As an integrated marketer, I’m always on the hunt for tools that can help me stay organized and collaborative with my teams. And for the past few years, I’ve used Notion to help me organize my personal and professional life - from DIY home projects to vacation planning and everything in between. So when it came time to create my personal website, I was curious if I could use a system I already knew and loved. Turns out I could, and here’s how I did it using Notion and Potion.so:
So what’s Notion?
Notion is a tool that allows users to create all types of content, including documents, wikis, and databases. Here are a few reasons why I find Notion useful as a marketer:
- Flexibility: The platform offers a wide range of block types (ie text, images, tables, and much, much more). This makes it a versatile tool for creating a variety of different materials such as landing pages, case studies, and product brochures.
- Collaboration: Multiple users can edit and collaborate on content in real-time! This makes it easy for marketing teams, friends, families, etc. to work together and ensure they’re on the same page.
- Customization: Notion is infinitely customizable. It provides the ability to create custom templates and use your own branding or start completely from scratch. This makes it easy to create marketing materials that are consistent with your company's style guide and give you a good looking website.
- Integrations: Notion has dozens of powerful integrations, and the community is always growing. Some of my favorites are Google Drive, Google Sheets, Figma, and Slack, which are easy to incorporate it into a variety of different workflows.
How does it work with Potion and what can you do with it?
Potion.so is a SaaS product that takes your existing notion pages and converts them into an SEO-friendly website. Once the initial setup is complete, you can edit your entire website directly in Notion. You can use it to create a simple blog with text and images, or you can get creative and add tables, calendars, and even databases to your blog. Anything you can do in Notion, you can do on your website! But that's not all. Potion also makes it easy to customize the look and feel of your blog, with a variety of themes and the ability to add your own logo. Plus, it's super user-friendly, so you don't need any technical expertise to get your blog up and running.
Here’s how to get started:
- Sign up for a Notion account and create a new page for your website. This is your top level blog page. Add content to the page using various blocks, such as text, images, tables, etc. You can also add databases (for blog posts) and child pages as needed.
- Click on the "Share" button in the top-right corner of the page and copy the URL of the page. Your Notion page has to be public to use it in Potion.
- Sign up for a free Potion account and connect your Notion account to Potion.
- Paste the link you copied from Notion earlier into Potion. That’s where the magic happens.
- Customize the appearance using the Potion dashboard, including choosing a theme and adding a logo. If you want to get fancy, you can use custom CSS to customize your site further (my fiance is a software developer, he helped me with this piece).
- View your website by clicking on the "View Site" button in the Potion dashboard. The website will be available at a unique URL that you can share with others.
- Bonus — Add your own custom domain. You’ll need to upgrade to the paid plan, but then you can have your own URL. Worth it!
That's it! You now have a fully functional website powered by Notion. If you want to make any updates to your website, simply make the changes in Notion and the updates will be reflected on your public website in real time. If you already love Notion and want a personal website, definitely give Potion a try. Trust me, you won't be disappointed.
Happy blogging!