GatherContent
Even a single piece of online content can have numerous components, including text, graphics, photos, tables and charts. Now, multiply that single piece of content by the dozens of pieces your business creates on a regular basis, and you can end up with one big mess.
The mess comes from forgetting who is working on what or when you told people their tasks were due. More mess comes from glitchy formats and missed deadlines, especially when you’re not sure who to track down for delivery.
Clean up the mess with GatherContent. This online platform allows you to plan, organize and collaborate on all types of Web content for seamless, on-time results.
Tools let you collate content, keep tabs on creators to eliminate delays, prep content for approval, and fully customize your content workflow.
Pros
The ability to easily organize and track all the pieces of a content puzzle is golden, as is the ability to keep solid track of which producers are working up to par and those who are consistently late with their content deliveries.
Sharing capabilities let you send content to project managers, editors or anyone else who needs to review or approve it.
The platform also gives you a central location where you can store all your finished content, making it easy for Web designers to access and retrieve material as needed.
Cons
The platform will let you store and access content, but it doesn’t provide any tools for optimizing it. You won’t find a spell checker, search engine optimization keyword options, or quick publishing to your favorite platform through application programming interface integration’s.
That means there’s no easy posting of your content on WordPress or other content management systems. Each page that needs an update or change must be changed individually, which can end up being a massive time-eater if you have multiple pages that need altering.
Although you can customize the workflow to meet your needs, you can’t fine-tune any of the features.
Wrike
Sick of sending emails to a dozen different team members working on your project? With Wrike, you can kiss those individual emails goodbye.
This project management platform brings all team members together in a single location, where they can communicate and collaborate through a variety of different channels.
Wrike not only lets you develop an overall plan for any given project; it also lets you break down each step into manageable chunks. Real-time progress tracking helps to ensure that the project is moving forward at the required pace.
Pros
Affordability tops the list of Wrike’s benefits, with tons of functionality available for free. The basic version of the software includes scads of features that enable high-level collaboration, such as file sharing and the ability to review a real-time activity stream.
Google Drive, Dropbox, iCal and other popular programs are easily integrated with Wrike accounts, and Wrike is mobile-friendly for users after a quick installation of its Android or iPhone app.
Targeted user groups and access controls ensure that team members can get into the files they need without worrying that they’ll access those they shouldn’t.
The focus on tasks is another highlight, as they make up the foundation of every project. Each task serves as a kind of mini-project, and management of all tasks is rapid and efficient.
A desktop pop-up even alerts task team members when someone assigns a new task or comments on an existing one.
Those looking to go beyond the free basic services can pay $99 per month for a version that handles up to 15 users, unlimited collaborators and unlimited projects, with 5 GB of storage space.
Cons
Wrike requires a hefty investment of time and resources to meet the steep learning curve. The system was designed to be flexible, which means you really need to put on your thinking cap to determine how you want to structure your projects.
If you don’t have a good grasp of the myriad underlying features and try to simply dive into a project, you’re likely to miss out and miss the mark for real efficiency.
Project managers may find that tracking tasks becomes confusing when there are a lot of them to manage.
When great numbers of files and tasks are added to the system, you can’t see a high-level view of everything that’s happening.
The bigger you go, the more chaotic the landscape becomes. It’s also slow and cumbersome to switch between the different views, such as from a timeline view to a workload view.
To pick up more content marketing tools for your business, take a look at the Content Marketing Conference in Las Vegas in 2016.