of managing a content production machine. 

With a Notion setup tailored for your creative workflow, you’ll waste less time reinventing processes and have more mental bandwidth for what matters most — producing high-quality content fueled by imagination and insight.

Beyond this sampling, there are hundreds of battle-tested Notion templates built specifically for content creators across the web. Here are a few exert sources to check out:

– Thomas Frank’s Notion templates and course

– Ali Abdaal’s video creation kit 

– Marie Poulin’s blog planning system

– Red Gregory’s content design templates

Now…what are you waiting for? 

With these templates primed for inspiration, it’s time to start creating! Open up a new Notion doc and let your original ideas flow freely knowing these templates have got your back when it comes to amplifying your best content.

The Bottom Line.

The blank page and blinking cursor await. But this time, with a bit less intimidation and a spark of excitement. 

Notion templates transform those muses in your mind into published pieces readers love. They prime the creative pump, impose structure on spurts of inspiration, and fuel the engines needed to consistently deliver engaging content built to perform.

What you create from here is entirely up to your vision. These templates provide the launchpad.

With keyword-optimized ideation prompts, integrated analytics to amplify top content, and calendars to schedule your ideas against deadlines, you now wield frameworks for streamlining productivity. 

No more wasting energy reinventing your creative systems. No more struggling with the vast whiteness of a blank Notion page or document. 

Notion has your back. 

Now, go dream up something incredible. Brainstorm what your audience needs to hear. The writing road lies ahead, and you’ve now got customizable templates specially outfitted to take your content where you want it to go.

So…what inspires you? What should your next blog post or video cover? The possibilities are truly infinite within these Notion walls. Unlock that fresh hit of creative rush and run with it. 

Your content planning sidekick eagerly awaits marching orders. Time to put it to work. Open that Notion workspace. Crack those knuckles. And start creating something awesome.

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