4 ways to capture your content ideas on the go

March 7, 2014

You’re walking down the street and have a great idea or some thoughts you like to get down for a blog post. It’s so good you think, “there’s no way I’ll forget this”. Or even so far as saying, “I always forget ideas, but this one is so good there is no way I will forget this ever in my entire life”.

I find the best ideas come along when you’re not even trying, so I thought I’d share a few things I’ve tried for capturing  content ideas.

Evernote

Organized, cross platform

Evernote does a ton of stuff – save images, text, audio, share and collaborate –  and and then sync with the cloud and all of your devices. I used to use it on my laptop to save clips and screenshots and random things. But because it does so much, it was a bit slower with a few too many clicks on my iPhone to get where I wanted to go. Nevertheless, a great product.

Download: Evernote.com

Note

Fast and simple

Squarespace made a simple app for taking notes on the go. This of course makes it lightweight and fast. As soon as you open, you write your note and flick up to send. You have a few options for where your note goes, including email, Google Doc, and even Evernote, in addition to storing them in the app itself. A downside for some is that it’s only available on iOS right now.

For the speed and simplicity (I have no patience and even less attention span), Note is my go-to for saving my blog content ideas.

Download: Squarespace.com

Voice apps

Fast but well, you know

Apps like Dragon Dictation work pretty well at recognizing your voice and converting to text. Any mistakes shouldn’t throw you off. I’ve recently started experimenting with this on my iPhone and half the time it’s a huge pain.

Most apps on iPhone or Android support dictation any place you can type text, including the apps we just looked at. This also includes iPhone’s built-in Notes app, which you can even start with your phone locked and asking Siri to “take a note…”. I find this doesn’t give you quite enough flexibility, though. If you pause for half a second too long, Siri will stop and save it. It works great when it’s cold outside, but not so much with surrounding noise, or people looking at you weird. There’s always the straight up voice recorder, too.

Download: Nuance.com

Old fashioned notebook

Reliable, durable,  great battery life.

Pencil on paper is good. The way I lay things out or sketch stuff is better than I can express in only typed text. Comes in various sizes, shapes, and colours.

Bonus tips

Talk to people? Saying your idea out loud helps you remember, and if you’re with people then sharing your thought – whether it’s blog content or headlines or what have you – can give you more ideas.

Don’t worry about spelling or punctuation, just capture the idea and sort it out later, you’ll know what you’re talking about (I hope).

Be nice to Siri and say thank you. If the machines do ever take over the world, it can’t hurt that you’re “one of the nice ones”, right?

For me, Squarespace’s Note wins because it’s fast and my phone is almost always near me, but the best notebook is the one you’ve got handy. Now if only I could take my iPhone into the shower…

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