How I Use Text Automation to Speed Up Article Creation

My Current Blog Post Template

I love taking shortcuts and sharing them. The following is an example of a blog post template that I am using in early January 2017.
The text is generated on my Macs and iOS by the TextExapander app. I type the letters “mmp” into the ByWord text editor app and everything below is automatically generated by TextExpander.
From there I export to HTML and publish to WordPress via Byword. It saves me a ton of steps. You gotta love New Media automation!
I hope you will use it to get some ideas for how you can Automate New Media.

Some Notes On the Template

I frequently change this template in my constant quest to improve the way I do things. You should be on that quest, too!
If you see text in red, it’s a note that I’m adding to explain what’s what. Those are not in the actual expansion.

The Blog Past Template

 
The expansion starts just after this…
TITLE: TitleGoesHere
AUTHOR: David Bourne
DATE: 2017/01/31 Tue     The expansion puts in the actual date.
DATE PUBLISHED:
PROMOTED:    A reminder to do this, and to record when I do it.
PROOF:    Did I follow up on the success of the post?
KEYWORDS: post, template, text expansion, automation, etc.
All of the above, TITLE through KEYWORDS, is for my internal notekeeping only.
I usually hide it at the top of the HTML file with a “<!– This is hidden HTML text! –>” code, so it does not display in the final webpage.

2DO List

  • add to blog topic index, and done list

SUMMARY    These are multimarkdown header codes. 

WhatIsItIn30Seconds  I create one word text blocks as reminders. I can double click them to easily replace them with real ideas. 

OUTLINE

OUTLINEGOESHERE

H1BIGPROMISE    This is an H1 title.

H3SUBIDEA  This is an H3 title.

H3SUBIDEA

H3SUBIDEA

WRAPUP

========================= Helper texts to copy and paste if I need them. 
!<– HiddenTextGoesHere –>
1. StrongFirstWord. start
2. StrongFirstWord. start
3. StrongFirstWord. start
A multimarkdown numbered outline with a bold first word.
!<–YouTube Embed Code –> 
<iframe width=”600″ height=”338″ src=”https://www.youtube.com/embed/XXXXXXXXXXXX?rel=0″ frameborder=”0″ allowfullscreen></iframe>

The End

But, hopefully it was just the start of you getting some new ideas about using blog templates. Please apply, rinse and repeat!

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