How to Manage and Organize Your Online Articles the Easy Way

Do you find that the more articles you create, the more time you’re spending promoting them? And do you get confused as to which articles you have already promoted and which ones you have not?

One of the most common questions people ask as they write more and more articles is

“How do I manage my articles and online promotions?”

The easiest way to keep track of your articles and online promotions is to use a spreadsheet. Just spend a few minutes creating one, and it will save you a tremendous amount of time in the long run.

I created an Excel spreadsheet to keep a list of all my articles, the links, the category, and where I have promoted them. It is a simple but very helpful spreadsheet.

First I created columns and named them:

• Title – I paste the titles in here.
• Link – I paste the link in here as soon as an article is published.
• Type – I put the category the article belongs to, like Cooking, Gifts, Relationship, Organizing, etc. You can create as many categories as you need.
• StumbleUpon – I mark it with “ok” after I promote the article on StumbleUpon.
• Digg – I mark it with “ok” after I promote the article on Digg.

As I join more social bookmarking sites, I will be adding more columns. So no matter how many bookmarking sites you join, there will be no cause for confusion for as long as you update your spreadsheet regularly. You can add as many columns as you want.

Note: The more social bookmarking sites you promote your articles on, the better. This gives your articles the best exposure possible. The other sites which are also popular are Reddit, Buzz, Technorati, del.icio.us,etc.

By a quick glance on this spreadsheet, I can see right away that some articles have not yet been promoted on Digg. Seeing this then I can quickly sign into my Digg account and submit the articles, and it will only take a few minutes.

With an up-to-date spreadsheet you will be able to make sure that all your articles have been submitted to the bookmarking sites.

You can also add columns for the networking sites you have joined, such as Facebook, MySpace, etc. You can also include the forums you participate in. Anything that you want to remember, put it on the spreadsheet. Very soon your spreadsheet will be your best friend =)

You will notice too that I put filters on the Column titles. Why?

Let’s say for example I’m writing an article about a recipe and I want to paste links to my other recipe articles. Instead of going through the list manually, I can quickly click on the filter “Type” and choose “Cooking”.

So this is what will appear:

Ta-Da! With just one click on the filter it showed me the articles I have on cooking.

Then I can quickly copy and paste these links to my new article.

See what a time-saver it is?

Here is how to filter.

In Excel 2003 or lower:

Highlight the whole document, then DATA – FILTER – AUTO FILTER

In Excel 2007:

Highlight the whole document, then DATA – FILTER

You will love filters!

I use this spreadsheet for my Triond articles, but you can use it for any sites that you submit your articles to. Whether you write for Triond, Bukisa, Associated Content, Helium, HubPages, etc. it will provide organization for all your articles.

I hope this article has helped you. If you enjoyed it kindly give it a Stumble or a Digg, that would be awesome!

All the best to you, and happy article-organizing!

Feel free to check out my profile for more helpful articles!

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