How to Build an Article Creation Pipeline

5 Steps to Maintain a Consistent Flow

As I am a power plant engineer, I am used to thinking about systems and processes. I have to maintain the plant so that the process brings consistent output in reliable quality to make my company's business profitable.

When it comes to writing, I have designed a process that I follow to maintain a constant rate of the published content. I will explain the steps and the process in the following so you can use whatever might suit your writing habits. This system isn’t limited to Medium articles. You can make it work for every type of content you like.

Let’s cover the equipment first: You will need an email inbox, a text document, four folders, and a spreadsheet. I use Gmail and Google Docs as storage for the inbox and the documents. My pipeline is about a structured path from idea to the published article.

The document goes all the way from the idea pool through drafting, editing, publishing, and finally the content library. In the following, I will explain each step from idea generation to the content library.

Idea Harvesting

My process starts with idea generation. I have discovered that it gets harder to write an article the more you focus on the outcome right at the point of idea generation. I think some of you might relate that it’s easy to get stuck by thinking:

‘What the heck could be a topic to write about that will be helpful to other people and is original?’.

The pressure of thinking about the results even before the process really started can block creativity.

The alternative is called idea harvesting: I walk through my life with my eyes and ears open and reflect on everything that I find interesting or what stayed on my mind for a while. I listen, and I watch.

For example, I listen to a radio station which only broadcasts news, comments, and background fact to several things that happened through the day. I also spend much time reading on Medium daily, reading on other sites about economics, finance, parenting, and lifestyle.

When I talk to my partner or my friends, I try to think about what matters to them at the moment, what problems they may face, or what makes them happy right now.

I am then trying to translate these little bits to article ideas. To be ready every time my creativity or ‘idea alarm’ hits me, I use my smartphone to keep track. I write myself a quick email with the subject ‘Article Idea’ and the idea itself in the text and maybe even some bullet points for the draft.

When I am on my laptop, I take all these emails that have arrived and put the ideas in a separate document. This is my storage for all article ideas, which I can browse when I don’t know what to write about.

Outlining and Drafting

When I take an idea that I want to write an article on, I use it as a title for a new text document and put it in the draft folder. All documents in the draft folder are named ‘Draft_’ at the beginning of the filename.

This is my workbench for designing the article structure through the outlining process and filling it with content. I write the first draft, revise the structure a bit, and add some additional information. I also add a fitting picture for the article in this step.

When I am consent with the main article structure, the writing itself, and the article picture, I copy the draft document into the second folder. This one is reserved for article drafts that have to be edited.

Editing

In this step, I do all the proofreading, spell checking, and formatting. I also define the relevant tags and do the final polishing of the title and sub-title. I do research which publication fits the topic and style of the article. I try to define at least two publications I want to pitch the article to if it is rejected.

When I am finished with editing and the article is ready to publish, the document is transferred to the Finished-folder.

Publishing

I try to keep a stash of articles in the Finished-folder as a buffer. If I get sick or something else keeps me from writing, I still have a reserve for publishing content. As I am a beginning writer, I try to move from publishing one article a week to two pieces at the moment. This means that I will keep at least two pieces in the Publish-folder to cover a whole week of content even though I didn’t write for what reason ever.

The system can be adjusted to fit your specific needs. If you want to publish five times a week and want to cover 2 weeks upfront, you may raise the number of pieces in your Publish-folder to ten. When using scheduling tools for content publishing, you can set dates for each piece of content. You then can even leave for a spontaneous vacation without messing with your publishing consistency.

The folder serves another purpose: If I see the number in the finished-folder is piling up, my writing habit has increased my output, which means that I can shift to a higher weekly publishing schedule. On the other hand, If I struggle to maintain the minimum stack of stories, I may have to reduce my publishing schedule to keep up with writing.

To publish, I have to transfer the document from my Google docs to where I want to publish. I copy the text into the Medium editor, set the relevant settings, and then hit ‘Submit’. In the best case, the article is accepted by the publication and gets published the next day.

Once the article is published, the document is transferred to the Published-folder. Its file name now begins with the date it was published. The Published-folder may have separate sub-folders for months, years, or whatever graduality you may prefer. This folder works as an archive for your previous work.

Keeping track in a content library

Once an article is moved to the Published-folder, I create a new row in the spreadsheet. It contains the name of the article, its link, and the date of publishing. I also add the publication it was published in and what other publications I may have pitched it to.

I also want to add a column containing a rough range of how much readers the article had. I am not talking about specific values because that would be too work-intense to track, but about overall values. These may like categories like ‘<100 reads’ or ‘<1k reads’.

I am using the spreadsheet to have a good overview of how my work performs to identify trends. I am looking forward to making assumptions about which kind of topics resonate well in what type of publication and which stuff is rejected by which publication. Also, by adding an idea of how much reads an article got, I can track how good the topic resonates with the audience.

The Takeaway

There you go. This is my five-step content creation pipeline. Feel free to use whatever part might be useful for your own writing habits.

It starts with idea harvesting and then outlining and drafting any idea suitable for making an article out of it. It then follows the pipeline through editing, being ready for publishing, and finally to the content library of published pieces.

With this process, I can keep the input side supplied with enough material. Once through the process, I keep track of where my work found a home and how well it resonates to learn lessons that will improve my technique.

Please let me know in the comments if you have questions or where you may see the potential for further improvements.