I often find myself writing multiple blog posts at the same time. I am constantly saving articles and links as I research future posts. Without a concrete content plan with a strict publishing timetable my half written posts may never reach completion.
When planning and researching future blog posts it is important that the content you have found is at your fingertips when you begin to write. I used to be really bad at this. I wasted time rooting around the web trying to find content I had seen and quite frankly thought I HAD BOOKMARKED somewhere. This cost me time and momentum.
I am pleased to say this never happens anymore thanks to the brilliant Pocket.
Save great blog ideas direct to your Pocket
What is Pocket?
Pocket is an app that allows a user save/bookmark interesting articles, photos and videos for later consumption.
- The wonderful thing about Pocket is that content can be easily accessed across multiple browsers, pcs, tablets and phones. So no mater what device I am on I can find my saved content effortlessly. I spend many a train ride reading content on Pocket that I have saved on my desktop.
- Bookmark content directly from Twitter. I find Twitter a rich hunting ground for great content and have even organised my favourite content sources into Twitter Lists. When I see an interesting and relevant tweet in my Twitterfeed I can save the article direct to pocket without leaving my twitterfeed.
Save content to your Pocket account fright rom your Twitterfeed
- Save content to Pocket direct from your browser. If I am reading a great article on the web that I think may be useful at a later date the Pocket plugin allows me to bookmark/save it instantly. Pocket has plugins for Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer and Safari. Quick Tip – Always tag the content you are saving. This will make it easier to find later.
Save Content to Pocket directly from your browser.
- Share content from Pocket in seconds to Facebook, Twitter or even schedule content via Buffer. I use Pocket to bookmark content when I don’t have time to read it in full. It in many ways Pocket has become my social newspaper. If I read an article that I think would be of interest my community I can share it instantly via pocket. If you use Buffer you can even schedule the post to appear on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or Google+ for your chosen time.
Share or even Schedule content to your Social Media channels directly from Pocket
- Tag your saved articles into different categories. When saving content to Pocket it is important to tag it. Tagging all your content makes retrieving your content easy and ensures all related content shows up in the one place. For example – I am researching an article on video production and find 10 articles. I can save + tag them as “video production” to Pocket and can easily find them any time in the future just by searching for ‘video production”.
Organise your saved articles into different categories. NB. You can add multiple tags to an article .
Use the search bar on Pocket is great for finding saved content, so even if you have not tagged content properly it is relatively easy to find. Other features include being able to filter content by articles, images or videos.
Finally, don’t be a content hoarder. Once you are finished reading, researching or using content delete or archive it from your Pocket feed. Otherwise your Pocket newsfeed will end up looking like my 7 year old’s bedroom……MESSY.
Check out my quick video and find out how Pocket and Hootsuite are a match made in heaven;)
I hope you have found this post of interest. What are your favourite tools? Which ones would you like us to write about?
