Here on the Cutline Speaks blog, we have a lot of cool things: This Week in Apps, What They Read, TGITF, and interesting posts by the Cutline Crew. So, I bet you’re all dying to know: how do we keep track of it all?
When we started poking around for a good editorial calendar tool, we found there wasn’t a ton to choose from even though everyone and their mom has a blog these days. There are a few paid tools, but since we couldn’t test those out ahead of time, we couldn’t tell if they were worth the investment.
And then, we found Trello.
Trello is a to-do list application that you can use on the web and your phone. It lets you create boards for projects or specific things and then make lists within that board. You can easily grab items from one list and drag them to another. You can also add deadlines to build out a calendar, and archive items when they’re done. And it turns out, that’s the perfect way — at least for us! — to manage a blog.
Here’s how we do it:
One, we’ve got a board just for Cutline Speaks. It’s purple and we love it. Then, we created lists that the blog posts move through: Blog Post Ideas, Blog Posts Submitted, Approved Blog Posts, Scheduled Blog Posts. We’ve also got a list for our blog columns to keep track of each one’s next post, and even a list to remember ideas we get for the columns. Sounds like a lot, but it’s super easy to manage when you can break everything down into lists.
Some power tips we use:
Activate the calendar feature in the Power-Ups. The calendar isn’t automatic but it’s free and super useful to track publish dates, though you’ll add dates as a “deadline” to the list items. It’ll add a new tab on the top that says “Calendar” that will show you just the calendar and what dates you’ve given everything. Plus, you can grab things from the calendar and drag them to a new date if you need to rearrange the calendar.
Attach it. We love attaching cover photos to make our lists pretty. But we also attach all the Google Docs we need for each blog post — Trello makes it super easy to attach items from your Drive, Dropbox, or just your computer.
Color code where it works. We use the color-coding that Trello offers to label each column’s post (e.g. TGITF is labeled blue, This Week in Apps is green, etc.) but you could also use those colors to mark the status of a blog post, e.g. whether it’s in progress, if it’s been edited, or if it’s ready to post.
Play around with it! We had a lot of fun customizing our boards and lists to best fit our needs.
Usually I’d show you a photo…but then you’d see all our upcoming blog posts and we like to keep it a surprise. 
If you’re looking for a new blog management tool, or even just a new to-do list, you might want to check out Trello!
The post Trello, For Magical Editorial Calendars appeared first on Cutline Communications.