Have you ever had the thought that things would be awesome if you had a clone? Like not in a weird “Orphan Black” kind of way, but just another you that can help you get things done? One of my many passions in life is automation and finding ways to automate processes. In my book, automated tasks are considered clones because they’re doing exactly what you would do on your behalf. The blogging process can be long and detailed depending on the kind of post it is (a how-to post may take longer to create than an opinion post), so it’s a great idea to throw some automated tasks into the process (aka your clone) to relieve you of some of the work.

These are the general steps of the blogging process from a high-level view:

Blog topic post research
Choose a post topic
Take photos for post
Edit photos
Type blog post
Create post graphics
Post goes live
Social media sharing

Where to remove a human from the process (in bold):

Blog topic post research
Choose a post topic
Take photos for post
Edit photos
Type blog post
Create post graphics
Post goes live
Social media sharing

The process has literally been cut in half! This is a dream come true, right? So how exactly can these tasks be done by your clone? Here’s how:

Blog post topic research

I go to social media for a large portion of my research. This is where my target audience hangs out. They’re on Twitter and Instagram posting away. I find them by searching for niche-related hashtags and keywords. The key is, instead of me searching social media myself, I have an automated task set up that searches for me and spits out the results onto a Google Sheet. I can then check this sheet at my leisure and find ideas for blog post topics directly from my target audience.

Type blog post

There is no need to type blog posts if you don’t want to thanks to voice-to-text capabilities on your phone and in Google Docs. You can talk your blog posts out into a doc and the words will be typed for you! This allows you to safely multi-task, like blogging while driving or cooking dinner for example. You only have to be present to talk, but you’re hands-free so you don’t have to worry about typing!

“The key to staying on track with blogging is to stay ahead.”

Post goes live

If you are working on blog posts and publishing them in real time, you've got it all wrong. You should be working ahead, so you should be scheduling your posts to go live at a predetermined time in the future. That’s the key to staying on track with blogging...staying ahead.

Social media sharing

There is also no reason to have to manually share your new blog posts on social media. Cross promotion is an awesome thing (posting on multiple social channels) and doesn’t have to involve you. You only need to create the automated task that will post to Twitter, Pinterest, Facebook, etc. when a new blog post goes live. After you create that task, you set it and forget it.

Another aspect of social sharing is sharing frequently. You can also automate this by scheduling posts in a tool like Buffer, Hootsuite, or CoSchedule. By setting up a group of social posts to go out some time in the future, so you can literally be brunching with your family and promoting your last 5 blog posts on social media without intruding on your family time!

Awesome, right? Well what about the other tasks that your clone can’t do? The great thing about this is that you will have freed up time to focus more on these tasks that you do need to touch. As I say, automation frees up time for you to work on things that you can’t automate!

Interested in having custom automated tasks (aka your clone) created for you?

Click here to start saving time!

I remember when I signed up for my first Gmail account. I was fascinated with them because they rolled email threads into one message rather than having multiple emails with the same subject on separate lines (hello organization!!). Little did I know, Google was going to have a huge impact in my life over the coming years.

Fast forward to present day and you will find me using so many Google apps for so many different things. The G Suite, as it’s so lovingly called, can be a bloggers dream. There are various apps that make up the G Suite, most that I use on the regular. Today I will be discussing the G Suite and how a blogger can use the products in their blogging processes.

First a little 101. The G Suite is comprised of Gmail, Calendar, Drive, Docs, Sheets, Slides, Forms, Sites and Hangouts and they are designed to integrate with each other. For example, if you want to insert a graph from Sheets into a Doc, you can easily do that. Docs and Sheets are similar and compatible with MS Word and MS Excel, so if you know these programs, the Google versions will be a breeze.

The other apps in G Suite may sound familiar and you may even use them currently. The difference in G Suite from Google’s free apps is that you receive double the storage space in Google Drive than the free accounts, 24/7 tech support and you receive a business email account (you@yourwebsite.com - golden & professional!) with 99.9% guaranteed uptime. Quite honestly, the business email is the best thing of all to me, so the accompanying G Suite products are an added bonus!

Now that you know a little background, here is how you can use the G Suite successfully as a blogger:

Google Sheets

Organize your tweets to post for the week (bonus points for automatically adding them to Google Calendar so that they post to Twitter based on a scheduled time!).
Store market research results (an automated task can add market research results from Twitter into a Google Sheet. Here’s more info on how to do it)
Store new email subscriber details to automatically add to a ConvertKit email list - I use the Squarespace platform for my website, but there is no direct connection from Squarespace to my email marketing provider, ConvertKit. As a result, if you use Squarespace’s newsletter or form blocks to collect email addresses, to get them to flow to ConvertKit automatically, a Google Sheet would need to be the bridge between the two.
Social stat tracking- Sheets is a good place to keep a record of your social media numbers so that you can see trends over time.
Graphs- if you are tracking social stats, create a graph so that you can visually understand the trends and know which platforms outperform each other for you.

Google Docs

Compose blog posts- I always create my blog posts is Google Docs before moving them into my blog editor. It’s one of the best things that I do to increase productivity. Here’s a post all about using Google Docs for blog posts.
Blogging collaboration- if you are working on a collaboration with another blogger, you can create and share Google Docs so that both parties can view and edit the doc. My friend and fellow blogger Katrina of Katrina Blair always use Google Docs for our collaboration blog posts and it works so well!
Outline and plan email and online course content- if you create educational material, you can do your planning/brain dumping in a Google Doc. For example, when I created one of my free email courses, I planned all of the content out and edited it in Docs.
Design free download content- if you offer digital freebies on your website, you can create the freebies in docs. For example, checklists, worksheets, bulleted tip lists, etc.

Gmail (business email)

Professional email is golden and more...professional. If you want to work with brands, you need to have a business email address to be taken seriously.
I mean, there’s really nothing else to say about this because that’s the most important reason to use a Gmail business email account. In fact, here’s a link to try a free 14 day trial of G Suite (just $6 a month after the trial period! Business email is the main feature of G Suite, but the other apps come along with it for no extra charge!).

Google Calendar

Schedule tweets to post to your social media accounts - if you store your tweets in Google Sheets, you can add them to your calendar to post on auto pilot.
Keep a blogging schedule/editorial calendar- Schedule blogging tasks so you will always know what needs to be done and when. When scheduling, don’t just list the day that a task should be completed, also schedule the steps that it will take to get there.
Appointments- if Google Calendar is your main calendar app, you can use it for scheduling appointments. Plenty of programs integrate with Calendar so when you schedule an appointment from a 3rd party source, the event can be automatically added to your calendar.

Google Hangouts

Webinars- if you want to host an informational webinar, you can do this using Google Hangouts.
Private masterclass- You may be selling seats for a live video training, so you can host these with Google as well.
Video calls- this can be a call with a business partner, vendor, brand, etc. If you want to have a meeting but live in completely different time zones or even just another state, video calls are awesome. My friend and I try to do a video call (virtual coffee date) monthly to plan out blogging things together.
Coaching calls- if you are a coach, you can have one-on-one coaching calls with your clients. Again, this is great for working across state lines.
Group calls- you can also have group calls in a Google Hangout. If you offer group coaching, this would be the way to do it.

Google Photos

Brand images- you can access all of your brand images if it’s stored in your Google Photo account. This makes it easy to access images on the go or when you need them on a whim.
Save a stockpile of photos- these photos can be used for Instagram/social media posting or to create blog post graphics. They can also be used on slideshows that you create with Google Slides.

Google Forms

Send surveys to your customers- surveys are an important piece of your blog because they give you insight directly from your customers and audience.
Send surveys to your email list- surveys can also be sent to your email list for insight that will help you determine the type of content that they want to keep receiving from you.
Create quizzes- quizzes are a fun tool that are also helpful for marketing because the results can tell you more about your audience and hep you tag them accordingly in your email marketing program.

Google Slides

Webinar slides- if you host webinars, you can create the slides using G Suite.
Pitch deck- if you pitch ideas to brands for collaboration, you can create a pitch deck using Slides.
In-person training/presentation- when meeting with potential clients in person or for in person presentations, Slides can be used to make a professional presentation.

Google Drive (cloud storage)

More of it- G Suite provides 30G of storage opposed to the 15G that are standard on the free version.
Folder for blog/business documents- you can create a folder to store your media kit, contracts and any other documents that you use.

Now that you know various ways that you can use G Suite, I hope that you start using it more often! Here’s that link again that will give you 14 days free. After the trial, G Suite is only $6 per month and SOOOO worth it (especially for that business email account).

So tell me, do you currently use G Suite? If so, how do you use it? Leave a comment below.

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The 'Gram @LaurenMyersCo

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Where to Remove a Human From Your Blogging Process (+ what to do instead)