When you sit down to start planning your content marketing strategy, you set your goals, objectives, messaging, and measurements. You figure out content buckets, team members, schedules, etc. You quickly realize there are a lot of spinning plates, so you need a way to manage all of them.
Where to start?
A vital tool in your content marketing toolbox is the editorial calendar. In fact, it’s been used by content providers for decades, if not centuries. It keeps you on track and provides a high-level view of your content strategy execution. It isn’t set in stone, but instead helps you balance content, match content to business goals, find holes, and plan resources.
Before the calendar, though, comes the ideas—the brainstorm, the “oh, I have a great idea for an article” moment you get in the shower. It’s best to keep these listed somewhere to remind you to discuss them later, rank them, assign them, ditch them—a step above the little idea notebook every successful writer seems to have.
Enter Trello.
Trello is a free project management tool available anywhere you want to use it. It’s beautifully designed, usable, easy to learn, and flexible. So flexible, in fact, it can manage everything from your spring cleaning to a complex software development project. And—wait for it—even your content marketing efforts.
In fact, the fine folks at Trello have even published (no doubt, as part of their own content marketing strategy) a handy guide on using Trello as an editorial calendar. Check it out today and start using Trello to keep all of your plates spinning, and to maybe even add a few more.
The post originally appeared on ADG Creative’s Brain Juice.