The 6 Best Content Planning Software — Experts Explain Their Top Choice

I’ve been in content marketing since early 2015. With almost a decade of experience, I’ve tested dozens of content planning software, spreadsheets, and calendars over the years.

Collaborations with leading companies like HubSpot, Cognism, Userpilot, and small startups gave me the chance to work with tons of workflows and features. Some were love at first click, and some were meh.

This article is a rundown of my six favorite content planning tools out there, complemented with insights from other content experts.

Table of Contents

• What is content planning software?
• 4 Benefits of Using Content Planning Software
• What to Look for in Content Planning Software
• The 6 Best Content Planning Software

What is content planning software?

Content planning software is a tool that helps you organize, schedule, track progress and post-dues, and manage your content creation process with teammates in one place.

It keeps your ideas, deadlines, briefs, publishing, and content distribution tasks on track, whether you’re working solo or as part of a team.

A content marketing manager easily spots gaps in content planning one month's time ahead and gets their team to address the issues collaboratively.

4 Benefits of Using Content Planning Software

Content planning software is so versatile that its benefits become a long list. Yet I’d group them together into four categories:

1. Keeps everything organized and saves time.

Remember the days when your content ideas were scattered across random docs and notes? OK, I’m still guilty of it. But now I move everything written to software and set deadlines, add attachments, draft the concept into a task’s description, etc.

Plus, it became a priority for our team’s weekly planning meetings — every idea goes to a backlog where a manager or responsible person picks tasks to work on a given week.

At HubSpot, we also use Asana to organize content marketing, media, and SEO, work with contractors and freelancers to keep them on track, and govern the whole process of content creation.

2. Helps track progress.

There’s nothing more satisfying than seeing tasks move from “in progress” to “done.” I love the visual progress bars and calendars — they keep me motivated and show me exactly where things stand.

Speaking of that, Scan2CAD demonstrated how Trello streamlined its workflows.

With over 90,000 customers and fewer than 25 employees, they needed a simple way to track progress. Before Trello, juggling multiple systems made tracking a headache for the entire time.

Now, Trello takes care of everything and gives a clear view of where each task stands — from content creation to sales to development.

Its straightforward setup made it easy to manage workflows and hit deadlines. As CEO Luke Kennedy, says, “We’ve saved hours of time and pain, plus a lot of money.”

3. Encourages collaboration.

Instead of endless email threads, everyone in the team updates the same tool. Comments, changes, and approvals happen all in one place, saving us tons of back-and-forth.

Mangopay’s experience with Notion is a perfect example of this. They streamlined their knowledge-sharing by replacing multiple tools with a single workspace. This added to collaboration and engagement — 64% of their 500 employees contribute as editors and 91% are active monthly.

By tearing down silos, Mangopay saw impressive results — like eliminating an HR Slack channel because answers were all in Wikis.

Source

4. Improves efficiency.

Having a clear plan means fewer last-minute scrambles, which leads to better ideas and execution. I can now schedule brainstorming sessions and still have time to refine everything before it goes live.

A perfect example of this is ON24 and their experience with CoSchedule. Before they started using it, their marketing team struggled with organizing their social media and blog content.

Deadlines were missed, and opportunities to grow their online presence were often overlooked. But once they centralized their content planning, they quadrupled their blog output from 24 to 112 blogs a year