Tracking your Content Marketing Strategy in Trello (FREE)

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A group of men and women sit at a desk and stand at a cork board with post it notes on it

I’ll be first to admit I’m not always the most organized person. I actually have ADHD making organization an even bigger hurdle for me than it is for most people. For this reason, I usually rely on tools and planning to stay on track! At my job, I use Confluence and Jira, but there are plenty of similar tools anyone can use for free: like Trello! In this post, I will show you how to:

  • create a workspace in Trello for your Content Marketing Strategy
  • create a Board and Lists for tracking your content
  • create informative Trello Cards
  • create a workflow with Trello

Note: This is not an affiliate post and I am not paid by anyone, any opinions in this post are my own.

Table of Contents

What is Trello?

Trello is a free collaboration and task organization tool. Think of it as an easy-to-use digital to-do list to track all your projects and processes! As per Google: “Trello is a web-based, Kanban-style, list-making application and is a subsidiary of Atlassian“. Atlassian also owns popular enterprise project management tools like Jira and Confluence. Trello and Jira are very similar.

If you are someone new to Marketing if you do end up at a large enterprise you may use end up using Jira. If you become comfortable with Trello you will easily be able to transfer those skills to Jira.

Some Trello Terminology:

  • Workspace: You can have multiple Workspaces. Each Workspace can have it’s own boards and members.
  • Board: Think of Boards as Categories in your business. You can have boards for web development, productline, marketing initiative, ect.
  • List: A list contains cards. I like to use lists as stages in a process.
  • Card: A card contains everything you need project to project.
  • Archive: Instead of deleting cards, they can be archived. You can click on the top right section of a list to archive all cards in the list. You can also click the top right of a card to archive individual cards.

Setting Up a Workspace in Trello

Creating a workspace allows you to track everything related to your business in one place. It also allows you to invite others so you can collaborate.

  1. In the top right hand corner there is a + button you can click. Select “Create a New Workspace”
  2. Name your workspace and select “Marketing” as the category, add a description
  3. If you are working with others you can invite them to join the Workspace
Trello Setup Screenshot
Creating a new Workspace in Trello

Setting Up a New Board in Trello

What’s great about Trello is you can create different types of boards. You can use one Trello board to track your website updates and development. You can create another to track business development or inventory. There are lots of templates to choose from, but none that work exactly how I like. Today we create one specifically for Content Marketing.

  1. Select “Create a New Board”
  2. Give your new board a Title, I called mine “Content Marketing Planning”
  3. In the top right under “Show Menu” you can change the background Image
  4. You can rename the three existing Lists and on the far right you can click “+ Add Another List”
Screenshot of Setting up Lists
Creating Lists in Trello

Using Lists for the Content Creation Process

Each List that you add to your board should represent a step in your Content Creation Process. While everyone’s process can be tweaked here is my process in lists:

  1. Content Ideas: As soon as I come up with an idea for a piece of content I pop it in here. (I just blog)
  2. Writing: Cards move from Ideas to Writing when you’ve started writing in WP or Word.
  3. Review: When you’re finished writing move it to Review. A Review for me includes SEO and Proofreading.
  4. Ready for Scheduling/Promotion: I often allow a blog to go live a week before I actually promote it on Social/Email/ect
  5. Promoted: The content is live and has been promoted. These cards can be regularly archived.
Trello Lists Example
My Trello Board for MunroH

Creating Valuable Content Marketing Trello Cards

Cards are going to be the real drivers of staying organized. The more information your card holds the more valuable it is, especially you have anyone else helping you.

Creating a Card

  1. Under the “Blog Ideas” List click “+ Add a New Card”
  2. Create a title, I like to put the Topic of the Content
  3. Click “Add Card”
  4. Now you need to add Details, Click on the Card to add more Info

Creating Detailed Content Cards

Lets start with adding Details. While you may not need all the details for every project, it’s always helpful to have as much detail as possible. Some common details to add to your cards:

  • Persona: Which Buyer Persona do you want this content to appeal to?
  • Buyers Journey: Awareness, Interest, Delight
  • Campaign: Name Campaign and link related content if desired
  • Content Type: Blog, Infographic, Video, Webinar, EBook ect
  • Category: The Business Line or Product you are promoting
  • Live Date: The date you want the content finished
  • Promotion Date: The date you plan to promote the content
  • Promotion Platforms: Email Campaign, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn
  • WordPress URL: Quick link to the editing page for the blog

You will notice on the right-hand side Trello has widgets that you can add to your cards to make them even more detailed:

  • Members: you can assign the task to someone else (Great for Proofreading)
  • Labels: Add colour coded labels to the cards that are easy to see. I like to use labels for Campaigns, Content Type, or Category
  • Checklist: Create a step by step process for creating your content
  • Date: This date will show on the list card quick view, I like to put the promotion date
  • Attachment: attach any images or documents you need to complete the content
  • Cover: Adds an image to the top of the card in the list, can help with organization like Labels
  • Comments: If working in a team use the comments to leave notes as you go
Example of a Typical Filled out Trello Card

Free Content Marketing Trello Card Template

Copy and Paste the content below into your card for a ready to go Content Creation template:

**Ideas**:
- basic point 1
- basic point 2

**Persona**: Independent Marketer Nora
**Buyers Journey**: Awareness, Interest, Delight
**Campaign**: Campaign Name
**Content-Type**: Blog, Infographic, Promotion, Webinar, Ebook
**Category**: Category Name

**Live Date**: Sunday, August 3rd, 12pm
**Promotion Date**: Tuesday, August 5th, 12 pm
**Promotion Platforms**: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Website, Email Campaign

**WP URL**: LINK TO POST

Once you have your Cards just the way you want them you can save them as Templates under “Actions”. You can make different templates based on the different content types for easy access checklists and consistent details.

Creating a Workflow with Cards

Once the card is created you can move ards along the lists from left to right by dragging and dropping. This is great if you have multiple pieces on the go. This is even more useful if you have specific team members who work on just the graphics or proof reading. As mentioned earlier you can regularly archive cards under the Promoted List when you no longer need them.

Processes Maintain Quality while Improving Speed

I recently had a conversation where it was implied creating content was a Quality or Speed issue. The idea being you could only pick one. I firmly believe both Quality and Speed are important and that theres no need to sacrifice one or the other. By using tools like Trello and creating detailed processes you are creating a tool box you can access whenever you need.

Do you use Trello? What tools do you use to keep track of your Content Process? Let me know in the comments!

Content Strategy 101: Creating Content for the Buyer Journey
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