When you manage remote workers, communication can be difficult. It’s nearly impossible to create a sense of community with your team. Collaboration is a beast all its own. And worse yet, tasks can get lost or misunderstood.

As someone who has managed remote workers for more than 10 years, I know the pain points that can creep up. But, I also know the benefits of remote workers. By being able to search worldwide, content managers can get the best person for the task. Is the best person for the job living in Illinois, but your company is based in New York? No big deal.

So how do I make it all come together? Through technology. Once I discovered Trello for content management, it didn’t take long before I was able to harmonize my location-independent team.

How to Build a Content Calendar with Trello

Planning your content calendar, managing your writers and tracking your content promotion strategy can get overwhelming. But, Trello is just robust enough to tackle these challenges by keeping everything in one place without being overkill. You can move tasks as you see fit and communicate with your team with ease.

When I build a content calendar with Trello, I start with the same elements.

  • Add all members who are part of the project.
  • Add two checklists:
    • Checklist No. 1 has all the phases or big-picture benchmarks involved in the project — research, interviewing subject matter experts, the first draft, editing, revisions, graphics and SEO.
    • Checklist No. 2 is all promotion tasks — backlinks, social media, email, etc.
  • Set a label summarizing the project at a glance. This can be categorized by vertical, type of content (webinar, e-course, article, case study), brand or any other category that makes sense for your business.
  • Set a due date.
  • Click “watch” so you get all alerts.
  • Attach a creative brief (Feel free to use my template and customize it to your needs).

Trello for content management is versatile. You can view your Trello boards in card format or in a calendar. When I plan my content calendar, I switch to calendar mode to visualize what my week, month or year look like. You can customize the view depending on how far out you want to visualize your content.

Let’s say you want to publish two articles a month, a video every other month and one webinar a quarter. This can all be laid out in your preferred format right in your Trello calendar while having the right people assigned to the correct resources within a Trello Card (writer, graphic designer, speaker, etc). The entire project team can communicate by using the project card as a discussion board. Team members can even “@” each other to tag one another in the comments.

Integrating Trello with Google Docs and SEMRush

For a seamless experience, I recommend having writers submit their content as a Google Doc right onto the Trello card.

Google Docs attach seamlessly into Trello cards, giving you the ability to edit, add comments and use the SEMRush add-on to check for search engine optimization.

Note: SEMRush is a paid subscription.

  • Check readability (Hemingway App can do this for free).
  • Review SEO based on the keywords you are trying to target.
  • Ensure there is no plagiarism with the “originality” checker.
  • Make sure your tone of voice isn’t too formal or too casual with the tone checker.

Last, Trello integrates with Gmail, so if you use G Suite for your business, you’re in luck. The Trello add-on for Gmail allows you to add emails as cards on your Trello boards.

Let’s say a writer emails you an interview they did with a subject matter expert. You can automatically add the email to Trello using the Trello add-on.

If this wasn’t enough for you, there are many Power-Ups that can make your content planning go even better!

Sometimes chats aren’t enough and you need a team meeting. Add the Google Hangouts Power-Up to video chat with the click of a button. Video chats are a great way to build community among remote workers, and this integration lets you do all of your communication in one place.

Take action: Review the available Power-Ups and choose the best ones for your content management.

Use Butler to Automate Repeating Digital Content Tasks

Butler by Trello helps you automate repetitive tasks, saving you time. Tiny marketing teams don’t have the time to manually do anything mundane. If something can be automated, it probably should be.

Butler works in two ways. First, it is smart. It looks at past actions on your board and recommends automation based on your behavior.

Second, it enables you to create rules to automate repetitive tasks. For instance, if you want the content manager to be alerted when an attachment has been added to the card by a writer, just create a rule to make that happen automatically!

Another time-saving Butler automation for content managers is triggered when a writer adds a draft to the Trello board and the draft is marked complete. Once a draft has been posted, it can be automated so that the due date is updated to the revision due date or the publish date.

Take action: Create a rule using Trello’s Butler Power-Up that will improve your content management.

In Closing

Managing remote workers effectively and efficiently is more important than ever before. By using tools like Trello for content management to streamline communication and connect with remote workers on multiple levels, content managers have the opportunity to manage remote writers and content production more efficiently than ever. There’s no need to trudge through a manual process. Embrace the new normal, work in harmony with your remote team, and allow Trello to help you grow your business.