How to set up a content creation hub in Notion

Welcome back to the Notion for Blogging series! For those of you who are new here, Notion is an all-inclusive productivity tool that combines the functionality of spreadsheets, word processors, task management solutions, and so much more. My Notion for Blogging series shows you how to use this tool to manage every element of your blog and brand in one place.

Today, I’ll walk you through the most important part of using Notion for content planning — creating the Content Creation Hub database. Let’s dig in!

What is a content creation hub and why do you need one?

A sneak peek of the Content Creation Hub premium Notion template, part of the Notion for Blogging Premium Template Pack!

A content creation hub is an intuitive content scheduling database. This single database is the backbone of your content planning and creation strategy in Notion. All your content lives in this hub. You can embed the database into other pages to easily see your content in context.

For example, let’s say you also create YouTube videos. You might have a separate page for your YouTube content that includes your stats, expenses, and resources for improving your video production skills. You can embed the Content Creation Hub database right into that page and filter it to show only your YouTube content.

That’s just one example of how you can use the Content Creation Hub to simplify content planning. Let’s explore a few others.

Plan all your blog, social media, email, podcast, and YouTube content in the same place

Notion’s database properties allow for granular organization. Properties and templates make it easy to create new content pieces and see existing ones in context.

It’s better than a simple content calendar because you can draft your posts and track related tasks right in Notion. No more switching between a dozen tabs!

Create filtered views to organize your content

Notion’s filters are an excellent way to clean up your hub and see only content that’s relevant to that view.

For example, you might want to create a new view for content that’s publishing this month. To do that, you’ll create a new view in the database and add filters that show content publishing between your preferred dates.

You can filter your content however you like — publish date, status, platform, and priority are just a few examples. I prefer to filter mine by campaign and platform:

Make templates to simplify content creation

Templates allow you to add a new post with the relevant properties already filled out in one click.

Another sneak peek of the Content Creation Hub premium template!

Going back to our YouTube example, your template for YouTube videos will already have “YouTube” selected under the Platform property, “video” under content type, etc. Plus a custom icon to visually indicate that the piece is a video.

Templates are a great way to populate all your tasks for that specific content type. Check out my blog post template:

Every time I create a new blog post using this template, these tasks populate automatically. Below the post tasks, I’ve also added space for the meta description, outline, and post draft. (I write all my blog posts in Notion — including this one!)

How to create a content creation hub in Notion

Here’s a step-by-step walkthrough on how to create your very own content creation hub. (Video walkthrough coming soon!)

Step 1: Create a new top-level page

Step 2: Select “table”

You can choose whichever database view you like, but I prefer tables, especially for the initial setup.

Step 3: Add properties

Okay, so you’ve got your basic Notion database. Now it’s time to add properties. These are the fields you’ll fill out for each new content piece. Here are a few ideas:

• Post title
• Select property for content type: Blog, social media, email, video, audio
• Select property for platform: Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Podcast
• Date property for publish date
• Select property for priority: High, med, low
• Select property for status: Not started, in progress, completed, awaiting

Tip: You can also add relations to other databases. Relations link two databases together. For example, my Content Creation Hub is linked to my Content Offers database. This is where I create and plan all of my products, deliverables, and lead magnets. This allows me to see every piece of content attached to a campaign or offer. (But we’ll cover this more in-depth later in this post!)

Step 4: Add your content

Once you’ve added properties, feel free to start adding content. Just click “New” in the top right-hand corner of the database to add a new item.

It’s okay if it gets a little messy at first — in the next tip, I’ll show you how to add custom filtered views to clean up your content.

Step 5: Create filtered views

Cool, so you’ve added some content to your hub. Now it’s time to clean it up with filtered views. Here’s how:

1. Click “Add new view” in the top left-hand corner.
2. Choose your view type and name it.
3. Click Filter > Add a filter > Add a filter
4. Choose your filters and set your parameters

Voila!

Check out this short video tutorial for setting up filtered views:

(This video features the Content Creation Hub Premium Notion Template, which already features several filtered views. Yours will probably look a little different.)

You can create unlimited new views, so feel free to go crazy here! You’re also able to choose your view type. Table, Calendar, and Gallery views work best for my Content Creation Hub, but you can choose whichever views make sense.

The filtered views you create in the main database won’t show up in the embedded versions of your Content Creation Hub. For instance, if you embed your hub on your YouTube page, you’ll need to create new filtered views within that page. Any views you create here won’t affect the main database and vice versa.

However, any new items you add to the embedded database or changes you make to existing items will show up in the main database.

Step 6: Create templates

Now that your Content Creation Hub is starting to look nice and tidy, you’re ready to start creating post templates. This will save you a ton of time and streamline the content creation process!

Within the template page, add relevant tasks or notes for that content type or platform to save yourself some time. My blog post template includes draft, SEO, and social media scheduling tasks. This simplifies pre-publication checks and keeps me on task.

Here’s how to do it:

1. Click the three dots in the upper right-hand corner of the database.
2. Select Templates
3. Click New template
4. Start editing. I recommend adding an icon, setting relevant properties for that content type, and adding tasks or notes in the main page
5. To add a new post using that template, click the dropdown arrow next to “New” in the upper right-hand corner of the database
6. Click the template you’d like the new post to use
7. To edit a template, click the three dots next to the template you’d like to edit and select “Edit”

Tip: If you’re creating several similar templates, click the three dots next to the template you’d like to duplicate and click “Duplicate”. This is useful for social media platforms where you’ll likely only need to change a few things.

Ideas for your Content Creation Hub in Notion

Hopefully you’ve got some ideas for your Content Creation Hub already, but I have a few more up my sleeve!

Properties

We’ve already covered some basic properties, but here are a few others:

• SEO keywords: Keep your SEO keywords handy so you can easily refer back to them while writing
• Categories: Add relevant blog post categories
• Type of page: If you like to indicate whether the page is a pillar page, subtopic, or landing page, this is a great way to do it

The possibilities are endless. These properties and the ones I’ve listed above work best for my workflow, but feel free to experiment with your own!

Templates

I recommend making templates for every single type of content you create:

• Blog posts
• Social media: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn
• Email
• YouTube
• Podcast

Embedding your Content Creation Hub on relevant subpages

Even though you’ve got this cool Content Creation Hub database, you might not want to refer to the main database unless you’re looking for a big-picture view of all your content. That’s why the embed feature is so cool. It lets you see your Content Creation Hub in other Notion pages.

(I call this an embed, but it’s technically a “linked database” in Notion.)

If you’re using Notion to plan your social media, YouTube, podcast, and email content, I recommend making a separate page for each platform. On those pages, you’ll embed a filtered view of the Content Creation Hub so you can see only content that’s publishing on that platform. Like so:

Linking your Content Creation Hub to another database

When I created my own Content Creation Hub, I planned to just use Notion’s “Select” property to indicate which campaign the content belonged to. But I quickly found this didn’t work for me. I wanted to use Notion to plan each campaign in depth, so I created a separate Content Offers Database.

This database allows me to plan the offer or campaign in a central hub and link to individual content pieces that are part of the campaign. Here’s an example:

You might want to do something similar, especially if you’re running multiple campaigns or creating several products each year.

How to create a Content Creation Hub in Notion: wrapping up

The Content Creation Hub is essential for creating a seamless, simple workflow in Notion. Think of your Content Creation Hub as your blog’s second brain.

Despite my love of productivity tools, my content plan was a scattered mess until I discovered Notion. Because I adore the app, content planning and creation no longer feel like a chore for me. Planning, creating, and organizing content all in one place are actually fun.

(I know — I’m a Notion nerd.)

Feeling overwhelmed just looking at this tutorial? I get it. You have a million and one things to manage. As cool and useful as Notion looks, you might not have the time to set up an intuitive workflow.

That’s exactly why I created the Notion for Blogging Premium Template Pack for busy bloggers like you. Complete with 75+ templates and pages to manage every element of your blog and brand.

Reclaim your time with the Notion for Blogging Premium Template Pack

Built-in content calendars, task management solutions, brand kit and vision, and so much more already done for you! This Notion blog template pack has everything you need to manage your content plan and schedule, brand, expenses, and so much more.

Prefer to set up your own content creation hub in Notion? No worries. I’m still creating FREE video tutorials and blog post walkthroughs.

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