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  • Content Calendar Setup Guide 2025 [Free Templates]

    Content Calendar Setup Guide 2025 [Free Templates]

    TL;DR: A content calendar is essential for consistent content marketing success. This guide covers:
    • Complete setup process – 11 steps from strategy to automation
    • Tool comparisons – Google Sheets, Trello, Asana, and Airtable
    • Free templates – Ready-to-use calendars for immediate implementation
    • Management best practices – Tips for team collaboration and workflow optimization
    Perfect for marketing teams ready to scale their content production systematically.

    What is a Content Calendar and Why You Need One

    Content calendars play a key role in content marketing. They can build the foundation of a predictable and consistent content engine. In turn, a well-running content engine is what’s needed to transform the content strategy into action.

    Content marketing focuses on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content. The main goal is to attract, engage, and retain a clearly-defined target audience. Measure by increasing brand awareness and generating leads or sales.

    When it comes to content creation predictability and consistency are key. That often requires managing a multitude of writers/content creators. Having an influx of content ideas. Staying on top of all the content pieces that are being written, edited, and promoted.

    A content calendar is a great tool to uplevel the way you manage your content creation process.

    Key Benefits of Using Content Calendars

    A content calendar allows anyone working in the content marketing team to have full visible of all moving parts while planning, writing and publishing content.

    Improved Organization and Planning: A content calendar provides a comprehensive overview of your content plan. It shows all the topics, formats, and publishing dates for all your content pieces. This clarity helps maintain a structured and proactive approach to content creation. It ensures that you cover all necessary themes and ideas relevant to your target audience.

    Consistency and Predictability: Consistency is key to successful content marketing. A content calendar helps you maintain a steady flow of content across various platforms. That fosters familiarity and trust among your audience. A consistent publishing schedule allows you to establish yourself as a reliable source of information.

    Better Time Management: A content calendar allows you to allocate tasks and set deadlines for your content team, ensuring efficient use of time and resources. By planning your content you go from reactive mode into proactive mode. You can avoid last-minute scrambles and ensure that your team has sufficient time to create high-quality content.

    How to run your own Keyword Audit and Creating Topic Clusters.

    Enhanced Collaboration: Content calendars ease collaboration among team members. They provide a shared platform to view, update, and discuss content ideas and plans. This transparency helps prevent miscommunication and duplication of efforts. And keeps everyone accountable for their tasks and responsibilities.

    Adaptability: A content calendar enables you to quickly adapt to changes in your industry, market trends, or customer preferences. A clear view of your content plan allows you to identify gaps and opportunities. That allows you to stay relevant and engaging.

    Process Performance Visibility: It’s hard to improve what you can’t see. A content calendar models the process of content creation – it makes it visible. It allows you to monitor and retrospect what is working and what isn’t by making all the bits and pieces visible. This allows you to measure how well your content creation system works. It can help you surface bottlenecks and inefficiencies that can be improved upon.

    Essential Elements of an Effective Content Calendar

    Essential elements of a content calendar.

    Strategic context: Context around the content marketing strategy. Who is the target audience? What are key channels? What is the publishing cadence per channel? What’s the voice and tonality you want to use? Answering these questions should allow you to pick the right content to prioritize. Additionally, it provides the guardrails and important context for briefing writers.

    Content Backlog: A library of content ideas that fit the content strategy. These can come from the team, customers, and stakeholders. Making it easy for stakeholders to contribute ideas can be a great way to keep content ideas flowing in.

    Content creation process: A main strength of content calendars is that they allow you to make all the steps visible that are needed to create, publish, and promote content. That allows you to better coordinate and collaborate. You can proactively manage all the content pieces that are moving and being worked on.

    Common content creation stages are:

    • Content Backlog: Here is where all the content ideas live.
    • Planning: This is where a content brief gets written and made ready for hand-off to writers
    • Writing: In this stage content gets researched and written.
    • Editing: The content piece gets finalized. That includes editing, proofreading, SEO optimizations, etc. In summary, anything that makes this ready for publishing.
    • Publishing: Content gets added to CMS, scheduled, and published.
    • Promoting: It doesn’t end with content being published. Content needs to get promoted and pushed to your audience.
    Status Tracking in your Trello Content Calendar (Kanban view)

    Calendar view: A calendar view allows you to have an overview of when and what type of content is published. It enables you to identify opportunities for cross-promotion.

    Content Calendar in Asana

    Due dates & Publishing dates: Adding content due dates and publishing dates will allow you to coordinate around key deadlines. It points the team to content pieces that need attention. And sets expectations for stakeholders of what is in the pipeline.

    Ownership assignment: Being able to assign owners and writers makes it visible who is responsible for a content piece. This can be the owner within the content team, the writers, the marketers promoting the content, etc.

    Overview of writer workload: When managing a lot of writers it can be helpful to visualize what each writer has on their plater. This allows you to stay on top of what is going on and intervene early if deadlines seem to slip.

    Playbooks: Playbooks can be powerful to formalize and set expectations on how things should get done. Playbooks provide a step-by-step guide on how to perform certain tasks. This allows one to hand off certain tasks to different people while removing any uncertainty about what needs to happen.

    How to Create a Content Calendar: Step-by-Step

    Content calendars are an integral part of an effective content marketing strategy. Here’s a detailed guide on how to create a content calendar:

    Strategy and Planning

    Step 1: Set your content marketing goals and objectives

    It’s crucial to define your content marketing goals, before creating your content calendar. These could include increasing brand awareness, generating leads, driving website traffic, or boosting audience engagement. Clear objectives guide your content planning and enable you to measure the success of your content marketing efforts.

    Step 2: Conduct a content audit

    Perform a content audit on your existing content. Aim to find gaps, opportunities, or areas for improvement. What topics are not or insufficiently covered? What content has worked well and what hasn’t? This will help you decide what type of content to include in your content calendar.

    Step 3: Identify your target audience

    Understanding your target audience is essential for creating relevant and engaging content. Identify your ideal customer personas. This includes their demographics, interests, pain points, and content consumption habits. Knowing for whom you write, will help you tailor your content to address their needs, preferences, and expectations.

    Step 4: Establish content themes and content types

    Create content themes and categories that align with your brand’s message and resonate with your target audience. This could include industry news, how-to guides, case studies, or thought leadership articles.

    Pro Tip: Define your mix of content types and formats, such as blog posts, articles, infographics, videos, podcasts, or social media posts. Consider diversifying your content mix to appeal to different audience preferences.

    Step 5: Determine the frequency and timing of content publishing

    Define your publishing cadence and timing based on your audience’s preferences and your team’s capacity. Consider factors like industry news cycle, seasonal trends, or competitor activity. Maintain a balance between consistency and flexibility. Ensure that you can adapt to changes and opportunities as they arise.

    Tool Selection and Setup

    Step 6: Assign roles and responsibilities

    Clearly define the roles and responsibilities of each team member. Who does what in the content creation process? From planning content, and preparing briefs, to content creation, editing, approval, and distribution. This ensures accountability and prevents miscommunication or duplication of efforts.

    Step 7: Choose your content calendar tool

    Decide on a tool for your content calendar, such as Google Sheets, Trello, Asana, Airtable, and others. The tool should at least support essential elements as mentioned above. Additionally, many tools provide automation features to further remove manual tasks and help to keep the team in the loop.

    Step 8: Model your content creation workflow

    Create the stages of your content creation process. Anything that needs to be done from the idea to the content being published and promoted. You can use “status” fields for that or many tools also provide some sort of Kanban view where stages are represented by a list. This allows you to see where each content piece sits. Also if there are any bottlenecks or delays within a certain stage. It gives you the visibility to manage the flow of your content production.

    Implementation and Optimization

    Step 9: Setup automation

    Many tools offer automation features. Such as the automated creation of tasks/subtasks based on the content creation stage. Or automated digest emails, or Slack notifications triggered by changes on your content calendar. This can be helpful to codify playbooks directly into your content calendar process. For example: Automatically add a list of tasks when a content piece moves from writing to editing and assign owners.

    Airtable automations for your Content Calendar

    Step 10: Populate the content calendar

    Start populating your content calendar. If you start fresh consider starting with placeholders based on your defined publishing cadence. Then generate content ideas for your backlog and fill in the placeholders with the first content pieces you want to create. Doing a keyword audit to define topic clusters can be a great way to see the first ideas for your content calendar.

    For each planned content piece include:

    • Content brief with title, keywords, URL, summary, target audience
    • Publishing date and content type
    • Assigned owner/writer

    Plan your content several weeks or months in advance to ensure a steady flow of content and avoid last-minute scrambles.

    Step 11: Review, adjust, and update the content calendar

    A content calendar is a living document. It should be continually refined and adjusted based on your team’s performance, audience feedback, and market dynamics.

    Maintain flexibility in your content calendar. Be open to rescheduling content pieces, adjusting your content mix, or incorporating new content ideas. Encourage your team to provide input and share ideas. Foster a collaborative and dynamic content planning process.

    Tips for Managing Your Content Calendar

    Effectively managing your content calendar is critical for maximizing the impact of your content marketing efforts.

    • Regularly review and update your content calendar. This is essential for ensuring alignment with your content marketing goals and strategy.
    • Assess how well the content creation process is working. Retrospect and see where there are bottlenecks and areas for improvement. Encourage your team to provide input and feedback on how the process is working.
    • Provide playbooks to codify how certain tasks should be done. This allows you to easily and quickly distribute tasks to the different team members. Here are some examples for playbooks:
    • Set reminders for deadlines and milestones to keep your team on track and ensure timely content creation. This could include deadlines for content drafts, editing, approval, and distribution.
    • Automate repetitive tasks as much as possible.
    The Content Engine Checklist: A List of Implementation Priorities.

    Content Calendar Management Best Practices

    Your content strategy evolves. It is important to stay up-to-date with your target audience and keep your content plan up-to-date with new learnings.

    • Monitor the performance of your content and adjust your strategy accordingly. Regularly analyze the performance of your published content. Use metrics such as page views, social shares, conversion rates, or the number of leads.
    • Gather audience feedback. Collect feedback from your audience through comments, surveys, or social media interactions to understand their preferences, needs, and expectations. Use this feedback to tailor your content program to your audience.
    • Stay updated with industry trends. Keep an eye on industry trends, news, and competitor activity. This can help you identify emerging topics, content formats, or distribution channels. Incorporate these insights into your content calendar and content program. This ensures your content remains relevant and engaging for your audience.
    • Conduct regular content audits. Periodically perform content audits to assess your existing content inventory. Identify gaps or opportunities, and evaluate the overall effectiveness of your content strategy. This can inform what content or formats to focus on to drive desired results.
    • Foster a culture of continuous improvement. Encourage your team to provide input, share ideas, and collaborate on refining your content strategy. Create an open content planning process that embraces experimentation, learning, and adaptation.
    • Review your content marketing goals. As your business evolves, your content marketing goals may change. Ensure that your content strategy is in sync with your objectives.

    A successful content calendar is in sync with the content strategy. As the content strategy evolves so does the content plan.

    Best Content Calendar Tools Compared

    There are various tools and templates available to help you create and manage your content calendar more efficiently. Here’s an overview of five popular content calendar tools:

    Google Sheets or Microsoft Excel:

    Versatile, but limited in your visualization options. These tools offer formatting options, such as color coding, filters, and conditional formatting. It can be used if something simple is needed until you grow out of it as a team.

    Trello Content Calendar:

    Trello is a project management tool that uses boards, lists, and cards to help you visually organize and manage your content calendar. Each card represents a content piece. You can move cards between lists to represent different stages of the content creation process. Trello also allows you to assign team members, set due dates, and add labels for easy categorization. Trello is easy to use, yet powerful for managing content calendars.

    Trello Content Calendar in Kanban view

    Asana Content Calendar:

    Asana is another popular project management tool. Asana is great for content calendars. You can create tasks for each content piece, assign team members, set deadlines, and track progress. Asana offers various project views, including a list, board, and calendar view.

    Asana Content Calendar in Kanban view

    Airtable Content Calendar:

    Airtable is a flexible and customizable tool that brings spreadsheets to a new level. It allows you to create content calendars with a variety of views, including grid, calendar, kanban, and gallery. It is likely the best tool if you are managing a lot of external writers. Airtable is an excellent choice for teams looking for a more advanced content calendar solution.

    Airtable Content Calendar in Kanban view

    When selecting a content calendar tool or template, consider your team’s needs, preferences, and workflow. A tool is only as good as the processes you have defined in your team.

    Marketing Tools to use alongside your content calendar

    A successful content engine requires a handful of tools alongside a content calendar. Here are a couple of examples that together can build a high-performing content system.

    Content Management Systems (CMS):

    CMS platforms like WordPress or HubSpot make it easy to publish new content. From being able to add it directly to the CMS to previewing it and scheduling for publishing. They also assist you with adding all the necessary metadata required for SEO.

    Social Media Management Tools:

    Distribution of content is key. Social media management tools, like Buffer or Hootsuite, allow you to schedule posts in advance. This enables you to coordinate and sync up content publishing times with your social media promotions.

    Analytics Tools:

    Tools like Google Analytics are an essential part of the digital marketer’s toolbelt. It helps you understand how your content performs and resonates with your audience. Having data on content performance readily available can foster data-informed decision-making. This is especially helpful when discussing or reviewing content plans.

    Collaboration Tools:

    Many tools offer integration with collaboration tools, such as Slack or Microsoft Teams. These integrations allow adding automation rules that push updates to your collaboration tools.

    Free Content Calendar Templates

    Download these ready-to-use templates to get started on your content calendar right away:

    Trello Content Calendar [Free Template]

    Asana Content Calendar [Free Template]

    Airtable Content Calendar [Free Template]

    Conclusion

    In today’s competitive digital landscape, a well-managed content program is crucial for the success of your content marketing efforts. A content calendar is an essential tool to achieve this. A good content calendar fosters the creation of a consistent and engaging content mix. It streamlines the content creation process and helps with better collaboration and alignment within your team. Furthermore and provides a holistic view of how you plan to reach your marketing goals.

    Regularly review and refine your content strategy. Incorporate audience feedback, industry trends, and data-driven insights. Foster a collaborative and dynamic content planning process within your team. And encourage continuous improvement and adaptation as a content team. These are the ingredients that make up a successful content program.

    By leveraging the power of content calendars you can optimize your content marketing efforts, and achieve greater consistency and predictability in your content creation. This is what ultimately drives better results for your business. Embrace the content calendar as a key component of your content marketing strategy. It’s how you build a predictable and scalable content engine.

  • Trello Content Calendar: Workflows and Automations (2026)

    Trello Content Calendar: Workflows and Automations (2026)

    A Trello Content Calendar in Calendar view.
    TL;DR: Build a Trello content calendar using automated workflows and visual planning. This guide provides:
    1. 10-stage Kanban workflow from idea to promotion
    2. Butler automation rules for checklist creation and notifications
    3. Calendar Power-Up integration for publishing timeline visibility
    4. Free template with pre-built playbooks and checklists
    Perfect for teams managing 5-50 content pieces monthly on Trello’s free plan. Grab the free template to start in under 15 minutes.

    Before we jump in: You can get your free Trello content calendar template here.

    Consistently producing valuable content is the cornerstone of a content marketing strategy.

    But as soon as you have many articles in your content creation process it can get messy quickly. It’s hard to keep the overview. Content pieces progress at different speeds. Deadlines might need adjusting. Many different tasks need to be coordinated.

    Predictability comes from acting, not reacting. Content should be planned and created with intention. This is where editorial content calendars come into play.

    Strategies and insights for effectively reaching and converting developer audiences

    Why Trello Excels for Content Calendar Management

    A Trello content calendar uses Kanban boards and Butler automation to visualize every stage of content production from ideation through promotion.

    A content calendar turns reactive publishing into a planned, repeatable system. It makes the entire content creation process visible so nothing falls through the cracks.

    Trello handles this well because the Kanban format maps naturally to content stages. Each list represents a phase (Backlog, Writing, Editing, Published), and each card is a content piece moving left to right through the pipeline. Even on the free plan, you get Butler automation, the Calendar Power-Up, and team collaboration features. For teams that need more structure, consider Asana or Airtable as alternatives.

    Draft.dev tip: After onboarding 100+ content teams, we find Trello works best when you limit your board to 10 or fewer workflow stages. More than that creates friction, and fewer than 5 leaves gaps where content stalls without visibility.

    Key Advantages of Trello for Content Teams:

    • Visual Kanban boards that make workflow status instantly clear
    • Free plan includes Butler automation (250 command runs/month), Calendar Power-Up, and team collaboration
    • Smart Boards (new in 2026) with AI-powered card prioritization and task delegation suggestions
    • Four board views on Premium: Kanban, Calendar, Timeline, and Dashboard
    • Flexible customization without complex setup or coding requirements
    • Integrations with Slack, Google Drive, and 200+ Power-Ups

    How to Set Up Your Trello Editorial Content Calendar

    Setting up a Trello editorial calendar requires creating workflow lists, enabling the Calendar Power-Up, configuring cards, and building Butler automation rules.

    The Kanban view: Visualize the end-to-end process of content creation

    Make sure that you and your team have all the information at your fingertips for performing specific tasks as part of the content creation. That includes content goals, target audience, distribution strategy, etc. But also playbooks and tactics on how to move content from one stage to the next. For example, how to write a content brief, how to format and structure content on your CMS, or best practices for SEO.

    The template below comes with a handful of tactics and playbooks. These should provide a good starting ground if you are starting from scratch.

    Complete Workflow Lists to Track Content Status

    Trello lists represent the status of each content piece as they move through the content creation flow.

    Kanban view showing multiple lists from idea to content being scheduled for publishing.

    10-Stage Content Creation Workflow:

    • Content Backlog: This list should include all your content ideas. There are multiple sources for content ideas – the team, customers, stakeholders, gap analysis of competitors’ content or your own, etc. Or you can use a keyword audit to identify topic clusters to write about. Classify content using labels, based on content type, channel, funnel stage, etc.
      • Output: A list of content ideas that are in line with your target audience and marketing goals.
    • Preparation: This is all about getting your content ready for writing. Be it internal or external. A well-written content brief is a great tool to do that. This brief includes the target audience, URL, h1 headline, keywords, links, etc. You also want to set a due date for the content piece. As soon as you set a due date it will also show up on the calendar view of the board.
      • Output: Content is ready to be handed to writers
    • Find a writer: Content is prepared. Let’s find and assign a writer.
      • Output: A writer is assigned and ready to start writing
    • Writing: Surprise – this is where the content gets written. This includes first drafts, draft reviews, and incorporating early feedback. Once the content is in a stage to be handed over for editing – proofreading, SEO optimization, etc.
      • Output: Content that is finalized from the writer’s perspective and ready for editing
    • Editing: The content is fairly finished. Now it is about polishing and ensuring we get the content to a state where it is ready to be published. Typically, this involves proofreading, copy editing, adding internal and external links, and SEO optimizations, …
      • Output: Content that is ready to be published
    • Scheduling: At this stage, you need to make the finished content ready for publishing. Content needs to be added to Content Management System, and formatted and structured correctly.
      • Output: Content that is scheduled for publishing
    • Scheduled: This column includes all content added to the CMS and waiting for the publish date.
    • Published: This column includes all published content pieces that are waiting to be promoted.
    • Promoting: In this phase, you are promoting the content. Social media promotions. Outreach to external partners for co-promotion. You can now also add backlinks to the newly published content.
      • Output: Content that is promoted through defined channels
    • Done.
      • Output: Party – Congrats, you published yet another content piece.

    Add Calendar Power-Up: Show What Content Goes Live When

    Activating the calendar Power-Up shows your cards on your calendar based on the due date. Giving each content piece a due date will give you a holistic view of your planned content.

    This allows you to be proactive in identifying opportunities for cross-promotion.

    Calendar View Benefits:

    • Publication timeline visualization for the entire team
    • Content clustering opportunities for SEO impact
    • Deadline management with visual due date tracking
    • Campaign coordination with product launches and events
    • Resource planning to prevent team overload

    Configure Cards as Individual Content Pieces

    Each card represents a content piece. Each card will live in a specific list which represents a stage in the content creation process.

    Essential Card Information:

    • Content title and target keyword
    • Due date for publication
    • Assigned team members (writer, editor, reviewer)
    • Content brief and research links
    • Success metrics and performance goals

    This allows you also to add important links and resources to a content piece. This can be a content brief, due date, an owner, and additional meta information like content type.

    Setup Automation Rules for Automatic Task Creation

    Trello Butler automation creates predefined checklists when cards move between workflow lists. The three most valuable automations trigger during Preparation (content brief checklist), Writing (draft review tasks), and Editing (SEO optimization checklist).

    Based on the state of the content, you need to perform different tasks. Using checklists allows you to make this visible and clear for anyone involved. In Trello, you can use automation rules to automatically create predefined checklists.

    Example of automation rules set up on Trello Content Calendar template.

    Key Automation Rules to Implement

    When a card is added to “Preparation”:

    • Create content brief with target audience and keywords
    • Research competitor content for the topic
    • Set publication deadline and assign writer
    • Gather supporting resources and expert quotes

    When a card moves to “Writing”:

    • Create first draft following content brief
    • Internal review and feedback incorporation
    • Final writer review and approval
    • Handoff preparation for editing team

    When a card moves to “Editing”:

    • Copy editing for clarity and flow
    • SEO optimization (title, meta, headers, links)
    • Fact-checking and source verification
    • Image sourcing and alt text creation

    You can download a Trello content calendar template below that includes checklists for each content creation stage. Trello unfortunately does not allow to share automation rules, but you can easily set up your own using these predefined checklists.

    Important Note: You can download a Trello content calendar template below that includes checklists for each content creation stage. Trello unfortunately does not allow you to share automation rules, but you can easily set up your own using these predefined checklists.

    Labels to classify and filter content

    Trello labels give you a visual tagging system for slicing your board by content type, channel, or funnel stage. Set up labels across three dimensions:

    Content Type: Article, Ebook, Tutorial, Video, Newsletter, Social Post Funnel Stage: TOFU (awareness), MOFU (consideration), BOFU (decision) Channel: Blog, LinkedIn, Email, YouTube, Partner Site

    This lets you filter the board to answer questions like “What MOFU content is in editing?” or “How many tutorials are scheduled this month?”

    Draft.dev Recommendation: Keep your label count under 15. More than that and the color-coding becomes noise instead of signal. If you need more granularity, use Trello Custom Fields (available on Standard plan and above) for metadata like target keyword, word count, or assigned editor.

    Integrations and Power-Ups Worth Adding

    • Slack integration for real-time card movement notifications in team channels
    • Google Drive for linking briefs, style guides, and research documents directly to cards
    • Card Repeater Power-Up for recurring content tasks (weekly newsletter, monthly report)
    • Google Calendar Sync to push Trello due dates into your team’s shared calendar
    • Email reports for stakeholders who need visibility without logging into Trello
    • Smart Boards (2026) for AI-suggested card prioritization based on due dates and workload

    Draft.dev Tip: Avoid Power-Up bloat. Start with Slack + Google Drive + Calendar Sync. Add others only when your team identifies a specific gap in their workflow.

    Download the Complete Trello Content Calendar Template

    Trello’s free plan is ideal for content calendars, combining visual Kanban boards for instant status tracking, Butler automation for task creation, and calendar Power-Ups for publication timelines—best suited for teams publishing 5-50 monthly pieces.
    Download the Trello Content Calendar Template.

    Download the content calendar template above to get started quickly. It comes with predefined labels, automation rules, checklists, playbooks, and tactics.

    Content calendar template features:

    • Predefined workflow
    • Predefined playbooks ready for you to use
    • Checklists for each content stage ready for setup in automation rules, including instructions
    • Easy to adapt the template to your needs
      • Add your target audience, content goals, distribution strategy
      • Add your own playbooks and tactics
      • Adjust the checklist template for each stage to fit your workflow
      • Update the labels to represent content categories most important to you
      • Adjust the status/lists to fit your teams’ workflows

    When Trello Stops Working for Content Teams

    Trello’s simplicity is its strength, but that same simplicity creates ceilings. Based on Draft.dev’s experience managing content operations across dozens of teams, here are the signals that you have outgrown Trello:

    Volume ceiling. Publishing more than 50 pieces monthly makes Kanban boards visually overwhelming. Cards stack up in middle stages and the board loses its “instant status” advantage.

    Reporting gaps. Trello’s Dashboard view (Premium only) covers basics, but it cannot track metrics like average time-in-stage, writer throughput, or content performance after publishing. Teams that need those analytics typically migrate to Notion, Monday.com, or Airtable.

    Multi-board complexity. When you need separate boards for blog content, social media, email campaigns, and video production, cross-board visibility breaks down. Trello does not offer native portfolio views across boards without the Enterprise plan.

    Permission granularity. The free plan limits you to 10 workspace members. Standard lifts that cap but still lacks fine-grained permissions for external writers or freelancers.

    If you are hitting these limits, read our guides on Asana content calendars and Airtable content calendars for alternatives that scale further.

    Transform Content Chaos into Predictable Publishing

    Detail view of Trello card with title, due date, owner, resources

    Make the template your own. Have everything you need to publish great content at your fingertips. Have a healthy backlog of relevant content. Know the status of each content piece that moves through the creation process. Get a holistic view of when all your content will be published.

    A well-organized content calendar is one of the core building blocks of a predictable and scalable content engine.

    Related Resources

  • Asana Content Calendar: Workflows and Automations (2026)

    Asana Content Calendar: Workflows and Automations (2026)

    Kanban board showing multiple columns with content pieces.
    TL;DR: Asana’s default content calendar template is basic and lacks the structure needed for serious content operations. This guide provides a complete, battle-tested Asana content calendar setup with:
    1. 9-stage workflow from idea to promotion
    2. Pre-built templates with subtasks for each content type
    3. Automation rules to prevent bottlenecks (Starter plan and above)
    4. Performance tracking with built-in reporting
    5. Free CSV template that takes 15 minutes to implement

    Before we jump in: You can get your free Asana content calendar template here.

    Asana’s content calendar template is good but quite simplistic. If you want something more opinionated our Asana template might be for you. Fast to get started. Easy to adapt.

    Why Content Calendars Drive Predictable Marketing Results

    An Asana content calendar uses board sections and automation rules to model a 9-stage publishing workflow, giving teams visual status tracking from content backlog through promotion.

    A content calendar turns reactive publishing into a planned, repeatable system. It makes the entire content creation process visible so nothing falls through the cracks, and it gives the rest of your organization a clear view of what has shipped and what is coming next.

    Using a content calendar consistently adds predictability. It sets the foundation for steady content production. With the right SEO optimizations in place, that consistency turns into predictable traffic and predictable leads. This is the cornerstone of a content marketing strategy. Read our high-level post on the benefits of content calendars here.

    Draft.dev Insight: In our 2026 Developer Marketing Survey, 51% of developer marketing teams are increasing investment in content marketing and SEO this year. Yet 42% of teams using vendors outsource content creation because internal teams are capacity-constrained. A structured content calendar is how you manage that volume, whether the work happens in-house or with external writers.

    Is Asana The Only Content Calendar Tool?

    There are many tools for managing a content calendar. We wrote about how to set up a content calendar with Trello and how to set up a content calendar with Airtable. Asana is a project management platform with all the components for a strong content calendar, and its 2026 feature set makes it particularly suited to teams that need structured workflows with built-in approvals.

    Choose Asana if your team needs approval gates, subtask dependencies, and reporting dashboards.

    Choose Trello if your team prefers a simpler Kanban-only approach with minimal overhead.

    Choose Airtable if you need database-style filtering and custom views across large content inventories.

    Essential Asana Features for Content Teams (2026)

    • Board and list views with customizable sections to model your content creation process
    • Calendar and Timeline views for publication scheduling and deadline tracking
    • Collaboration tools including tasks, subtasks, task owners, due dates, comments, and @mentions
    • Task templates (Starter plan) for standardized content workflows across content types
    • Automation rules (Starter plan, unlimited on Starter+) to auto-assign subtasks, move tasks, and trigger notifications
    • Forms (Starter plan) to collect content ideas from stakeholders through publicly available intake forms
    • Dashboards and reporting to assess process performance and identify bottlenecks
    • AI features (Starter plan, 1,500 AI actions/month): smart task summaries, status updates, and workflow suggestions
    • AI Teammates (Advanced/Enterprise, launched early 2026): prebuilt collaborative agents for content production, campaign management, and intake triage

    How to Set Up Your Asana Editorial Content Calendar

    Setting up an Asana editorial calendar requires creating board sections for each workflow stage, configuring task templates with subtasks, and building automation rules for handoffs.

    Step 1: Model Your Content Creation Workflow

    Start from idea to content being written, published, and promoted. Set up “sections” on the “Board” view of your project. Each section is a content creation stage, e.g. content backlog, preparation, editing, promoting, etc. Each section shows the status of the card as it moves through the process.

    Kanban board showing multiple columns with content pieces.

    Content Creation Workflow Stages:

    1. Content Backlog – Prioritized content ideas with keyword research
    2. Preparation – Content briefs, writer assignments, and resource gathering
    3. Writing – First drafts through final revisions
    4. Editing – Copy editing, SEO optimization, and fact-checking
    5. Scheduling – CMS upload, meta data, and publication timing
    6. Scheduled – Final review before automated publishing
    7. Published – Live content ready for promotion
    8. Promoting – Multi-channel distribution and amplification
    9. Done – Performance tracking and optimization insights

    Step 2: Configure Tasks and Subtasks for Each Content Piece

    Each content piece is a task on the board. Each task will live in a section of your board. Each task will have all the necessary information to move it through the process.

    Each content piece has sub-tasks to show what needs to be done. Be clear on what you expect to get done at each stage. Disassociate planning from execution. That aligns the team and removes any hesitation when it comes to doing the things.

    Pro Tip: On the free Personal plan, create a task called “TEMPLATE” that includes all subtasks for each stage. Duplicate it for each new content piece. This workaround takes 30 seconds per piece and avoids the need for paid features.
    On Starter ($10.99/user/month): Convert the task to a formal template or use automation rules to add subtasks when a task moves to a different section. This eliminates manual duplication entirely.
    On Advanced ($24.99/user/month): Combine task templates with Asana AI to auto-generate smart summaries of each content piece and flag overdue subtasks. AI actions (1,500/month on Starter, more on Advanced) can auto-update project status and suggest next steps.

    Step 3: Implement Strategic Content Tagging

    Asana content tagging uses a three-dimension system of content type, funnel stage, and distribution channel to filter your board by any combination of categories.

    Use tags to define content categories, content types, etc. Tags are great to define content types, content channels, and content funnel stages. For example:

    Content Classification Tags:

    • Content Types: “Article”, “Ebook”, “Case Study”, “Video”, “Infographic”
    • Funnel Stages: “TOFU”, “MOFU”, “BOFU”
    • Distribution Channels: “Newsletter”, “LinkedIn”, “Blog”, “Webinar”
    • Priority Levels: “High Priority”, “Standard”, “Evergreen”

    This allows you to quickly see what articles or ebooks are being worked on or planned.

    Step 4: Set Up Due Dates and Publishing Schedules

    Who doesn’t love due dates? It enables your team to coordinate around the most urgent tasks. It ensures content keeps moving through the process efficiently.

    Common Setup Mistake: Do not skip buffer time between stages. Content that moves from Writing to Editing on the same day almost always needs a second editing pass because writers have not had distance from their own draft. Build at least 24-48 hours of buffer between Writing completion and Editing start.

    Step 5: Master Calendar View for Content Planning

    Use the calendar view to see when content will be published. Seeing when content will be published is great for finding opportunities for co-promotion and distribution.

    Calendar showing when articles, assets, or newsletter are being published.

    Calendar View Benefits:

    • Content clustering for maximum SEO impact
    • Launch coordination with product releases and campaigns
    • Competitive timing awareness to avoid conflicts
    • Seasonal planning for holidays and industry events

    Starter and Advanced Features That Scale Content Operations

    Approvals (Starter+)

    Add approval gates at transition points in your workflow. For example, require content manager sign-off before a task moves from Editing to Scheduling. Approvals create a formal record of who reviewed what and when, which matters for teams with compliance requirements or external stakeholders.

    Automation Rules (Starter+, unlimited)

    Automate repetitive handoffs: auto-assign subtasks when a task moves to a new section, notify the editor when a draft enters Editing, or flag tasks that have been in one section for more than 5 business days. Asana’s Starter plan includes unlimited automation rules (previously capped on the old Premium plan).

    Forms (Starter+)

    Collect content ideas through publicly shareable intake forms that feed directly into your Content Backlog section. Each submission becomes a task with pre-filled fields, reducing manual data entry from stakeholders who do not use Asana daily.

    Dashboards (Starter+)

    Built-in dashboards visualize process performance: tasks completed per week, average time in each section, and bottleneck identification. Use these to spot stages where content consistently stalls.

    Asana AI (Starter+, new in 2026)

    Asana’s AI features include smart task summaries, automated status updates, and workflow optimization suggestions. On the Starter plan, teams get 1,500 AI actions per month. For content calendars, the most useful AI feature is auto-generated project status updates that pull from task activity across the board.

    AI Teammates (Advanced/Enterprise, new in 2026)

    Asana launched AI Teammates in early 2026: prebuilt collaborative agents that handle complex, multi-step workflows. For content teams, the most relevant prebuilt agents cover content production and campaign management. These agents can draft intake summaries, triage incoming content requests, and flag at-risk deadlines, all within the Asana interface with human checkpoints at each step.

    Draft.dev Insight: Our 2026 Developer Marketing Survey found that 85% of developer marketing teams use AI for content ideation and drafting, but only 7% find it “very useful.” Asana’s AI features fill a different gap: they handle the project management overhead (status updates, bottleneck detection, intake triage) that content-focused AI tools do not touch. Automating these handoffs lets your team spend more time on the creative work that requires human judgment.

    Graphs showing completed and open tickets.

    Complete Asana Content Calendar Template Breakdown

    The content calendar template comes as a .csv that you can upload during project creation. This will prepopulate your board with the main content creation stages as outlined below.

    Content creation process modeled in the template

    • Content Backlog: This is where all your content ideas go. It’s a prioritized list of content ideas. If you are using Asana Starter (formerly Premium), you can use the “Form” feature to collect content ideas from stakeholders.
    • Preparation: This is where you get your content ready to be worked on. Write a content brief. Assign a due date. Find and identify a writer. Hand it off to writers. Giving enough context to writers reduced revisions at a later stage.
    • Writing: This is where content gets written. From a first draft to feedback rounds to a finished article ready for editing.
    • Editing: At this stage, the content gets refined and made ready for publishing. From proofreading to copyediting to SEO optimizations to adding links and so on.
    • Scheduling: We have the final content piece. Now we need to get it ready for publishing. This includes creating design assets, adding them to the CMS, and scheduling for publishing.
    • Scheduled: Everything is prepared. The content is just waiting to be published.
    • Published: Content is published and ready to be promoted.
    • Promoting: Content is actively promoted via defined channels.
    • Done: Time to party and celebrate yet another content piece going live.

    It also includes:

    • A how-to-get-started guide.
    • A template task for content pieces, ready for you to copy and adapt.
    • Predefined sub-tasks on the template task for easy adaptation.
    Shows project overview in Asana with predefined links and goal.

    Download the Asana Content Calendar Template

    Download the Asana Content Calendar Template.

    When Asana Stops Working for Content Teams

    Asana handles structured content workflows well, but it has ceilings. Here are the signals that you may need a different tool or a more complex Asana setup:

    Content-specific metadata. Asana tasks support custom fields (Starter+), but they are not built for content-specific metadata like target keyword, word count, SEO score, or CMS status. Teams that track 10+ data points per content piece often find Airtable’s database-style fields more natural.

    Freelancer access friction. The free Personal plan supports up to 10 members. Starter adds unlimited guest access, but guests see the full project, not just their assigned tasks. Teams managing 5+ external writers sometimes prefer Trello’s simpler single-board guest permissions.

    Cross-project visibility. If you run separate Asana projects for blog content, email campaigns, social media, and video production, seeing a unified content calendar across all four requires the Advanced plan’s Portfolio feature ($24.99/user/month). On Starter, each project is a silo.

    Database-level reporting. Asana dashboards show task-level metrics (completed, overdue, by section). They do not natively report on content performance metrics (traffic, conversions, engagement). For performance tracking, you will need a separate analytics layer or an Airtable/Notion setup that connects to your analytics tools.

    How to Customize Your Asana Content Calendar System

    Add Context To Your Content Strategy

    Include essential context in your project overview page:

    • Provide information about your target audience
    • Provide links to content goals, cadence, channels, etc.
    • Provide playbooks to align across your team on how to best get certain tasks done.

    Essential Content Calendar Resources:

    Adapt the Workflow to Your Team

    Customize these elements:

    • Adapt the sections to fit your specific workflow
    • Modify the subtasks on the Template Task for your content types
    • Adjust timeline estimates based on your team’s capacity and quality standards

    Make the template your own. Have everything you need to publish great content predictably. A well-prioritized backlog with excellent content ideas relevant to your audience. Know the status of each content piece as it moves through its creation process. Get full visibility of what content will be published and when. Identify opportunities for co-promotion and distribution.

    A well-organized content calendar is one of the core building blocks of a predictable and scalable content engine.

  • Best Blogging Platforms for Developers & Technical Content

    Best Blogging Platforms for Developers & Technical Content

    TL;DR: Choosing the right blogging platform depends on your technical needs and content strategy:
    1. For non-technical teams: WordPress (41% of all websites) offers the most extensive plugin ecosystem and user-friendly interface
    2. For developer blogs: Static site generators like Gatsby, Hugo, and Jekyll provide speed, version control, and customization
    3. For modern publishing: Ghost combines clean editing experience with headless CMS capabilities for flexible content distribution
    This page provides comprehensive reviews, platform comparisons, and setup guides to help you choose and implement the best blogging solution for your technical content strategy.

    There are dozens of blogging platforms you can choose from. On this page you’ll find reviews, comparisons, and tips for setting up some of the most popular blogging platforms. While some are aimed at technical blogs, most would work for any subject matter. Find even more technical content at Draft.dev and the Draft.dev Blog

    Choosing the Best Blogging Platform for Technical Content

    Choosing the right blogging platform is one of the first decisions any dev marketing team needs to make. This impacts site performance, content workflow, SEO capabilities, and long-term scalability. This guide covers popular blogging platforms, from traditional content management systems to modern static site generators.

    Download the Trello Content Calendar Template.

    Key Factors When Choosing a Blogging Platform

    Consider these essential criteria before committing to a platform long-term:

    • Technical requirements: Developer-friendly features like markdown support, version control integration, and API access
    • Performance needs: Page load speed, Core Web Vitals scores, and ability to handle traffic spikes
    • Content workflow: Editing experience, collaboration features, and publishing automation
    • Customization level: Theme flexibility, plugin ecosystem, and ability to modify core functionality
    • Hosting and maintenance: Self-hosted vs. managed solutions, ongoing technical requirements
    • SEO capabilities: Built-in optimization features, schema markup support, and mobile responsiveness

    Platform Reviews and Comparisons

    The Best Technical Blogging Platforms

    By Karl Hughes

    One of the first decisions any developer marketing team needs to make is which technical…read more.

    How to Use React DevTools in Safari

    By Lucien Chemaly

    React is commonly used for the frontend in static site generators like Gatsby and now…read more.

    Getting Started with WordPress Development: A Developer’s Guide

    By Naman Bansal

    WordPress is the most popular content management system (CMS), supporting 41 percent of all websites…read more.

    Complete Guide to Blogging Platforms

    Writing a blog is one thing, but finding a place to publish it is quite…read more.

    Using Ghost as a Headless CMS

    By Jerry Ejonavi

    Ghost, an open source publishing platform built with Node.js, provides a good editing experience and…read more.

    Running Ghost on Docker for Your Developer Blog

    By Arek Nawo

    Ghost is one of the most popular open source blogging platforms. It boasts powerful features…read more.

    React vs. Vue: A Modern Comparison

    By Piero Borrelli

    Choosing the best frontend framework can be a daunting challenge. New technologies are created every…read more.

    Next.js vs. Gatsby

    By Shaundai Person

    React frameworks are software platforms that extend the capabilities of React web applications. Certain functionality…read more.

    Introduction to Publii, the Static Site Generator

    By Kealan Parr

    There is so much to consider when making a basic website. You have to think…read more.

    Hugo vs. Gatsby

    JAMStack, which stands for JavaScript, API, and Markup, is the latest buzzword in the world…read more.

    Jekyll vs. WordPress

    By Richard White

    There are many choices when it comes to building a website or blog, catering to…read more.

    How to run your own Keyword Audit and Creating Topic Clusters.

    Setting Up a Custom 404 Page with GitHub Pages

    By Sodeeq Elusoji

    In this article, I’ll be showing you how to create a custom error 404 page…read more.

    Hugo vs. Jekyll: Which is Right for Your Blog?

    By John Gramila

    Static site generators create HTML sites, with predictable page layouts and content with regular presentation…read more.

    Creating Gatsby Starters

    By Ashutosh K Singh

    GatsbyJS is an open-source React-based, GraphQL powered static site generator. You can create blazingly fast…read more.

    Creating Hugo Themes

    By Siddhant Varma

    Lately, developers are adopting static site generators like Hugo to quickly deliver content to their…read more.


    Blogging Platforms for Your Startup

    By Karl Hughes

    There are many good reasons to start a blog for your startup: to update your…read more.

    Additional Resources

    Looking for expert help with your technical content strategy? Draft.dev specializes in creating high-quality technical content for developer tools and B2B SaaS companies. Our network of experienced technical writers can help you scale your content production while maintaining technical accuracy and SEO best practices.

    Explore more resources:

    Visit the Draft.dev Blog for more insights on technical content marketing, or schedule a consultation to discuss your content needs.

  • How We Use AI Writing Tools at Draft.dev

    How We Use AI Writing Tools at Draft.dev

    TL;DR: How Draft.dev uses AI writing tools in technical content production:
    1. What We Use AI For: Generating article descriptions, title variations, content outlines, email replies, and brainstorming list items and transitions
    2. What We Don’t Use AI For: Writing actual technical content, replacing subject matter experts, or creating content requiring deep technical expertise and personal experience
    3. Quality Control: Human experts must guide and fact-check all AI output, with detection tools to identify AI-written content in submissions
    4. Future Vision: AI writing tools will function like Excel for accountants—augmenting expert work rather than replacing it, making writing more approachable for engineers
    Great writers won’t be replaced by AI but will learn to work with it as a virtual assistant to increase productivity.

    In 2020, I started exploring AI writing tools. I recorded a screencast back then on how you could use GPT-3 to create or at least help you create a technical blog post. In 2021, I recorded a more in-depth comparison of the AI writing tools available at that time.

    It’s interesting to compare the two videos because you can see how much better these tools got in just a year. That said, all the tools I tried in 2020 and 2021 were clunky. They seemed to push in the direction of writing entire blog posts for you, but they couldn’t get beyond surface-level definitions of terms and often introduced factual inaccuracies.

    In 2022, OpenAI released Chat GPT, and by early 2023, it had hit the mainstream. Everyone from clients to writers to family members asks me about AI writing now, so I thought it would be worth putting down a short summary of my thoughts and the role we see these tools playing at Draft.dev.

    TL;DR: We believe in embracing new technology and learning how to use it.

    In their current state, AI writing tools cannot replace the writers we work with (engineers with deep subject matter expertise), but we are exploring these tools and how using them could make sense.

    How to build a content engine.

    How do AI writing tools like GPT actually work?

    The well-known generative writing tools available today (like GPT-3 and more recently, GPT-4) use large language models (LLMs) to summarize or generate text based on existing text datasets. In other words, they “read” content on the internet and use it to surmise patterns that allow them to write new content.

    LLMs are a form of neural network, a concept that’s been part of machine learning for at least 40 years, but the big unlock in recent years has been cheaper access to computing power and storage. While it’s not trivial to crawl enough of the internet to build one of these things, Google’s been doing it since 1996, and as you might imagine, they’re not the only ones gathering data.

    As the ability to collect and store text data improved, so did the availability of computing power to compute the strength between nodes in this data. The technical details go beyond my understanding, but essentially, LLMs today are trained on trillions of words to calculate the relationship between them and “learn” to use them.

    What can AI writing tools do well in 2025?

    This technology is changing (and improving) rapidly, but as of March 2023 when I write this, the best general-purpose consumer-available AI writing tool is OpenAI’s GPT-4 (the model used by Chat GPT).

    It can do amazing things like write a short poem about the recent collapse of Silicon Valley Bank in the style of Charles Bukowski:

    The Valley once glittered with gold,
But greed took hold, and fortunes were sold.
Silicon dreams turned into a nightmare,
As the bank collapsed, leaving despair.

Investors panicked, accounts were drained,
The system failed, and hope remained.
Bukowski saw it all before,
The rise and fall of money's allure.

The Valley's tech giants brought hope and change,
But the price we paid was out of range.
The crash of '23 was a bitter pill,
And the wounds may take years to heal.

But in the rubble, we'll rebuild anew,
The spirit of innovation shining through.
Lessons learned, the future bright,
As we rise again with all our might.

    Or describe the feeling that an ancient Greek stoic would have while falling off a cliff:

    I strive to maintain a state of inner calm and rationality regardless of external circumstances. Therefore, as I fall off a cliff, I focus on accepting the inevitability of my fate rather than giving in to fear or panic.

I remind myself that death is a natural part of the cycle of life, and that my consciousness will simply return to the universe in a different form. I reflect on the impermanence of all things and the idea that my time on this earth was always limited. I find solace in the knowledge that I lived a virtuous life, true to my principles and values.

As I approach the ground, I feel a sense of detachment from my physical body and a deep sense of peace. I trust that the universe has a plan for me, and that whatever happens next is simply part of that plan. In this moment, I am at peace with my fate, knowing that I lived and died according to my own code of ethics.

    What AI Writing Doesn’t Do Well

    But it’s not perfect. The current iteration of GPT-4 isn’t updated with real-time data (although that’s coming soon), and it often states factual inaccuracies confidently without citing sources, so it’s essential to have a human in the loop.

    AI experts caution, however, that such tools should only be used to support people who are already experts in their domain. Generative AI has been shown to spew disturbing content and misinformation, while other concerns have surfaced over intellectual property theft and privacy. – Karen Hao, The Wall Street Journal

    It also doesn’t do well with personal experience or realistic examples, especially in niche topic areas (like ours). While you can try to push it to do so, it doesn’t always understand “real life” so it struggles to replicate the human experience.

    Finally, it doesn’t do well with extended pieces of text. It struggles to go deeper into topics, so you’ll often find it repeating the same surface-level definition of a topic or spitting out nonsensical jargon because it doesn’t have enough good data on a particular niche.

    For these reasons, it struggles at technical depth—one of our main selling points to clients—and it’s nowhere close to replacing our world-class group of software engineers as a writer. As a rule, we push writers to go deeper and add more personal experience when we see it lacking, and we’re planning to use Positional to detect AI-written content going forward.

    What AI Writing Does Do Well

    That said, we are starting to use GPT-3 in a few specific ways.

    We’ve started using it to generate short descriptions of new articles, new variations of titles for blog posts, and even some article outlines. While we still have to guide and fact-check the machine, it’s saving us a few hours of work per week already.

    Coworkers have told me they use it to reply to emails, come up with definitions for generic terms, and get started on new ideas. While I haven’t found it useful for writing the actual content of a blog post, it has helped me come up with ideas for items in a list or brainstorm transitions between sections.

    Many of GPT-3’s weaknesses are fixable though, so I think we’ll continue using it more in the future. It’s pretty easy to imagine OpenAI including fact-checking and real-time data in future models. Other companies will also be building specialized versions of OpenAI’s generic language models to work better for internal docs, emails, and industry-specific writing. It’s going to be a very interesting next few years in the writing industry.

    How to turn readers into customers.

    How will AI writing tools change content marketing?

    AI writing tools will be for writers like Excel is for accountants.

    Great writers (like great accountants) won’t be replaced by AI writers, but will instead learn to work with AI as a virtual assistant to get more done.

    Subject matter experts with personal experience and knowledge of the nuance of their field won’t be replaced by AI, but maybe the tools will make writing more approachable. I’d love to see more engineers start writing because tools like Chat GPT make it easier.

    Generative AI might also change the way we search for information online. We may be able to interact with search engines through more natural formats like asking questions, and maybe…just maybe…Siri will finally be good at something.

    Like Ryan Law recently said, anyone working in content marketing or writing today should be exploring these tools and learning how to use them in their day-to-day. I’d love to hear how you’re exploring and using AI in your writing. Find me on Twitter to continue the conversation.

  • Best Marketing Tools for Startups and Growing Businesses

    Best Marketing Tools for Startups and Growing Businesses

    TL;DR: Essential marketing tool categories for scaling businesses:
    1. Course creation – ILIAS, Skillshare, PluralSight for thought leadership
    2. Competitive research – SimilarWeb, WooRank, SpyFu for market intelligence
    3. Social automation – ContentStudio, RiteKit, Delay for Reddit for consistent presence
    4. Customer chat – Instream, Jetlink, LiveAdmins for support scaling
    5. CRM software – Airtable, Trello, Freshworks for relationship management
    6. Email marketing – ActiveTrail, SendGrid, HubSpot for lead nurturing
    Plus tools for press releases, logos, stock images, surveys, landing pages, and AI writing assistance. Choose tools that integrate with your existing stack and match your growth stage.

    The growth of any business is a beautiful thing. Exhibiting both progress and prowess, the development of your company proves its USP has real value. You’re not just surviving; you’re thriving.

    But rapid growth has another connotation for business owners: upscaling. This costly, sometimes time-consuming process applies to every element of your company – including marketing. Your marketers might not be able to create enough collateral to meet growing demand. Maybe relationship management is becoming too complicated for internal spreadsheets. Or maybe you haven’t reached the stage where an in-house team makes sense.

    Download the Trello Content Calendar Template.

    If your company is starting to experience significant growing pains, it might be time to consider a partnership with specialized marketing automation tools. Check out these 12 unique categories to smooth out the scaling process and reduce unnecessary strain on internal resources.

    The Best Marketing Tools For Businesses Of All Industries

    No matter where your business needs some extra help, you can count on one of these marketing tools to fill in the gaps.

    Just as a side note, we weren’t sponsored to add any of these tools to the list. They’re just our opinions regarding the platforms we’ve used, tried, and tested over the years.

    Online Course Creation Tools

    If you’re looking to establish your brand as an industry leader, online course creation tools may be a great way to cultivate thought leadership and attention.

    • Open-source management tool ILIAS has a suite of comprehensive options and several million users to date.
    • Skillshare provides course creation and distribution tools, as well as money-making capabilities.
    • If you’re in a tech niche looking for a wider reach, PluralSight is an excellent course creation tool.

    Tools for Finding and Researching Your Competition

    Know thy enemy, or at least thy competitor, with a couple of these competition research tools.

    • SimilarWeb is a great way to see where competitors are sourcing traffic.
    • Tools like WooRank allow you to rank multiple competitor websites, hunting for ways to outperform them.
    • If you need to understand more about the keywords, backlinks, and ads used by competitors, SpyFu is a good place to start.

    Social Media Automation Tools

    Finding time to manage your web presence can be difficult, which is why social media automation tools can be extraordinarily helpful for growing startups.

    • Startups can leverage tools like Delay For Reddit to spread technical content.
    • ContentStudio is a well-rounded tool for social planning, posting, and scheduling.
    • Tools like RiteKit automatically embellish your posts with the perfect blend of hashtags, images, and mentions.

    Customer Chat Tools

    Today’s customers expect nothing but excellence in customer service. Reach leads in meaningful ways using these customer chat tools.

    • Instream is perfect for gathering lead data and creating lasting relationships.
    • AI tools like Jetlink help startups streamline their live chat capabilities.
    • If you need to outsource a larger portion of your customer service, LiveAdmins is a wonderful starting place.

    Press Release Creation and Distribution Tools

    Depending on your industry, regular news updates may be an important part of your growth strategy. Simplify the process by leveraging one of these press release tools.

    • EReleases might be pricey, but it does come with guaranteed distribution and access to 100,000+ journalists.
    • Sign up for the Help A Reporter Out newsletter, and get daily emails from journalists in need of sources.
    • Tools like OpenPR are free to use with an attributed backlink and distribute links through an RSS feed.

    Customer Relationship Management Software

    These CRM tools for startups adapt well to any industry niche.

    • From contact storage to workflow, tools like Airtable have a lot to offer.
    • I personally love using Trello to manage daily processes, especially for monitoring workflow.
    • If you don’t mind paying a little extra, Freshworks CRM is an AI-based program with lots of potential.

    Startup Logo Creation Tools

    If you haven’t designed something you like yet, one of these startup logo creation tools might be able to help.

    • While it might not be the most unique tool on the list, Canva is one of the best resources for logos, graphics, and more.
    • Noun Project provides a huge database of vector icons and images – all for free.

    Free Stock Images

    No matter what industry you’re in, you’ll need access to some eye-catching images from time to time. Check out a few platforms for sourcing free stock images here.

    • The Death To Stock Newsletter is an interesting, if an unconventional, way to get free images. Simply subscribe to the list, and receive a free image every day.
    • If you’re willing to settle for more vintage photos, New Old Stock houses a collection of images that have fallen outside copyright protection.
    • Startups often benefit from the aptly named Startup Stock Photos website.

    Survey Tools

    It’s important to check on the pulse of your customers from time to time. These survey tools make it easier than ever.

    • Formspree lets you handle contact forms at a glance, and embed dynamic forms directly onto a website.
    • Lime Survey is a free, open-source platform (with a paid hosted version). Its ability to capture real voices at scale stands it out in the marketplace.
    • Wufoo is a phenomenal program that integrates with the biggest players in your marketing stack, including Stripe, Google Sheets, and Mailchimp.

    Landing Page Tools

    While it’s totally possible to code a landing page on your own, the time and effort it takes to build one from scratch might not be worth it. Use some of these helpful landing page tools to hit the ground running.

    • Simple, free, and easy to start up, Carrd is a winner right out of the gate. Their one-page sites are streamlined, attractive, and very well priced.
    • For startups needing additional customer support, Landbot allows developers to turn landing pages into chat tools. This program is extremely customizable, adapting to almost any need.
    • Neocities is great for developers who want total control over landing page development. Enjoy an in-browser HTML editor, custom domain support, and a command line tool.

    If you already have Mailchimp under your belt, consider using native tools like Mailchimp Landing Pages.

    How to run your own Keyword Audit and Creating Topic Clusters.

    Email Marketing Tools

    Serving as both a lead generation and customer engagement platform, everyone needs some form of email marketing on their side. Equip your startup to do more with less by using one of these platforms:

    • ActiveTrail is one of the most popular email platforms, and for good reason. Users enjoy a one-stop-shop for many marketing tasks, including SMS campaigns and landing page builders.
    • Prefer API-driven emails? SendGrid might be the perfect option for you. Create templates and campaigns directly in the system, and watch your subscriber count grow.

    Need more suggested content marketing tools? Consider hunting around for integrative CRMs like HubSpot Email.

    Best AI Writing Software

    Whether you need better SEO or some help with writer’s block, AI is a great way to get started with copywriting. Although the best AI writing software is typically geared toward writers, there are several platforms available for SEO or editing professionals.

    • Grammarly is a great platform for checking work. It’s particularly good at strengthening your writing and scanning for accidental plagiarism.
    • INK specializes in the incorporation of keywords with SEO-focused UI. It’s easy to use and simple to navigate, making it a valuable partner for growing businesses.
    • Jasper.ai is a great place to start, especially for businesses needing a wide variety of written work. The program (AKA Jasper) scours through millions of pages of content types to create original work, including blog posts, emails, social media, and more.

    Of course, AI writing tools will only bring you so far. Heavily researched articles, highly specialized work, and technical tutorials are difficult to craft without a human touch. For this reason, it’s best to trust your writing work to verified professionals, including the team behind Draft.dev.

    If you’re interested in developing blog content, tutorials, or copywriting aimed at technical decision makers, Draft.dev has the solutions you’re looking for. After all, great marketing content should also be great educational content. Book a call at your earliest convenience to chat about your needs and expectations.

  • The Best AI Writing Software in 2022

    The Best AI Writing Software in 2022

    I’m super excited about AI-powered writing software. You might think that as a writer, I’d be afraid of AI taking my job, but in truth, I think it’s only going to empower more people to create better content over time. That said, AI writing software has ways to go before we’ll be using it to write for clients at Draft.dev.

    In this post, I’ll compare four of the most popular AI writing assistants. I’ll be assessing how well they work on the different types of technical content we write, how easy they are to use, and the value for your money.

    In order to test each, I used standard prompts and titles for the articles I wanted the AI to write. You can find these at the end of this blog post. But first, let’s talk about what AI writing software looks like today.

    What is AI Writing Software?

    Computer-assisted writing tools have been around for a while now. I have used Grammarly and Hemingway Editor for years, but unlike the AI writing software that I’ve reviewed here, these tools merely correct existing content.

    The four AI writing tools below generate original content using a sophisticated neural network provided by ​​OpenAI’s GPT-3 model. This means that given a prompt and some guidance, these tools can actually write for you…at least in theory.

    As you’ll see, the truth is that these tools are far from perfect. While the best ones might be as good as a very low-cost SEO copywriter, they struggle with esoteric or complex topics. They also tend to introduce factual inaccuracies and are often quite repetitive when left unchecked, so you have to keep a close eye on them.

    That said, I see enormous potential for these AI writing tools to become assistants for human writers. As you can see in the video I recorded for this post, you can get a lot of value out of these tools if you know how to feed them good prompts and combine them with human knowledge.

    Comparing Today’s Top AI Writing Software

    In order to better understand the potential and limitations of AI writing software, I decided to test-drive four of the most popular tools out there. I’ll continue to try out new tools as they hit the market, so if you’ve got one for me to try, reach out to us.

    Copy.ai

    Copy.ai Home Page

    Copy.ai was the first tool I tried. Copy.ai bills itself as a way for marketers to overcome writer’s block, supporting everything from sales copy to blog content.

    In a couple of minutes, I had figured out how to work with it. They have dozens of features in the left sidebar, but it’s not clear what all of them are or how I should use them, so I mostly stuck to the blog titles, intros, and bullet points features.

    Writing a roundup worked pretty well. It was able to come up with generic descriptions for each item in my given list, but it struggled to get much deeper than that. I’ve come to find that this lack of depth is typical among AI writing tools, especially in highly specialized topics like technical writing.

    Copy.ai was worthless at writing tutorials with code samples, but I could see many of the topic ideation and keyword generation features being somewhat useful if you struggle to come up with topics. My only concern is that the AI isn’t really thinking strategically, but rather coming up with ideas based on existing content. Still, it might help get you “unstuck” at times.

    Pricing for Copy.ai is in the middle of the road. After your 7-day free trial, you’ll pay $35/mo for an individual account. Team pricing requires a custom quote.

    Jarvis (now Jasper)

    Jasper Home Page

    Jarvis (recently renamed “Jasper”) is definitely aiming for the premium end of the market, and it’s clear that they’ve spent more effort on the product (and marketing) than many of the others here. That said, the writing itself is not that much different from cheaper options.

    On the plus side, it was really easy and self-explanatory to get started with creating a blog post. Jarvis offers several kinds of content, but as I was primarily focused on long-form blog posts, that’s where I spent most of my time. Unlike Copy.ai, you can’t pick the text that goes into your post though, so I found that I was doing a lot of deleting when an AI-written passage made no sense. Jarvis also seems to randomly add extra line breaks to content (or maybe this is a flaw in GPT-3?), which it seems like it could strip out for me to save time.

    The Tech Content Manger's Playbook

    As for writing technical content, it was fairly good at writing introductory content for the roundup. From what I could tell, the descriptions of each tool I was comparing were accurate, but it struggled to get into much depth when I prompted it to create a technical guide and it couldn’t make progress on the tutorial I tried to have it write.

    As I mentioned, Jarvis is at the premium end of the price range for AI writing tools at $60 per month, and unlike most of the other tools I tried, there’s no free trial. While it might perform better on other kinds of writing, I would not recommend it for blog posts at this point as there are cheaper and easier-to-use options out there.

    Frase

    Frase Home Page

    Unlike the other items on this list, Frase is more explicitly focused on helping you create SEO-driven content. It analyzes the existing search engine results for the keywords you give it to help you create a brief and outline.

    Like the other software here, Frase does include an AI writing assistant as well. It seems that Frase is trying to integrate both the research and writing work for SEO writers in one place, and I think it does a fairly good job of it.

    That said, it wasn’t any better at creating technically detailed or especially interesting content. Like the others on this list, it tends to work best on high-level overviews of non-technical topics or low-depth listicles. That said, if SEO writing is your primary focus and you don’t need an AI writing tool to help with other forms of copywriting, Frase might be a good option.

    You can get a 7-day trial of Frase for $1 and then pay $19 per month for an individual plan after that.

    Copysmith

    Frase Home Page

    Copysmith embraces an AI-assisted workflow, expecting you as a writer to fill in the gaps and create most of the content yourself, but layering an AI that will suggest copy for you as needed. It’s most similar to Copy.ai above, but initially, I found Copysmith a bit harder to use. It was a little less clear if you could write long-form content and the blog post idea feature initially gave me very strange results.

    That said, I’ve found that Copysmith really grew on me the more I stuck with it. I’m now using it on a daily basis to generate article titles and descriptions based on keywords, and my team is starting to integrate it into our content outlining workflow. The most defining feature is that it generates multiple options for each request you submit, so instead of clicking “regenerate” over and over, you can pick from a long list of automatically generated pieces of text.

    Copysmith is reasonably priced at $19 per month for individual accounts, and they’re starting to integrate with other tools like Zapier. I’m really excited about how much this could improve our content planning and writing workflows at Draft.dev this year.

    Conclusion

    The options for AI writing software are growing and improving. While many use the same underlying model (GPT-3), we’re likely to see competing models emerge and better implementations built as the technology matures.

    We certainly won’t be replacing our writers with AI anytime soon though. The truth is that AI writing software is a versatile assistant, but far from replacing high-quality technical writers for the kind of content we produce at Draft.dev.

    That said, I could see AI writers starting to replace some low-end freelance writers or at least make writers more efficient. Like many other industries have seen, artificial intelligence is a great supplement to human intelligence.

    50 Ideas for your next blog post.

    Appendix

    Prompts Used – Here are the three prompts I used in case you want to test these tools on your own:

    Best continuous integration tools (roundup)

    In this roundup, we’d like to compare 10 or more of the most popular continuous integration tools available. In the end, we’d like to help software developers pick the best tool based on their budget, stack, and preferred workflow.

    Introduction to Redis (guide)

    In this blog post, we want to offer software engineers a high-level introduction to Redis, the key-value store. We also want to provide code samples to show developers how to use it and what commands are available.

    How to Create Your First NodeJS Application (tutorial)

    In this tutorial, we’d like to show new software developers how to get started with NodeJS. They will build a small application with a single page that says “Hello, World!”

  • Best Online Course Creation Tools for Startups

    Best Online Course Creation Tools for Startups

    TL;DR: Online course creation platforms help you build, publish, and monetize educational content. Top recommendations:
    1. Teachable – Best all-in-one platform for selling courses with built-in marketing tools
    2. Thinkific – Most flexible for branding and customization on your own domain
    3. Moodle – Open-source solution offering complete control for technical users
    These platforms handle course hosting, payment processing, and student management. Free options like Moodle and Canvas work for basic courses, while paid platforms add marketing automation and advanced analytics.

    If your product requires specialized knowledge or if you’re trying to position yourself as a thought leader, creating an online course could be a great marketing strategy. Online courses can even be businesses in their own right. Many people are more comfortable taking courses online so they don’t have to leave home, but if you’re trying to create one, where do you start?

    Download the Trello Content Calendar Template.

    How to Create an Online Course

    I worked in education technology for many years before I started Draft.dev, so while I’m not an expert course creator, I have supported a number of others in building online education solutions. I won’t go into details in this post, but the abbreviated process typically goes something like this:

    1. Pick your topic.
    2. Outline the course and modules.
    3. Write the text content for your course (could be a script if you’re doing videos)
    4. Record the content.
    5. Publish the content.
    6. Distribute the content.

    A lot of course creators focus on the first four points and forget that they ultimately need a way to collect payments and distribute their courses too.

    Online Course Creation Platforms

    This list is meant to provide a jumping-off point. I’ve tried to highlight many of the best course creation platforms available and give you a little bit of information about each one. Some are free and open-source, while others are paid and full of time-saving features.

    While you’ll still have to do the hard work of creating your online course, having the right platform can make publishing, distributing, and administering your course much easier.

    • Thinkific ($0) – Create, market, and sell courses online from your own website.

    • Teachable ($33.25) – Teachable lets you create courses that you can charge users for.

    • Whop ($0) – Whop lets you create, sell, and manage online courses, memberships, and digital products with built-in community features like chat, forums, and livestreams. You can launch a storefront in minutes, accept global payments, and engage learners in one place.

    • Adapt Learning ($0) – This free LMS (or “learning management system”) allows you to create video courses and distribute them on your own site using the open-source Adapt Framework.

    • Canvas ($0) – Canvas has several products that you can use for courses. Canvas Cloud is free or the code is open source if you want to host it yourself.

    • Forma LMS ($0) – While it’s primarily for corporate training, Forma has free and open source options that can be adapted to just about any course creation needs.

    • Google Open Classroom ($0) – Using Google Classroom, your students can sign up for your course with their Google account and have access to videos, assessments, and feedback.

    • Guides.co ($0) – Centered around building “guides” this course creation platform focuses on helpful, community-contributed posts.

    • ILIAS ($0) – ILIAS is another open-source course management platform with millions of users in large and small businesses.

    • Moodle ($0) – Open source and used by many colleges, Moodle also offers recommended hosting options if you’re not sure how to get started.

    • Opigno ($0) – A full-featured LMS built on the popular PHP framework, Drupal, Opigno can handle single courses and paid subscriptions.

    • Pluralsight ($0) – Pluralsight also requires an application in exchange for a wider, built-in reach. It’s especially popular with developers and technical topics.

    • Skillshare ($0) – Skillshare helps you create your course, distribute it, and make money with paid content.

    • Udemy ($0) – Once your course is live, students will be able to discover and buy it, earning you money every time.

    • eWebinar ($49) – eWebinar is an automated webinar solution, set on a schedule, which combines pre-recorded video with real-time interactions and live chat to deliver an engaging experience for attendees. It’s used by many businesses for streamlining sales, onboarding, and training.

  • Best Competition Research Tools for Startups

    Best Competition Research Tools for Startups

    TL;DR: Competition research tools help startups analyze competitors’ strategies, traffic sources, and market positioning. Top recommendations:
    1. SimilarWeb – Best for analyzing competitor traffic sources and audience overlap
    2. SpyFu – Most comprehensive for tracking competitor keywords, ads, and backlinks
    3. CrunchBase – Essential for researching competitor funding, leadership, and company history
    These tools reveal how competitors attract customers, which marketing channels they use, and where market gaps exist. Most offer free tiers for basic competitive intelligence.

    You may think that your startup stands alone – that it’s truly unique in the market – but that’s rarely true. In fact, having no competition might mean that your startup just isn’t necessary. If there’s a market of people willing to buy your product, they’re probably spending their money elsewhere today. Your job is to find out where.

    Why Research Your Competition?

    Getting a lay of the competitive landscape can help you in many ways. Not only will you be prepared to compete better against established players, but you’ll also learn how your rivals market their products, who their customers are, and how successful they’ve been.

    Researching your competition can also help you discover new niches that may be underserved, and if your startup starts to gain traction, your competitors may end up being partners or even acquisition targets.

    That said, where do you start on this path to knowing your competition? What tools can you use to find and learn about your competitors? That’s where this list can help you.

    Startup Competitor Research Tools

    In this list, I’ve included several of the tools I use to find and research similar startups and products. You can use these tools to come up with ideas for your blog, figure out how they’re doing, and learn more about their customers.

    Alexa ($0) – Alexa’s similar site tool uses audience overlap rather than site content to determine similarity.

    AlternativeTo ($0) – If you know your product is similar to at least one other site, you can use AlternativeTo to find dozens of alternatives to that site.

    Competeshark ($89) – Imagine being able to see details on your competitors’ marketing campaigns. That’s the premise of Competeshark’s service.

    CrunchBase ($0) – See when companies were started, how much financing they received and who is leading them.

    Google Alerts ($0) – Keeping up with mentions of your competitors in the news or blogs is easy with Google Alerts.

    Internet Archive ($0) – Want to see what your competitors’ websites looked like last month? A year ago? The Way Back Machine from archive.org has been storing old versions of websites since the 90’s.

    Keyhole ($149) – Great for tracking social mentions, brand names, or hash tags over time so you can quickly respond or catch emerging competitors.

    Linkedin ($0) – Just about everyone has a Linkedin account, so it’s a great way to research your competition’s company, founders, employees, and even open job listings.

    Product Hunt ($0) – If you’re into startups, you have probably heard of Product Hunt. It helps you find new products by emailing newly submitted products every day (or week) and does a pretty good job categorizing submissions.

    Serpstat ($15) – Serpstat compiles historical data on keywords, allowing you to easily see how a keyword’s popularity has changed and how strong the competition is for it.

    SimilarSites ($0) – SimilarSites’ search is pretty good at identifying competing sites in a specific niche.

    SimilarWeb ($0) – SimilarWeb can show you how your competition is getting traffic (eg: from social, SEO, or advertising).

    SocialMentions ($0) – SocialMention offers real-time social media search for keywords including domain names.

    SpyFu ($33) – Use SpyFu to keep up with backlinks, keywords, and ads your competitors are using to attract visitors.

    The Search Monitor – This tool will help you keep up with who is buying ads on which search terms. Great if you’re in an industry that does a lot of paid advertising.

    How to run your own Keyword Audit and Creating Topic Clusters.

    Trade Journals ($0) – For more traditional businesses, there is probably a trade journal out there. In new media, you might be more likely to find competitors mentioned in industry blogs or news sites.

    Visual Ping ($0) – Monitors webpages by letting you select an area of text to watch.

    Wachete ($0) – Track a website, get notified of changes

    WebWire ($0) – WebWire hosts a list of trade journals by industry that could be very helpful if you’re exploring a new market and want to know what the major news sources are.

    Whois Lookup ($0) – This might be helpful for smaller competitors who don’t include much information about the company’s founders or structure on their site. Whois lookup allows you to see who owns the domain name, when it was bought/sold, and any other domains they own.

    WooRank ($49) – Good for ranking your competitors’ websites and looking for ways you can outperform them.

    Did I miss a tool that you love? Submit your suggestions here

  • Best Social Media Automation Tools for Startups

    Best Social Media Automation Tools for Startups

    TL;DR: Social media automation tools help startups maintain consistent social presence without daily manual posting. Top recommendations:
    1. Buffer – Best for multi-platform scheduling with analytics
    2. Zapier – Most versatile for custom automation workflows
    3. Hootsuite – Comprehensive management with content discovery
    These tools automate posting schedules, suggest content, and track performance across multiple platforms. Most offer free tiers for startups testing social strategies.

    Social media can be a time-consuming and mentally tasking chore. Many small business owners just skip social media, but after spending years posting consistently on my personal social media accounts, I can tell you that it can work and it doesn’t take as much time as you think.

    Why Use Social Media?

    Social media is a great way to drive traffic once you build a following, but for many small businesses, the question is, “how do you build a following?”

    Step one is to consistently post relevant content on social media. It may take months or years to build up a significant following, but once you do, social media can be as powerful as an email marketing list for driving traffic to your blog or website.

    Not only will your followers see updates, most social networks have an amplification formula where popular public posts will be shared to an even broader audience. The only way to eventually make something go viral is to make sure people hear about it, and social media is a great place to start.

    Social media also helps you rank higher in search engines. While it’s a bit indirect, these social signals build authority for your site and help attract backlinks which raise your website’s profile.

    All that said, you don’t want your social media channels to be boring, spammy, or annoying. You want them filled with regularly published, interesting, relevant, and fresh content. This is where social media automation tools can help.

    Social Media Automation Tools

    By automating your social media efforts, you can queue up posts for the month ahead, get suggestions for new stories to post, or keep an eye on what your fans or followers are saying. The tools below help with one or all of those things, so if you’re getting started on social media, I highly recommend making your life easier by automating parts of it.

    Zapier ($0) – Zapier can do much more than just social media – it’s a complete automation solution for non-developers. Link accounts, automatically post from RSS feeds, or set up complex filters with Zapier.

    Buffer ($0) – Buffer is great for scheduling posts on multiple social platforms or accounts. Plus, it gives you analytics about which of your posts have done the best.

    Delay for Reddit ($0) – An easy to use tool to target subreddits, optimize post timing and schedule your posts to reach more Redditors.

    Planable ($49) – Planable, the most visual platform to transform your creative ideas into social media posts, brainstorm right in the platform, get feedback, make sure the post is approved by your teammates and schedule the posts directly to social media.

    ContentStudio ($15) – ContentStudio helps you quickly find new content for your blog or social media channels and then automatically share it every day on your schedule. It also has a free plan that allows you to get started without a credit card.

    Coschedule ReQueue ($40) – Requeue works much like Buffer, but it continues recycling updates after the first share, allowing you to sit back and know that your social channels are full of content.

    Download the Trello Content Calendar Template.

    F5Bot ($0) – A free service that emails you when your selected keywords are mentioned on Reddit, Hacker News, or Lobsters. Use it to monitor your brand, your projects, or just topics that you’re interested in.

    Hootsuite ($0) – Much like Tweetdeck, Hootsuite helps you manage multiple Twitter accounts, but Hootsuite takes it further. You can also schedule posts to other social networks, find new content automatically, and track your posts’ performance.

    Social Share Preview ($0) – Preview your site, landing page, or blog posts on social media before publishing them.

    Hubspot ($0) – As part of Hubspot’s marketing platform, you get a social media management tool.

    OneUp ($7.99) – OneUp will republish your top performing evergreen content to get more out of each post.

    Ritekit ($12) – My favorite social media automation tool because it will enhance your posts with hashtags, images, and mentions.

    Sprout Social ($99) – At $99/month, Sprout Social may be a bit pricey for some early-stage startups, but it is one of the most powerful social media management and automation platforms available.

  • Live Customer Chat Tools for Startups

    Live Customer Chat Tools for Startups

    If you want to engage your customers at the moment they’re considering buying your product or signing up for your service, there’s no better way than live chat. You’re probably familiar with Intercom or Autopilot because they’ve become so ubiquitous now, but there are many other options out there.

    Live chat demo using Autopilot

    Should You Use Live Chat?

    To be honest, live chat widgets aren’t for everyone. You’ll notice that I don’t have one on the Draft.dev website because as a content creation agency it’s rarely critical that we address customers’ concerns immediately.

    That said, software-as-a-service vendors should consider adding live chat. Users expect a seamless, self-service experience, so being able to respond immediately is really important.

    Many live chat widgets also allow you to proactively reach out to customers based on their past interactions with your site. This is really helpful if you know it takes several touch-points to close the deal with your target market.

    The downside to live chat is that it gives customers the impression that you’re available all the time. When you don’t respond quickly, you might discourage potential buyers, so it’s important to have someone monitoring your live chat widget frequently.

    Customer Chat Tools for Startups

    To help you get started, I compiled this comprehensive list of customer chat tools that are a good fit for early to mid-stage startups. Each of these tools gives you a workable low-cost plan and most of them will scale up to meet your needs as you grow.

    Intercom ($49) – Intercom is probably the most well-known player in this space. Their offerings now border on complete customer and sales solutions, but you can just use them for chat as well.

    Sendbird ($0) – If you want to build real-time chat for a custom application, Sendbird is the way to go. They also have a fantastic blog that goes through building real applications (like this financial chat app tutorial), so you won’t get lost implementing it.

    Altocloud ($49) – In addition to chat, Altocloud gives you customer journeys, predictive analytics and more.

    Autopilot ($20) – Autopilot covers more than just in-app chat; you can use it to build complex customer journeys as well.

    Chatra ($0) – You can either wait for visitors to ask you questions or proactively engage them on your sales pages.

    Crisp.chat ($0) – Crisp offers a free tier for small businesses with just one or two customer service reps, so this could be perfect for a side project just getting started.

    Chat.io ($10) – Has a Facebook integration that lets you handle Messenger conversations along with chats from your website in one app.

    Drift ($0) – Drift seeks to replace your traditional interest forms with a smart chat AI, and they offer a free plan for fewer than 100 contacts.

    Freshchat ($0) – Also offers a free tier plus personalized and targeted messages.

    50 Ideas for your next blog post

    Gitter Sidecar ($0) – Gitter is a developer community chat platform, but they also have a javascript widget that you can use as on-site chat.

    HelpCrunch ($12) – Messaging integrates into their complete customer-service solution.

    Instream ($6) – Chat can be great for gathering leads who aren’t ready to commit their email address. Instream lets you start gathering this data right away.

    JetLink – Supplement your customer service with smart chatbots that can cut down on the amount of time you spend answering common questions.

    JivoSite ($0) – Includes a free tier for up to five agents. It integrates with Facebook messenger if your customers happen to be there as well.

    Landbot ($20) – Turn a landing page into a chatbot. Create beautiful conversational interfaces in minutes and boost your conversion rate. It’s easy to use, fully customizable, and made for lead capturing.

    LiveChat ($16) – Contact your online visitors in real-time through LiveChat! Chat with your visitors and convert them into customers using the web, desktop, and mobile applications. Start your free 60-day LiveChat trial today.

    LivePerson – LivePerson is more geared towards enterprise customers, but it’s worth looking at. Their plans currently start at $40/month.

    Reamaze ($20) – Reamaze brings all your customer conversations from social media into one place.

    Rocketbots ($19) – Rocketbots uses AI to learn from customer chats, suggests replies, and automates conversations across live chat or messaging apps.

    Smallchat ($0) – Smallchat hooks into your existing Slack channel to allow you to talk with customers on your site, and they offer a free plan.

    Subiz ($9.59) – Analytics for your visitors is included in their chat platform.

    Tawk ($0) – Lets you chat with people on your website or mobile app. Best of all for small projects, it’s 100% free.

    Tidio ($0) – Create outbound and inbound responses as well as automated triggers for your messages.

    UserDeck ($10) – Provides in-app chat as well as an FAQ service for your customers.

    LiveAdmins ($20) – LiveAdmins supports your live chat with real humans that are always available. Their platform is easy to set-up, fully customizable, and available round-the-clock – catering to over 10 industries across 8 time zones.

    Zendesk ($5) – You may be familiar with Zendesk for customer support, but they also have a full-service chat feature for your site.

    The Tech Content Manger's Playbook
  • Press Release Tools: 13+ Services for Startup Marketing

    Press Release Tools: 13+ Services for Startup Marketing

    How to build a content engine.
    TL;DR: Press releases work best as part of a comprehensive media strategy, not standalone announcements. Effective options range from free services like HARO and PRLog to premium platforms like EReleases ($299). Target niche publications, craft compelling narratives, optimize for relevant keywords, and layer additional content marketing efforts on top of your release. The ROI comes from strategic distribution combined with journalist outreach, content syndication, and paid media support.

    Contacting bloggers and journalists directly to pitch your startup works, but it’s incredibly time-consuming. Sometimes, a low-cost or free press release is well worth it, so if you’re considering investing in one for your startup, look no further.

    Is a Press Release Worth It?

    The truth is, many startups pass on press releases because it’s often hard to measure or determine the ROI (return on investment). That said, when done as part of a comprehensive media push, I’ve seen them work before.

    Pushing a press release is just the first step in the process. When coupled with strong content marketing, content syndication, outreach to journalists, and paid media, a press release can add credibility and authoritative information to your outreach efforts.

    How to Use Press Releases at Your Startup

    The wrong way to use a press release is to write up a salesy announcement pushing your latest product announcement and spend a bunch of money blindly pushing it to mass media outlets. Instead, think about the following tips:

    • Go niche – target publications that are most relevant for your customers.
    • Make it an interesting story – capture the journalists’ imaginations.
    • Use relevant keywords – writers who cover a particular beat might find your company if your release shows up in their Google Alerts.
    • Layer content on top of it – use the release as a launch-point and do paid media, guest posts, and internal blog posts to help promote it.

    The Best Press Release Services for Startups

    Since press release service rates vary widely, I took to Quora and asked some of my newsletter subscribers to weigh in. We came up with this list of press release tools and services that aren’t prohibitively expensive, and might be worth your startup’s investment:

    PRnob.com ($29) – Get your press release published on 10,000+ news and media outlets.

    PR Buzz ($299) – While their package is a bit more expensive, it offers unlimited releases in a year. This could be a great way to test out several different releases and styles.

    PRWeb ($99) – Adds some SEO juice to your release by distributing it on their site and others in their network.

    Press Release Jet ($49) – They offer a low-cost package for startups that distributes your release to 250+ quality media sites as well as all the major search engines.

    24-7 PressRelease ($49) – Their Visibility Boost package distributes your release to 50+ media sites, and lets you attach media as well.

    EReleases ($299) – Guaranteed distribution on 75 media sites, plus they send your release out to over 100,000 journalists.

    Newswire ($59) – They have a low-cost package without guarantee of pickup.

    OpenPR ($0) – Free if you backlink to their site, and they’ll distribute your link to their RSS feeds and newsletter.

    PR.com ($30) – Offers a low-cost package, but no guaranteed syndication.

    PRLog ($0) – Free ad-supported distribution with options to purchase premium packages.

    WebWire ($0) – WebWire hosts a list of trade journals organized by industry. This could be very helpful if you’re exploring a new market and want to know what the major news sources are.

    Help a Reporter Out ($0) – If you want to skip the release and find reporters directly, sign up for HARO. You’ll get emails every day from reporters who need sources.

    Muck Rack ($0) – While their paid plans don’t list pricing, you can search for journalists and look up their contact information yourself if you’ve got the time.

  • Best CRM Software for Startups

    Best CRM Software for Startups

    How to build a content engine.
    TL;DR: Startups need CRM systems when moving beyond spreadsheets to manage multiple sales conversations and customer relationships. Free options like HubSpot CRM, Airtable, and Pigeon provide core contact management, email tracking, and pipeline visualization without upfront costs. Premium tools like Pipedrive and Freshworks CRM add automation, lead scoring, and advanced analytics. Choose based on your sales volume, team size, and integration requirements rather than feature count.

    Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software can help you manage customers, make more money, and keep up with leads, but it can also get expensive and cumbersome pretty quickly. Some of the best-known CRMs like Salesforce are great for enterprise settings, they can be overkill (and out of budget) for startups.

    How Does a CRM Work?

    Typically, a customer relationship manager stores names, email addresses, account notes, and reminders for a business’ sales leads. Some CRMs include email automation tools, some support team functions, and some offer analytics and tracking.

    In large organizations, sales teams use a CRM to allow all their reps and operations people to share critical customer information. This facilitates handoffs between SDRs and account managers among other things.

    Does Your Startup Need a CRM?

    While some early-stage startups may not need a dedicated CRM tool (spreadsheets are okay if you just have a few customers), you need to have some sort of system if you plan on taking sales seriously. You might not be able to pay hundreds of dollars per month for Salesforce on day one, but there are some good options that won’t set you back too much.

    In this post, I wanted to highlight some of the best, low-cost CRMs I’ve seen for startup founders to help keep up with their customers and sales conversations.

    Best CRM Software for Startups

    Airtable ($0) – Airtable is a database that’s as easy to use as a spreadsheet. I’ve been keeping my personal contacts in Airtable for the past few months and like it a lot, especially now that they’ve released more automation integrations recently.

    Pigeon ($0) – I started using Pigeon earlier this year, and have really liked it so far. It’s not the most feature-complete on this list, but it covers all the basics and integrates with Gmail and Zapier.

    Hubspot CRM ($0) – Hubspot’s free CRM is a great option for small businesses just starting out. If you use some of Hubspot’s other tools then this will integrate nicely.

    Streak ($0) – Streak lets its users manage customers, sales, email support, bug tracking, and hiring via Gmail. Their free tier is pretty generous, but you’ll probably need to upgrade to a paid plan once you have multiple salespeople.

    Pipedrive ($12.50) – Pipedrive is a great solution for improving automation, enhancing leads, and tracking your campaigns without spending a bundle.

    Trello ($0) – It’s free, easy to use, and you can add upgrades for reminders, calendars, and more. While not exclusively a CRM, you can use integrations and automations to make it a passable option for low-volume.

    Cloze ($17) – Cloze is a mobile app to track customers, clients, prospects and leads without the hassle of CRM.

    Freshworks CRM ($29) – AI-based lead scoring, built-in phone, email, activity capture, and a unified tracking dashboard make Freshworks CRM a strong choice for a reasonable price.

    Less Annoying CRM ($15) – A simple customer relationship manager made just for small businesses. Manage contact info, track leads, and never miss a follow-up.

    Pickle CRM ($8) – Pickle is the dead-simple CRM tool for entrepreneurs, realtors, wedding planners, and small businesses. It prides itself in helping you manage your contacts with minimal tooling overhead.

    Relenta ($39) – Relenta CRM is an email-based CRM. Relenta CRM works by automatically linking all sent and received email to contact timelines.

  • Best Free Stock Image Sites for Startups in 2025

    Best Free Stock Image Sites for Startups in 2025

    TL;DR: The best free stock image sites for startups in 2025:
    1. Unsplash – Easiest to search with optional attribution and massive high-quality library
    2. Pexels – Excellent variety with contributor leaderboards encouraging quality submissions
    3. Pixabay – Over 1.2 million community-generated images covering virtually every topic
    4. Pikwizard – 100,000+ exclusive images, especially strong for people photography
    These platforms offer Creative Commons Zero (CC0) or similar licenses allowing commercial use without attribution requirements, perfect for bootstrapped startups building content libraries.

    It’s really hard to justify paying for stock images on your blog when your startup is just getting off the ground.

    While large companies may justify an in-house designer, custom photography, or very specific high-quality photos from paid sites, it’s hard to spend that kind of money when you’re just starting out. That said, you can probably make it a lot further than you think with one of the free options for stock photos I’ve listed here.

    How to build a content engine.

    The Importance of Having Startup Images in Your Blog Posts

    But first, why should you have images in your blog posts at all? Isn’t the focus primarily on the writing?

    Yes, you should spend most of your time writing great content for your blog and promoting that content, but images are important too. For example:

    • They help break up long spans of text and give readers a break.
    • Startup images are great for SEO (especially if they’re unique).
    • Commercial stock images can illustrate or summarize your point.

    Unfortunately, stock images can be bland and expensive. In this post, I’ve collected some of my favorite sources of free stock imagery. These sites are great for startups that want to add high-quality images to their blog posts but don’t have a huge budget to do so.

    How I Create and Download Free Images for My Blog

    As an example of how you can use some of the tools below, I created this video showing how I create unique lead images for my blog. Unsplash and Bannersnack are free, so in just five minutes, you can make eye-catching, original images that make your blog posts stand out on social media!

    This workflow works for me, but Unsplash and Bannersnack aren’t the only startup image resources around.

    Free Stock Images for Your Startup’s Blog

    Unsplash – My personal go-to for stock images because it’s effortless to search and use. Attribution is also optional.

    Moose – Free pictures to download that are designed to work together.

    Pexels – Lots of great photos with an interesting leaderboard for contributors.

    AllTheFreeStock – Get all the free stock images, videos, music, and icons under the Creative Commons Zero license.

    Burst by Shopify – Their collections offer nice groupings of photos for specific use cases.

    Death to Stock Newsletter – Subscribe to get free stock photos emailed to you every day.

    EveryPixel – Uses artificial intelligence to index and search 50+ stock image providers for the best match.

    Flickr Creative Commons – Creative Commons is a non-profit that offers an alternative to full copyright. There are different levels of CC licenses on Flickr.

    FoodieFactor – FoodieFactor is a collection of 1200 of the best free food and drink stock photos currently available on the internet.

    Foodiesfeed – Natural-looking food photos that are free to download or use.

    ISO Republic – ISO Republic provides free stock photos for creatives and has published over 3,000 CC0 licensed images since its inception.

    LibreStock – Allows you to search multiple stock photo sites at once.

    Negative Space – Beautiful, high-resolution free photos for personal or commercial projects.

    New Old Stock – Vintage photos that no longer have copyright protection and are free to use.

    Picjumbo – Thousands of free money stock photos  with upgrade options to get even more with a premium membership.

    Pikwizard – Over 100,000 completely free stock photos that don’t require any attribution. High-quality images of people that can’t be found on other free stock photo sites.

    Pixabay – Over 1.2 million community-generated new stock images of just about everything you can imagine.

    Rawpixel – Most free images to use on the website are exclusive, comprised of photography, vector art, and mockups.

    Startup Stock Photos – Free photos for startups, bloggers, publishers, websites, designers, developers, and creators.

    Stock Up – Search their collection of 20,000 free stock photos.

    StockSnap.io – Hundreds of free, high-resolution images added weekly.

    Stockified – The search isn’t great, but the free work images are pretty interesting.