Quite a few things have happened since my previous blogger workflow update in March. Mailbrew is in, Apple News is out, forgot about Reddit and a few surprises. Let’s dig in.

The biggest change is the introduction of Mailbrew

Mailbrew comes in to complement News Explorer as a tool to help me more efficiently consume information that needs my attention. I’m really in love with this service. Please read my Mailbrew review here.

The side effect of the Mailbrew addition is that I’m reconsidering my use of Mailchimp. I’m currently suggesting my newsletter subscribers switch to my new newsletter coming out of Mailbrew, which is much more complete and better looking. It gathers my blog posts from my main blog’s RSS feed and posts coming out of Micro.blog’s RSS feed. I’m closely monitoring the situation. I’ll see how it goes.

My blogger workflow as of 2020-05

Apple’s News for my content distribution

As I write this third workflow update, I’m still waiting for Apple to approve my feed submission, more than three months after my submission. Some people think Apple no longer allows user-generated content. Too bad. I decided to remove the service altogether from my workflow diagram for now. Who news Apple anyway, right?

What about Reddit

Curiously, I forgot to mention that my blog posts are cross-posted to my subreddit named /numericcitizen. I’m using IFTTT for this. For those who consume their content from Reddit, they can subscribe to my subreddit.

Cross-posting from Micro.blog to WordPress

The thing that I like the most about Micro.blog is its simplicity. It is very easy to post new thoughts, comments, etc. Sometimes, I want to put something out there without all the fuss and requirements of WordPress, like tags, SEO edits, feature images, etc.

But, for some of my posts on Micro.blog, I want them to appear on my main blog too. I recently experimented with a few things with IFTTT and a WordPress plugin to automate this task. But in each case, I didn’t like the results. On top of that, the WordPress plugin that I tried has not received an update in more than two years. There are some bugs with my current version of WordPress, which is 5.4.1. For me, it’s a no-go.

I decided to use a manual process with MarsEdit. This venerable macOS application is simple and can post to WordPress and Micro.blog. The latter is currently being added to an upcoming version. So far, it is working fine for me.

Cross-posting with MarsEdit means copy-pasting my text from one place to another and hitting the “post to blog” button. Simple enough.

Another tiny but really useful addition: Pager for Reddit

A bit like NewsExplorer and Mailbrew, Pager is an application that works for me in the background. The Pager app helps me stay updated with content I care about on Reddit. I should probably write a separate review. The design of this iPadOS application is great. Setting up filters is easy. It’s been a while since the last update; my hope is that this app is still being maintained. It’s a really cool app, and it is free!

An unexpected change of behaviour

As you probably know by now, Apple recently introduced a few new things regarding its iPad product line: iPadOS 13.4 with complete support for mouse and trackpad and the Magic Keyboard. These two simple things are unexpectedly changing my workflow. I happen to work much more often on my iPad than I used to. Second, my usage of Notion diverted my time spent in Ulysses. Notion is not a text processor per se, but it can act as one. I write most of my text in Notion and do the final write-up in Ulysses when I’m done with my research and my ideas are fully written down. Overall, I spend less time in Ulysses, but it’s still an essential application in my workflow.

Final words

I feel my blogger workflow is stabilizing a bit. No major changes are on the horizon, which is a good thing. Now, I’m concentrating on the content.

Initially published a month ago, my blogger workflow received a lot of traction, and since then, I made a few important changes. Today, I want to address how I consume content and which tools I use to support my research.

A significant change was made to how I manage and consume RSS feeds. I recently switched from Reeder to News Explorer (read my review of News Explorer) because of the more powerful features available, as I wrote in my review. Because of this change, first, I no longer need to depend on Feedly for my synchronization service. Second, I can more easily keep track of VIP tweeps or YouTube channels.

A fundamental change is integrating Notion.so to help me as a blogger. I no longer rely on Apple’s Reminders for bookmarking internet stuff I want to blog about. And Notion is so much more powerful than Raindrop.io. Expect a review of Notion in the near future.

Flipboard and Tumblr were also added as new publishing conduits for those who prefer these platforms. As of this writing, I’m still waiting for Apple to approve my submission. Rumours are circulating that Apple no longer accepts user-created content for News. If true, I think it is a missed opportunity for Apple.

Two apps that I use a lot made their apparition on the workflow: Linky and Birdbrain. The former is used to generate visual quotes like the following one. The latter helps me manage the Twitter followers or tweets that I follow.

Other improvements to come

I would like to see better support for Apple’s Shortcuts in Notion.so app and Micro.blog. Another thing that I would like to see is the support of Micro.blog in Linky, which currently only supports Twitter. I asked the developer about it, and he said we were often asked about this. My fingers are crossed.

If you are a blogger like me, you may find it interesting to learn about what tools other bloggers are using. If you are not (yet) a blogger, you’ll see what it takes to start and thrive! As a long-time blogger, I’m happy to share all the details about my workflow with you. You’ll learn about the tools I like to use and the relation between them. Let’s dig in.

Two platforms and a social network

For my blogging needs, I rely on two blogging platforms: WordPress and Micro.blog. They have their own purposes.

My main blog (“Numeric Citizen Blog”) is hosted on WordPress.com. The design is based on the Baskerville 2 WordPress theme¹. As a paying subscriber to the WordPress Business Plan, my readers get an ad-free website.

Recently, I decided to lower the frequency of new posts in order to publish longer ones. For shorter posts, I’m now using exclusively micro.blog (see “The Return of Micro Blogging ?”). I’m quite happy with my choices. WordPress is well known but micro.blog is quite marginal. This platform is simple to use, looks a bit like Twitter but doesn’t have all the noise and there is no advertising. There is a choice of native macOS or iOS clients, too, which is mandatory for me.

As you can see from the workflow diagram below, Twitter is the only social network that I use to reach out to potential readers. Posts from micro.blog and WordPress get cross-posted automatically to Twitter. This is another way of reaching more people, especially with the use of hashtags.

Because of my use of Micro.blog, I rarely publish directly on Twitter these days. I prefer micro.blog for this purpose. With automatic cross-posting to Twitter, I save time and reach both communities with a single post which is nice.

I don’t use Facebook, for well-documented reasons (see “My Final Post On Facebook”). I’m not on Pinterest either, as my blog content doesn’t fit this platform. I used to be on Tumblr a few years ago with many smaller blogs, but I decided to leave this behind (see “Bye Bye Tumblr”). Will I return? It depends. The future of Tumblr is now in the hands of Automattic, the owner of WordPress.com (see “Automattic buys Tumblr from Verizon for reportedly less than $20 million”). I’ll see.

Publishing services

Blogging is cool, but being read is even better! That is why I’m using a few publishing services to reach more people. From time to time, I manually cross-post my most important pieces on Medium. I’m part of the Medium Partner Program, which gets me a few dollars here and there for my content but nothing to pay the bills.

I’m also relying on Google News albeit with fewer expectations to reach out to readers. On top of this, I’m waiting for the approval of Apple’s News service and Flipboard to go live. I don’t expect too much traction from these services, though. I see them as complemental tools to reach audiences where they are. The effort to put them in place is very low, so why not? Think of this as experimental.

Supporting tools

As you may already know, I’m very much invested in the Apple ecosystem. As such, I’m using the Mac, the iPad or the iPhone as a writing or creation tool. To enable this movement between all devices, I rely on multi-platform support for most of my supporting apps. From Ulysses (see “Switching to Ulysses for my Writing Needs”) to Adobe Spark (see “My Review of Adobe Spark Post”), I can use all of these on all my devices. Apple’s iCloud is the syncing service that ties it all up, and it works without an itch².

The journaling app DayOne plays an important role behind the scenes. This is the tool that I use to archive my published content. Very cool stuff. (see “Documenting My Numeric Life”).

A less-known web service called CrowdSignal allows me to create polls and gather feedback for my blog posts. Each blog post can be rated, and the results are accumulated on CrowdSignal. As of this writing, the post’s rating is at 4.5 / 5.0, which is not bad at all! This service, owned by Automattic, is free of charge, which is cool.

WordPress is an open architecture that allows the development of plugins. I use a total of 26 plugins that complement the basic WordPress features. One example is a Buffer plugin, which will put every post on my Buffer queue in order to repost a reminder about content published on my blog to Twitter a few days later. Another plugin is Google Analytics, which provides a dashboard of the visitor’s statistics on my WordPress Admin page, which is very handy. Finally, I’m using a plugin that cross-posts content to Apple’s News Service³.

Quality control

To improve the quality of my posts, I rely on two important tools: Grammarly and Yoast SEO. I pay for these because I think the quality is mandatory. Don’t forget, I’m French-Canadian, so I need help improving my English. Both of these plug-ins are doing a great job. Grammarly is available as a browser plugin, as a standalone application or on the web. I wish I could use it within Ulysses, but plugins are impossible on iOS. Because of that, the final proofing is done on the web, not within Ulysses. Finally.

Yoast is a WordPress plugin and works in the background while editing a new post. It helps me optimize my blog posts for search engines⁴. The following screenshot is Yoast in action while editing this post.

A few words about my blogger routine

Each morning, I spend about 45-60 minutes to work on many things related to being a blogger. It can be reading, searching, designing, testing, writing or publishing. I do spend even more time during the weekends. Overall, five to ten hours per week of hard work. That is a lot, but it is rewarding. This time is on top of what I spend on my other passion: photography.

Miscellaneous notes and room for improvements

Finally, on the workflow diagram, you’ll find all the paying services or applications with a green dollar icon. I spend over $500 annually on this blogging adventure, but I think it is worth it. If you want to encourage me, feel free to give me some tips or become a paying member of my blog⁵. It is less than the cost of a Starbucks coffee. Think about it.

RSS feeds are an important tool in my blogger life. I use them a lot to stay in touch with my sources. But I also enable them on my blogs as I think they facilitate content diffusion and consumption (see “To all content creators: RSS feeds as facilitators, use them!”).

There is one place where I think I’ll change the tools that I use. Look for the yellow box on the diagram. I’m in the process of reconsidering Reeder as my RSS reader and replacing it with something else⁶. I want to get rid of Feedly altogether. Because Google dropped support for Google’s Reader service, I had to migrate to Feedly.

Last words

If you think I could improve something in this workflow, feel free to make any suggestions in the comments section. I would be glad to read from other bloggers.

If you want to know why I do all this, read my “Why This Blog” page. If you have any questions, please use the comments section and don’t be shy about asking! I’ll be more than happy to provide answers.