Notion: The Simple Stuff in 15 minutes or less. With Videos.
Of Macro Snapshots, and Executive Summaries
The best way to understand Notion? Try it. Instead of learning the product inside out, let’s walk through four common use cases.
Use Case1: Blog Post Creation
Writing a post in Notion, and adding banner images and icons for creative flair, is as simple as demonstrated in the above demo.
Steps to Replicate
Create a free account on notion.so.
Select 'New Page' or click the writing pen icon on the top right side of the sidebar menu.
Ignore the impulse to check templates - think of templates as outlines!
Start writing as you would a draft post in Substack.
Add images and other elements to enhance the post.
Use ‘/’ as a shortcut command to access the menu. For example, typing '/image' immediately provides an image option. Typing ':-)' automatically translates into a smiley face. Over thousands of words, these shortcuts save time versus using menus for navigation.
Once you create a post in Notion, you can simply input it into Substack. While gifs import well, for Unsplash images, you should insert them directly into Substack.
Use Case 2: Easy Formatting.
Let’s return to the Notion post created earlier and quickly format some pasted text (you can import multiple standard formats).
With or without AI, the ‘Turn into’ feature is a boon. You can create pages for each of the twenty topics shown in the video, and have a nested set of pages linked to the master page.
Pro-tip: This feature would be very useful for journaling, and writing book chapters where each chapter can be a page.
Now, let's quickly demonstrate how to do this by creating journal entries.
Use Case 3: Writing Our Daily Lives.
See how easy and fun it is to create daily review logs that are linked and can be duplicated so you can shorten the creation time!
You never have to search for related documents in a folder again.
Use Case 4: Viewing a Content Catalog
I discussed why content management is key in this cheat sheet. I then showed you a Notion catalog snapshot of my upcoming six articles in this post on brand kits. I now illustrate how easy it is to craft different views of the same data. Check the demo:
In the above video, I demonstrated two views of the same data:
Gallery view, which provides a snapshot of the content. Then, I linked each image to the relevant posts on Substack.
Table view, where I initially structured the data for the catalog plan, including relevant links to content.
The beauty of it is that the data for the catalog was created once.
While you can build a content catalog in various tools like Excel or Word tables, doing so in Notion is notably easier.
Smart links in Notion enable you to effortlessly organize and track sub-topics within major content categories. This means that if you ever decide to write sub-topics for the major content categories, you can group and track them easily as sub-pages under one idea without having to revamp the whole catalog.
For example, imagine a gardening publication with sub-topics like 'small gardens.' Later, if you decide to add a post on container roses, Notion allows you to effortlessly incorporate it into the sub-topic and automatically link it.
Creating a hierarchy within your content catalog can be challenging in other tools. However, Notion offers multiple viewing options, including a simple list, calendar view, table, Kanban board, and snapshots, making data visualization and management more intuitive and customizable.
Conclusion
Why use Notion? It is extremely simple and easy to use, saving you time in editing and creating flow during writing.
I covered four easy use cases that highlighted the versatility of the tool.
These are basic building blocks that lead to advanced use cases.
In under fifteen minutes, we've learned:
How to write from scratch, edit, format, and add gifs and images to a blog post.
How to use inline commands and convert blocks of text.
How to view the same data in different formats.
For businesses, the real-time collaboration feature offers a significant productivity boost, a topic I may delve into further in subsequent discussions.
What are its shortcomings? More on that later!
© Jayshree Gururaj, 2024
Upgrade to see all the future posts on Notion! In upcoming discussions, I'll explore additional nuances, such as sharing website pages, creating content catalogs, using AI, and showcasing tables through practical use cases. Discover how small businesses and startups can leverage Notion as an alternative to building a corporate site.