Consistency is key in content marketing—it's what keeps your brand identity strong and your audience engaged. But without content planning, things can quickly go haywire. Stress levels skyrocket, deadlines loom, and opportunities slip through the cracks.
But it doesn't have to be that way. With a content planning tool, you're not just organizing content—you're empowering your team to collaborate efficiently and deliver content that hits the mark every time.
Explore the 15 best tools for content planning that will greatly enhance your team's efficiency and marketing achievements.
Tip: Grab our free, interactive content planning template for a quick start.
Top 15 Content Planning Tools
- StoryChief - Content Marketing Platform
- Google Workspace
- Microsoft 365
- Asana
- Airtable
- Trello
- ContentCal
- GatherContent
- Notion
- CoSchedule
- Clearscope
- MarketMuse
- Canva Pro
- Content Snare
- Basecamp
1. StoryChief - Your Content Marketing Powerhouse
StoryChief is a content marketing platform for content collaboration, planning, and content distribution. It’s a centralized hub that enables marketing team members to manage every aspect of their content planning process from start to finish.
With StoryChief, you can easily collaborate, brief, assign, write, optimize for SEO and readability, review, approve, and publish content.
Additionally, you can involve your team in creating website content, newsletters, videos, webinars, podcasts, and whitepapers. You can also promote your content across various channels, including social media, ambassadors, influencers, and press lists.
StoryChief integrates with all kinds of CMSs which means you can publish content to your website hassle-free, with a single click. StoryChief then allows you to track the performance of your content from several dashboards and reports.
Because of this extensive list of capabilities, editorial teams benefit from creating and managing content for all channels from a single platform.
Best features:
- Collaborative writing: Allows teams to collaborate on content creation in real-time.
- Content optimization: Provides SEO suggestions to improve content performance.
- Multi-channel publishing: Easily distribute content across various platforms.
- Content Calendar: Helps in planning and scheduling content publication.
StoryChief is also a great content planning tool for Wordpress and HubSpot. The distribution platform enables easy publishing to a CMS.
Pricing starts at 30 USD per month for individuals up to 220 USD per month for teams, and 400 USD per month for agencies. Dive in risk-free with our 7 day free trial. So you have plenty of time to understand the power of StoryChief without commitment.
2. Google Workspace
Google planning tools unite into Google Workspace. There, your team can do anything online, from communicating via Gmail, Chat, and Meet to collaborating on content in Docs, Sheets, and Slides to undergoing training in Classroom.
Google’s suite enables easy file management, real-time file syncing, and team collaboration from any place and device.
Best features:
- Collaborative tools: Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides facilitate real-time collaboration.
- Cloud storage: Provides ample storage for content assets.
- Gmail: For communication and managing email campaigns.
- Google calendar: Useful for scheduling content release dates and deadlines.
Cons:
- The documents can become a mess if you include images and videos because they’re just not the best for mixing different types of media.
- You'll need to publish the content manually.
Pricing: free 2-week trial, then $6/month per user for the Starter plan.
3. Microsoft 365
Microsoft 365 suite features desktop and online content planning tools for all-in-one app task completion. It's a good option for anyone from independent content writers to multi-level marketing teams and enterprises.
Microsoft 365 offers convenient desktop-to-online file synchronization and real-time collaboration in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. Also, communication, planning, to-do listing, and other capabilities are available.
Best features:
- Microsoft Word and Excel: Ideal for creating and managing content.
- Outlook: For email marketing and communication.
- SharePoint: Collaborative workspace for content teams.
- OneDrive: Cloud storage for content assets.
Cons:
- You'll need to publish content manually.
- As a content marketer, you might not need all the subscription features.
Pricing: Microsoft 365 for Business starts at $6/user monthly.
4. Asana
Asana is a project planning tool that enables easy workplace management through an intuitive dashboard.
The workspace is customizable so that you can adjust it to the goals of your project. You can also streamline your internal communication and progress tracking through various integrations. Moreover, you can export Asana to Excel as a data backup option.
Best features:
- Task management: Helps in organizing content creation tasks.
- Project tracking: Allows teams to monitor content progress.
- Content calendar: Supports planning and scheduling content.
- Collaborative workspaces: Enhances teamwork and communication.
Cons:
- You'll need to publish content manually.
- Asana doesn’t allow assigning multiple people to the same tasks.
Pricing: free plan, paid plans start at $10.99/user monthly.
Spend less time moving things around, and more time creating great content. Try it free! 🙌
5. Airtable
Airtable is a powerful yet easy-to-use database tool for information management and collaboration.
With the view of a spreadsheet, this tool can be a practical content planner. With no coding involved, build models of content pages for your website, define relationships between them, and manage different types of content with great visibility.
Best features:
- Flexible database: Customizable for content planning and management.
- Content tracking: Keep an inventory of content assets.
- Calendar view: Plan content release dates visually.
- Collaborative features: Share and edit content plans with teams.
Cons:
- You can't work with drafts directly in the app.
- You'll need to publish content manually.
Pricing: free, starting paid plan is $12/month per user.
6. Trello
Trello is a project management tool that helps visualize tasks and workflows to get a full view of project progress at a single glance.
You can customize it to your project, team, and content channels.
Best features:
- add as many or as few cards as you need
- dedicate cards to tasks or sort them how you want it
- see the progress bar change as you check out milestones
- use templates and data filters
- attach files to cards
- set up triggered and automated notifications
Trello might not be enough if you have a large team working with content, but it works well for small/medium-sized teams.
Con: You'll need to publish content manually.
Pricing: free, paid plans start at $5/user monthly.
7. ContentCal
ContentCal is a planning and publishing software for social media marketing management, which Adobe has recently acquired.
This tool features a calendar-like dashboard where you can plan social media posts and schedule their publication. Your team and clients can collaborate on the content directly in the software to create, edit, and approve it.
You also get analytics and reporting on your social media campaigns. Besides, you can interact with your audience by replying to comments and messages through the software.
At the same time, the tool has a limited number of social networks to integrate with.
Best features:
- Content calendar: Plan and schedule content across multiple channels.
- Approval workflow: Streamline content review and approval.
- Direct publishing: Publish content to social platforms.
- Analytics: Monitor content performance.
Cons:
- The tool only supports social media scheduling. You will need another tool if you want to auto-schedule to your blog, email newsletters, content hubs or PR lists.
Pricing: free or Premium for $9.99/month.
8. GatherContent
GatherContent is an all-in-one content marketing platform for managing all your content operations from creation to exporting to CMS.
Gather Content allows businesses to keep content operations consistent across all channels thanks to convenient content management features.
Best features:
- create, collaborate on and store all your content on one platform
- add content guidelines for your team to refer to
- invite collaborators
- export your publications to the CMS
Cons:
- The platform can be a bit difficult for beginners or for simple content tasks.
- No ability to track changes when collaborating on content with multiple collaborators.
Pricing: free trial; then $99+ per month.
9. Notion
Notion is a project management software that helps streamline business workflows and operations through visual task and process organization.
Notion offers a user-friendly interface to map out and structure your content planning efforts. On top of that, in-app team collaboration, progress tracking, task prioritization, and file management are available.
Thanks to the integration of content planning tools and APIs, you can create a powerful hub to manage all content for your project, from content ideas to post approvals and publication plans. But Notion itself can't publish your content.
Best features:
- Customizable workspace: Create content databases and calendars.
- Collaborative documents: Real-time editing and commenting.
- Task management: Plan content-related tasks.
- Integration options: Connect with other tools for content publishing.
Con: You have to publish content manually or build automation workflows using APIs.
Pricing: free for personal use; business plans start at $8 per user monthly.
Tip: Start planning your content today with our free content planning template - no commitment.
10. CoSchedule
CoSchedule is a content planning software that offers a centralized, all-in-one marketing calendar and dashboard.
CoSchedule offers the majority of content organization tools capabilities, from setting up a marketing calendar to project management.
Best features:
- multi-channel publication scheduling
- task prioritization
- team collaboration
- project tracking
- templates and customization
- reporting
Cons:
- The file organization and bulk file upload may be difficult to familiarize with.
- Does not have Pinterest in its social media scheduler options.
Pricing: free or $29/monthly per user for a Pro plan.
11. Clearscope
Clearscope is a powerful asset for businesses running SEO content marketing — the platform helps boost your blog’s traffic by identifying SEO gaps in your content.
This SEO platform provides capabilities to enhance the ranking of your content. Features like keyword research, competitor analysis, and live content scoring help you create high-ranking publications.
Best features:
- Content optimization: Provides keyword insights for content creation.
- Competitor analysis: Analyze top-ranking content for SEO.
- Content briefs: Helps in creating high-quality, SEO-friendly content.
- Integrations: Integrates with various content creation tools.
Con: Clearscope is a pricy tool, which might not suit small and medium teams.
Pricing: starts at $170 per month.
12. MarketMuse
MarketMuse is an AI-driven content planning tool to build a content strategy and create publications based on a novel approach to organic search ranking and content audit.
MarketMuse provides SEO insights on the ranking of your content. You can track keywords and run content audits and competitor analyses to find more best-ranking keywords. Except for that, the tool has content, link, and user management features.
Best features:
- Content optimization: Offers AI-driven content recommendations.
- Competitive analysis: Analyze competitor content strategies.
- Content research: Generates content briefs and outlines.
- Content score: Measure content quality and relevance.
Con: As Clearscope, MarketMuse is pretty expensive. It might not work for you if you don't have big content volumes or don't focus on SEO a lot.
Pricing: free, paid plans start at $7,200 annually.
13. Canva Pro
Canva Pro is not a direct content planning tool. It's still helpful for the process, though. It is a graphic design tool that allows the creation of illustrations and visuals for your content publications with easy drag-and-drop functionality.
Canva Pro offers an all-in-one collection of visual content planning tools, from royalty-free photos and animated videos of various styles to the custom creation of other types of visuals (from scratch or based on in-built templates).
With the pro version, you can create layouts to plan your publications, follow content consistency, and see what your future feed may look like.
Best features:
- Graphic design: Create eye-catching visuals for content.
- Templates: Easily design social media graphics and infographics.
- Collaboration: Work on visual content with teams.
- Brand kit: Maintain consistent branding across content.
- Canva content planner tool: Use the integration to publish posts on Facebook, Pinterest, and more.
Con: Unfortunately, you can't publish content so you will need to publish manually.
Pricing: monthly plans start at $12.99 per user.
14. Content Snare
Content Snare is a content organization tool that allows keeping all your files in one place. Respectively, you don’t go back and forth between emails, shared documents, and file management systems to find what you need.
Content Snare helps keep resources for your blog content plan and other marketing tasks in order. Upload, edit, share and collaborate on documents, see file version history, use templates, and set up reminders for collaborators in a single platform with a simple and intuitive interface.
Best features:
- Content Collection: Streamline the process of gathering content from clients.
- Customizable forms: Create content request forms.
- Automated reminders: Keep content contributors on track.
- Content organization: Efficiently manage collected content.c
Cons: Content Snare doesn't have many integrations and requires some time to adjust.
Pricing: paid plans start at $29 per month.
15. Basecamp
Basecamp is a project management tool that helps streamline communication and stay productive.
Basecamp can be an effective marketing planner app thanks to the project monitoring and management features it offers.
Best features:
- task creation, assignment, and prioritization
- templates for project and content planning
- calendar view for planned publications
- resource management
- goal and KPI setting
Cons:
- You need to publish content manually.
- Labeling and tagging aren't the strongest features of this tool.
Pricing: $11/user monthly.
More content planning tools
Other platforms with key content planning features:
- Planable facilitates collaborative content planning strategies for social media teams, ensuring seamless scheduling and approval processes.
- Sendible streamlines social media management by offering tools for scheduling, analytics, and engagement, tailored to trending topics and audience insights.
- Evernote serves as a versatile note-taking platform, aiding in organizing ideas, research, and content planning strategies across various projects.
- Monday.com provides a comprehensive task tracking solution with visual representation, enabling teams to efficiently manage and monitor progress.
- Wistia specializes in hosting and analyzing video content, empowering businesses to create engaging visual narratives and track viewer engagement.
- Wrike offers robust project management tools for organizing tasks, deadlines, and collaboration efforts, ideal for content planning strategies and team coordination.
- Social Champ simplifies social media scheduling and automation, assisting in sharing content across multiple platforms and tracking performance metrics.
- Google Sheets facilitates collaborative content planning and data analysis, enabling teams to organize information and collaborate in real-time.
- MeetEdgar automates social media posting and recycling content, optimizing content planning strategies and ensuring consistent engagement.
- Brafton Platform provides content marketing services, including content creation, distribution, and analytics, helping businesses execute effective content planning strategies.
- ChatGPT offers AI-powered text generation, supporting content creation, ideation, and research across various topics and platforms.
- LinkedIn serves as a professional networking platform, essential for sharing content, engaging with industry trends, and networking with peers and prospects.
What is content planning?
Content planning involves strategically organizing and scheduling the creation of content. This process includes setting objectives, identifying who the content is for, researching topics, brainstorming ideas, creating a schedule in an editorial calendar, and allocating resources to ensure that high-quality content is delivered consistently and on time.
The purpose of content planning is to ensure that your content aligns with your overall marketing goals and delivers valuable, engaging, and relevant information that appeals to your audience. A successful content plan keeps you organized, ensures consistency in your messaging and branding, improves efficiency, and enhances the outcomes of your content marketing initiatives.
How do you make a content plan?
Creating a content plan requires the following 9 steps:
- Define your goals: Begin by clarifying what you aim to achieve through your content marketing. Whether it's increasing brand awareness, generating leads, driving traffic to your website, or educating your audience, having clear goals is crucial.
- Identify your target audience: Know your ideal customers and their needs, interests, and challenges. This knowledge enables you to craft content that they find valuable.
- Conduct keyword research: Utilize tools like Google Keyword Planner or SEMrush to discover keywords and topics that match what your audience is searching for.
- Brainstorm content ideas: Create a list of topic ideas based on keyword research, industry trends, customer inquiries, and challenges. Your list should include various educational, informative, entertaining, and promotional materials.
- Create an editorial calendar: Arrange your ideas into a calendar to schedule when each piece will be created and published. Consider seasonal trends, holidays, product launches, and industry events in your planning.
- Assign responsibilities: Decide who will create each piece of content and establish deadlines for completion. Ensure expectations are communicated to maintain alignment within the team.
- Optimize for SEO: Enhance the visibility of your content in search engine results by incorporating relevant keywords into titles tags meta descriptions headings body copy.
- Promote and distribute: Develop a strategy for promoting and sharing each piece of content across various channels such as social media platforms (Facebook, Twitter), email newsletters, email campaigns, blogs, podcast episodes, etc.
- Monitor performance: To track the performance of your content, you can use tools like Google Analytics or social media insights dashboards. Analyze important metrics such as page views, time spent on page, social shares, and conversions (if applicable) to evaluate the effectiveness of your content plan. Based on these insights, adjust your content plan as necessary.
Why you need content planning tools
With many tools for content marketing, the 2 main types of software are content planning software and content publishing software.
- Content planning tools help you manage what content you will publish and when you will do it.
- Content publishing tools auto-publish your content to the right platforms, at the right time and date.
Planning your content is beneficial for many reasons. Here are the top 3 reasons:
1. Maintaining consistency
Juggling multiple marketing channels becomes challenging as your business grows. A content planning tool streamlines this process by helping you create a schedule, ensuring your team is well-informed about posting times.
This approach not only aids in adhering to your content strategy but also provides a clear overview of how your content aligns with your SEO vision.
2. Seizing important moments
Utilize upcoming holidays and events to strategically plan your content, seizing opportunities to promote your business effectively. Whether it's crafting engaging blog posts for Black Friday or Christmas, a content planner ensures you never miss a chance.
It also proves invaluable for urgent publications, allowing quick rearrangement of your content calendar.
3. Save time and effort
Aligning your content with your marketing strategy requires dedicated time and effort, especially for multi-platform publishing.
Content planning and publishing software come to the rescue, eliminating late-night publishing sessions. You can plan ahead, focus on other tasks, and avoid the hassles of manual content publication.
“With StoryChief, we plan a year of content ahead, working closely with our clients to define a clear focus. Once the content calendar is set and approved, every piece of content flows seamlessly from StoryChief.” - Patrick Laughlin, CEO at iProv
Remember, while not every content planner offers automated publishing, all-in-one platforms like StoryChief save significant planning time thanks to 1,000 direct-publishing integrations. Start planning your content today.
Essential features for content planning tools
Let's delve into the essential content planning tools and see how StoryChief not only incorporates them but excels, transforming your workflow into a powerhouse of efficiency.
Traditional tools
- Often require multiple platforms for writing, reviewing, and collaboration.
- Limited or no SEO suggestions, leaving your content's performance to chance.
- Manual publishing across various platforms, time-consuming and prone to errors.
- Limited or fragmented analytics, making it hard to measure content effectiveness.
- Require complex processes for publishing content to your website.
StoryChief
- Collaborate seamlessly in real-time with our all-in-one writing hub.
- SEO suggestions are integrated for maximum visibility and engagement.
- Distribute content easily across channels with one click, ensuring consistent messaging and saving time.
- Comprehensive dashboards and reports to track the performance of your content. Make data-driven decisions to refine and optimize your strategy.
- Seamless integration with various CMSs. Publish content to your website hassle-free, ensuring a smooth and efficient workflow.
What’s the best content planning tool for you?
As you can see, content planning platforms come in various shapes and forms:
- all-in-one platforms
- publishing software
- schedulers and calendars
- project planning tools
- SEO and content marketing apps
Each can contribute to different sides of your content production and content marketing efforts, depending on what you need.
We collected those 15 tools for you to easily choose the best suitable option (or a toolset) based on your content planning needs and budget. Check out the tools that will help you automate and streamline the most important content processes.
Still skeptical? Hear it from marketers like you who saved hours with StoryChief.
Want to service more clients efficiently, achieve faster content delivery, and higher revenue? Try StoryChief free for 7 days.
Want to know more about essential content marketing tools? Check out these articles in our series:
