Does content planning across multiple platforms feel overwhelming? Consistency is key in content marketing. But without the right content planning tools, 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 content marketing team to collaborate efficiently and deliver content that hits the mark every time.
Explore the 28 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 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
- 13 more content planning tools
- Use case: How iProv streamlined a year of content planning with StoryChief
1. StoryChief - Your Content Marketing Powerhouse
StoryChief is a versatile content marketing platform designed to streamline content collaboration, planning, and content distribution—all from a single, centralized hub. With StoryChief, every step of your content planning process is simplified and optimized, empowering your team to deliver impactful content on schedule, every time.
In just a few minutes, you can create a custom content marketing strategy tailored to your audience. Our wizard populates your content calendar with engaging social posts optimized for reach and drafts SEO-friendly blog content. This allows your team to focus on refining and personalizing content, simplifying the entire content planning process.
From initial brainstorming to publication, StoryChief offers intuitive tools that make it easy to collaborate, brief, assign, write, optimize for SEO and readability, review, approve, and publish content—all without switching between platforms.
StoryChief's standout features:
- SEO strategy tools: Use AI-driven SEO tools to research keywords, optimize content, analyze competitors, and craft high-impact, engaging content.
- Collaborative writing: StoryChief simplifies team collaboration, allowing marketing teams to create everything from website content and newsletters to videos, webinars, podcasts, and whitepapers.
- Task management: With tools to assign tasks and control access, your team can collaborate in real time, enhancing productivity without the back-and-forth.
- Content optimization & audits: Weekly content audits and SEO suggestions ensure your content is always optimized for maximum visibility.
- Multi-channel publishing: Distribute across multiple channels, including your CMS, social media, ambassador networks, influencers, and press lists—all from a single platform.
- Content calendar: Plan, schedule, and keep track of content publication dates to stay organized and on target.
Pricing starts at 29 USD per month for individuals up to 49 USD per month for agencies.
Dive in risk-free with our 7-day free trial. You'll have ample time to experience StoryChief's power—no strings attached.
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, visualize your website structure, 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 target 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 scheduling to social media accounts. 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.
Tip: Start planning your content today with our free content planning template - no commitment.
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 difficult for beginners or 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, task 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.
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 platform
- 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 that builds a good content strategy and creates publications based on a novel approach to organic search ranking and content auditing.
MarketMuse provides SEO insights on the ranking of your content. You can track keywords and run content audits and competitor analyses to find the best-ranking keywords. In addition, the tool has content, links, and user management features.
Best features:
- Content optimization: Offers AI-driven content recommendations.
- Competitive analysis: Analyze competition 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.
Boost your content planning today—start with our free content planning template and transform your strategy. 👇
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 through an editorial calendar.
- Sendible streamlines executing your social media strategy 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 post 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 track progress using due dates and assigning tasks.
- 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.
- 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 process, distribution, and analytics, helping businesses execute effective content planning strategies.
- Ahrefs: Ahrefs is an SEO tool that assists in content planning through features like competitor analysis, backlink analysis, and keyword research. It helps you discover and prioritize content ideas.
- Agorapulse: Agorapulse is a social media management tool that helps plan, schedule, monitor, and analyze content performance across multiple social platforms, streamlining social media strategy.
- Brandwatch: Brandwatch is a powerful social media monitoring and analytics tool that helps businesses track brand sentiment and audience insights to inform their content strategies.
- PromoRepublic: PromoRepublic is an all-in-one social media management platform designed to streamline content creation, scheduling, and posting across multiple channels for enhanced brand visibility.
Use Case: How iProv Streamlined a Year of Content Planning with StoryChief
When iProv, a digital-first marketing agency, integrated StoryChief into their workflow, they transformed their content planning process. The most significant change was their ability to plan content a full year in advance, something they had previously struggled with.
This long-term planning approach allowed iProv to:
- Develop a comprehensive, year-long content strategy
- Align their content with long-term business goals
- Anticipate and prepare for seasonal trends and industry events
The benefits of this extended planning horizon were substantial. iProv's team found they could:
- Distribute workload more evenly throughout the year
- Reduce last-minute content rushes
- Ensure consistent quality across all content pieces
CEO Patrick Laughlin noted the positive impact:
"Planning a year ahead has allowed us to be more strategic and less reactive in our content creation. It's improved both our work quality and our team's work-life balance."
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 content creation team is well-informed about posting times.
This approach not only aids in adhering to your overarching 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 strategy 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 and saving your team time. 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.
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 28 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 high-quality content delivery, and higher revenue? Try StoryChief free for 7 days.
