How to Build a Saved Content Library with Trello

One curated source for all your online content!

With so much content available these days, I need a single place to store it all so that I can peruse through it in dedicated times (otherwise, I’d just constantly be reading articles I come across.)

While I already have a Saved Content board, I wanted to take it to the next level by integrating some automation into it (because, well, I’m me.)

Specifically, I wanted to incorporate a way to subscribe to blogs that I care about and rather than having to go to them and bookmark the new content, I wanted it to be automatically updated on my Trello board.

I went live yesterday to see if I could build an RSS Feed Reader in Trello, and sure enough, I could! It was almost too easy because it only took me about 30 minutes, and that was even with adding some bells and whistles on it, and the longest part was figuring out how to find RSS Feed URLs 😂

Here’s how you can do it too!

(PS - Read all the way to the end to see how you can get some bonus Trello content if you’re interested.)

Step 1: Copy the template board

Copy this template to get started with your own version. (Feel free to copy over without the cards, unless you’re interested in things like learning how to be a developer. 😊 )

You also can just create a new board and add two lists “Inbox” and “Save”. Up to you.

Off the bat, that’s easy enough eh?

Step 2: Manually add your content

Now you need to get some articles in your board! While the next step is all about how to do that automatically, here’s how to do it manually if you come across something you like.

Add links to Trello with This Link

Heard of the “add to Trello” button? Save this link as a bookmark, and anytime you’re on a page, just click that bookmark to add that page to Trello.

It’s super straightforward- the page literally tells you the instructions.

As it says, you can even set up this link to send content to a specific board and list. Check it out in action!

Add links with a PixieBrix extension

If you want to have some customization options, you can build out your own triggers for sending links to Trello with PixieBrix. I wrote all about that, and even made a video showing how to build that if you want!

Add links from mobile via Share

You can send links to Trello as easily as texting a link to a friend! Just click the share arrow

Note - if you don’t see Trello as an option under share, check your phone’s “Share” options. You might need to enable Trello.

Step 3: Automatically add content

This is what the bulk of my livestream was really about: finding ways to automatically add content from RSS Feed URLs.

Turns out this wasn’t too hard as long as you don’t mind using Zapier.

In case you didn’t already know, Zapier is a no-code tool that lets you automate all sorts of things. If you’re automating things inside of Trello, then Trello’s native automation is much better, but if you’re trying to bring more data INTO Trello, I definitely recommend checking out Zapier.

Find the RSS Feed URL

Zapier wrote a great post all about how to find the RSS Feed URL for any blog or website. I was able to use this successfully to grab the feed for the Trello Blog, the Zapier blog, and a personal finance blog that I follow.

Set up a Zap to create new cards from new items on that feed

Zapier has a trigger option for looking for new content on multiple RSS Feeds. All you need to do is add those URLs you just got from the previous step.

Then, just add an action step for creating a new Trello card with the title of the new post, and adding an attachment with a link! Your zap should look like this.

You can just copy my Zap and swap it out with your Trello board and list and your preferred URLs to watch. If you want to follow along as I set this up, start watching the livestream recording at around 12:00 and you’ll be able to see the step-by-step process of setting up a zap.

Step 4: Organize your content

You can use labels to categorize your content if you’d like. I set up some rules that added labels based on some words in the title, such as if it has “investing” or “saving” or “finance”, it will get the personal finance label.

This might take some experimenting as there’s a lot of words that could fit in a category and I couldn’t think of them all off the top of my head. There’s also probably some overlap, but that’s okay!

Here’s an example of my Butler rule:

Feel free to copy and paste this in the “name containing” and then switch each of the words out with the words you want it to look for.

regex:/.*(invest|Invest|finance|Finance|saving|Saving).*/

Note: Remember that these are case-sensitive! That’s why I have “invest” and “Invest”.

And now you have a saved content library!

Whenever you find a few free minutes, you can head to the Trello board and grab an article and read it, then move it to your saved list, or archive the card!

Does anybody have any other ideas of what should be included in this board? Maybe I’ll try to build it in a future live stream!

PS - If you made it this far…

If you made it this far, you must be a really big fan of Trello and building things with it. If that’s the case, you might be interested to know I just launched a Patreon for my most dedicated followers to support me and help me keep creating great Trello content!

In return, you’ll get access to some exclusive Trello content that I won’t be sharing in the free version of the newsletter or broadcasting on my YouTube channel. If there’s enough interest, I’ll even start doing some bi-monthly group coaching calls and creating a Slack space for us to all share our Trello questions and discuss what content I should be writing about!

If that sounds like something you’d be interested in, I’d be thrilled if you’d support me on Patreon. If you’re already paying for the premium version of this newsletter, there’s no need to do both - you’re automatically included and will receive this bonus content!