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The Creation Process
Hey there, darklings.
In the interest of transparency, especially during this era of AI we find ourselves in, I have decided to give you the rundown of how articles are written on LOD.
I pride myself on using a thorough human-centric process for researching, writing, and optimizing articles. This involves a lot of reading both physical and digital books, but also online research via AI-search tools like Perplexity on occasion. I loathe AI-generated articles and always commit to writing everything myself, but in all honesty, there are a number of tools I use (and would suggest to any blogger) that boost my research capabilities and fine-tune syntax, spelling, and grammar.
Here then is LOD’s article creation process, and the tools we use:
Step 1: Quick Idea Capture with Napkin
As ideas and inspiration strike, I quickly jot them down in the simple, intuitive note-taking app called Napkin. Its minimalist design allows me to easily capture thoughts on the go without distractions, and it even includes a focus mode whereby it resurfaces ideas for you that you might want to review. Plus, it sports a beautiful design, and I just can’t live without it at this point.
Napkin also keeps all my notes, links, and images organized automatically via AI, without the need for self-created folders or tags. I find this essential for making sure those Eureka! and A-ha! moments are captured painlessly and effortlessly.
Step 2: Additional Research via NinjaChat
Other than reading and compiling my own thoughts and opinions, added internet research is done using Ninja Chat. It’s an affordable tool that let’s me access the best AI research models, rather than paying for them separately.
Step 3: Compiling Notes and Research in Notion
Once I have a collection of Napkin notes around a potential article topic, I create a new page or database in my go-to productivity software Notion to begin formalizing and expanding those rough ideas.
Notion’s interface allows me to enter all my notes, source material, weblinks, embedded files, images, videos, and other data components into one unified database with the help of Notion AI.
So, with all of this research at my fingertips, I can then comfortably start working on my article. Anytime I am stuck, the Notion AI will surface the information I’ve compiled on command, acting as a type of super-librarian. This has proven invaluable to me, and allows me to maintain a flow state while writing free from constant interruption.
I’ll typically go through several rounds of free-writing and research-regurgitation within Notion before moving to a final draft.
4. AI-Assisted Editing with Notion
After a couple of drafting cycles, I’ll have Notion analyze my final post and suggest grammar, spelling, and syntax improvements. The AI is quite good at catching these kinds of errors. This saves me from embarrassing myself with my blundering brain (the bane of many an English teacher back in my halcyon youth).
5. Plagiarism Checking with QuillBot
Before publishing or submitting an article, I always run it through QuillBot’s plagiarism checker. This provides me with an in-depth originality report highlighting any potential unintended plagiarized content.
QuillBot has been a great tool for double-checking that no unintended copying has slipped through, even for properly cited quotes and sources. It gives me confidence that everything is fully original. As a blogger, you need this peace of mind, trust me.
Quick QuillBot Overview: QuillBot’s AI writing suite has many other useful capabilities beyond just plagiarism detection. The paraphrasing and co-writing tools are also quite handy for remixing and repurposing some of your old content. The plagiarism guardrails are what I rely on most for LOD, though.
6. SEO Optimization with RankIQ
The final step is to analyze the content’s search engine optimization and make any keyword targeting/content adjustments with the help of RankIQ’s toolset.
Rank IQ crawls articles and pages, compares them against top-ranking competitors, and provides suggestions to improve relevance and ranking for specific topics or keywords in their article optimizer. It’s an invaluable aid for ensuring posts attain maximum visibility and authority. It’s probably the main reason why LOD’s traffic has exploded over the last year.
7. Video Creation with Pictory AI
If an article warrants a supplemental video, I’ll upload my script and other media assets to Pictory AI for automated video generation. Pictory’s AI handles adding narration, scene rendering, graphics and produces impressive videos in a variety of styles.
Having this capability allows me to quickly create high-quality videos to pair with articles for more engaging multimedia content. These videos can also be shared to social media as quick as you please, or uploaded automatically to YouTube.
8. Social Media Boosing via Crowdfire
We share all our content to social media sites for maximum discoverability. This is effortlessly done by Crowdfire, and for our Into the Weird and Fear Planet accounts, via Ocoya, the two best social media managers around.
The Wrap-Up
And that’s our creation process in a nutshell!
For new bloggers or content creators, I would suggest trying as many tools as possible until you find that which works for you. And for those of you who think Notion too complex and want something simpler, I’d suggest trying TextCortex, which is an AI writing tool that is all the rage at the moment. It works as a database that you can compile yourself and then trains itself using your notes, much like Notion. However, TextCortex has more assistive writing capabilities than Notion AI, and can even ‘learn’ your writing style, drawing from content you’ve entered into your personal knowledge hub. That makes TextCortex more suitable for writers who want to overcome writer’s block, or have too little time on their hands and need AI to produce the bulk of their drafts. I’ve tried it and it’s a tempting alternative. I still choose Notion, though, because I feel more at home writing everything myself, with only occasional AI input.
I hope you found these insights into LOD’s writing process interesting, dark travelers. If not, then just ignore this page and go back to reading the fun stuff – our horror and sci-fi posts! Still, thanks for stopping by. Your support means the world to me.
Take care, and keep it creepy!
Much love
Herm