How to Create a Content Calendar Using Asana

I am going to share with you an easy and fun way to create a content calendar using Asana.

As my business grows, it is extremely important that I am efficient with my content system because I have such a limited amount of working hours.

On a normal week, I am lucky if I have 15-20 hours to actually sit down and work.

Using Asana has allowed me to streamline my processes and make it easier to show up and create and promote my content consistently. 

If you love Asana as much as I do, be sure to check out my Daily Journal Prompts project. The Daily Journal Prompts project will help you to get into the routine of writing and creating content consistently for your business.

What is Asana?

If you’ve never heard of Asana it is a free task management tool to help you stay on track, collaborate, communicate and organize your projects with (or without) a team.

One of the best things I have done for my business is to start using Asana.

I tried it years ago, but I never made it a priority. I would play around with some of the features and would quickly find myself forgetting to even open it up.

It started to feel like more work so I would stop for a few months until I got that spark again to get organized and more efficient with my systems.

Thankfully, I have made it an integral part of how I run my business and it has led me to stay on track and consistently create content to grow my audience. 

Step #1 - Create a New Project

The first step to using Asana for your content calendar is to create a Project.

You can create separate projects for each of the different types of content you create (video, podcasts, blog posts, etc.) or you can house it all under one project and just name it Content Calendar.

I personally like to start with the “list” view when I am creating a new project.

Asana‘s hierarchy is:

Projects -> Tasks -> Subtasks

This is how you will need to organize all the tasks that make up your content calendar.

The project is your Content Calendar, the tasks are the main things you do when you create content and the subtasks are all the smaller action items that make-up a task.

Once you have the project created you can edit the color of the project.

This is one of my favorite features of Asana. I know I am such a nerd, but I love having a color-coded calendar.

I personally prefer to use the “calendar” view in Asana as my default view. This is where the color-coding will come into play because you can quickly associate which tasks are for your content calendar and which belong to other projects in Asana.

Read more: 5 Ways to Master Your Content Planning Process

Step #2 - Create Templates

Depending on the types of content you create, you will want to make a template for each type. For example, you’ll want a template for YouTube videos and a separate template for Blog Posts.

The template is literally the process you follow every single time you create a new piece of content. You can read more about creating a Blog Post Template here.

All you have to do to build out your template is to start adding in the tasks and subtasks you complete each time you create content.

You can see in the image below how that can look.

I try to break it up into very small action steps.

Instead of just putting down write content I will break it up into subtasks like research content, create the folder for the content, SEO details, etc.

This will make it so easy for you to follow when you are ready to write a new blog post or record a new video because all you have to do is duplicate your template and you are ready to go.

Step #3 - Duplicate the Template

Now that you have fleshed out your content templates within Asana, it’s time to start planning out the content you will be creating.

Let’s say you plan to write 4 new blog posts this month and you already know the titles you will be writing about.

Go into the content template you created and click the dots to the left of the title. Scroll down and click on ‘duplicate task’.

Then, add in the title of the blog post and click ‘create new task’.

You can replicate this process for each of the new blog posts you will be writing.

Step #4 - Add Due Dates + Assign

Now you are ready to add in due dates and assign the tasks.

If you do not have a team, you will be assigning all of the tasks to yourself so that they show up on your calendar to be completed.

If you have a team you can assign each task or subtask to a member of your team.

You can add in due dates for your tasks and your subtasks it just depends on what you prefer.

Once you have it all assigned, switch over to the calendar view and you can see how you’ve started to create a color-coded calendar.

I love seeing it in this view because I can quickly look at each day and see what I have coming up and what needs to be completed.

After you start using Asana for other projects in your business you will start to build out a daily calendar of tasks that you can easily complete and check off.

Taking the time to create a content calendar in Asana will help to alleviate stress and make your business run like a well-oiled machine.

You no longer have to think about what you need to be doing because you’ll have this calendar to guide you each day.

Be sure to download a free copy of my Consistent Content Roadmap!

GET THE ROADMAP

I’d love to hear your thoughts or planning process. Comment below and tell me if you use Asana for a content calendar.