Asana vs. Basecamp vs. Trello vs. Podio For Content Managers

I want to discuss Asana vs. Basecamp vs. Trello vs. Podio for content managers.

Content managing is essentially taking care of the social media/marketing/blog content schedule, dealing with content creators, and organising everything to get it all onto your channels. It’s something I do for a lot of my clients, but the downside is – everyone tends to prefer different platforms.

I’ve had the opportunity to work with Asana, Basecamp, Trello, and Podio (among others) so I’m going to share what I’ve found so that if you’re a content manager looking for a platform to use, you can make an informed choice.

The Issue With Content Management

Keeping a content calendar and managing all your content becomes increasingly complex with every new member that joins your team. The more people and (sub)tasks there are on there, the harder it is to keep track or organised.

Because of this, business or agency owners start to struggle because it’s more time consuming, and on top of that, work quality suffers, and deadlines are missed.

So the right solution is key.

For me, project management software helps streamline everything and gives you a complete overview. So, whether you’re an agency owner taking on clients, managing someone else’s’ content, or just dealing with your own, here’s a comparison of the four most popular options: Asana, Trello, Basecamp, and Podio, with all the features and pricing plans.

Comparison: Asana vs. Basecamp vs. Trello vs. Podio

Asana

Pros

Asana is one of the most popular project management options currently available. It helps all team members stay focused on the tasks and is particularly good at letting you see an overview of what you need to do to a certain deadline.

It has task tracking options and depending on how you like to view your projects you can look at them as a list or in boards.  It’s especially helpful when tracking multiple content projects, with options like task assignments, reporting options, custom views, and automatic notifications.

Cons

It is not as intuitive as Trello and has a bit of a steeper learning curve.

Trello

Pros

Trello is a lightweight project management solution that’s easy to use and set up. The concept Trello utilises is using boards, lists, and cards – so basically, a Kanban type of solution. The boards are used for projects, while the lists for each board can be used as categories, parts of the content creation stages, or whatever else you need at the moment. You can add cards to each list – basically, a task that will help you remember what needs to be done.

Trello is easy to navigate because it’s a drag and drop situation. Plus, you can add plenty of detail and depth on each card by clicking on it.

Cons

There’s a lot of scrolling if you have many projects open at once. It’s also easy to forget about the subtasks when you’re looking at the overview because it’s neatly stacked away!

Basecamp

Pros

Basecamp is a mix of a communication platform and project management. It features everything a content team needs to get things done in one place: from message boards and group chat to file sharing and storage.

It primarily focuses on real-time collaboration instead of long-term planning, so it’s best used when the whole team is working on a content piece. When it comes to project management capabilities, it offers schedules and to-do lists.

Cons

The pricing scheme is a bit different from others so it can be costly – you will play a flat fee of $99 per month and get unlimited users, projects, features, as well as 500GB of storage, which is decent sized for all your content needs so it depends on your budget.

Podio

Pros

Podio is primarily a collaboration tool but has decent capabilities for content management. It has an extensive apps library that defines its main functionality, so you can tailor it to your business needs.

This way, you can set it up to work as a content management platform and order content and delegate tasks such as writing articles and editing them, as well as provide input on details for each order.

Cons

I found it to have quite a steep learning curve and some users I’ve worked with really struggle to get going with it.

My Choice

My personal preference, and what I use for Silhouette Creatives’ task management is Asana.

It’s very simple and doesn’t have all the ‘bells and whistles’ but that’s all I need! It’s free to use for the team I work with, and the ability to set deadlines and order tasks according to them sets it apart for me.

My written content has a fast turnaround – it’s one of the things that sets us apart from other London content writers. So I need to know at the drop of a hat, what is due out today and what isn’t etc.

Top Tip for Setting Up Asana for Content Managers

The way I do it is:

I have a client ‘task’ and create subtasks which are allocated to staff to complete. Each subtask has its own deadline and I can see everything needed.

I will often create a week ‘task’ of things due ‘this week’ or in some cases ‘today’ and once it is complete, it’s marked as ‘done’ and removed from the list.

If you need help with content management, drop me a message and we can help make that happen!