If you are a content manager, project manager, marketer, creative director or social media manager, you understand the need to organize and systemize your content creation process. How do you create a social media calendar?
Finding one tool that helps organize all of your pieces of content in one place can be daunting.
What if you found a tool that would house, categorize, and color code all your content pieces?
What if you found one place to brainstorm ideas, plan and collaborate with team members, and repurpose already published content, just to name a few tasks. What if you could take that tool and use it for multiple clients?
Today we are comparing Trello vs Loomly to create your social media content calendar.
We will compare:
✅ Pricing
✅ Functionality
✅ Efficiency
✅ Interface
In addition, we will compare these other functionalities:
☑️ Integration
☑️ Mobile Functionality
☑️ Teams
Trello vs Loomly for the Social Media Manager
What are Trello and Loomly and how can these tools help a social media manager do their job? By creating a social media content calendar template for each client.
Trello is a web-based, Kanban-style, list-making application.
From Trello: “Trello helps teams work more collaboratively and get more done. Trello’s boards, lists, and cards enable teams to organize and prioritize projects in a fun, flexible, and rewarding way.”
Loomly is the Brand Success Platform that empowers marketing teams to grow successful brands online through collaboration, publishing & analytics features.
From Loomly: “Loomly helps you organize all your social media content into calendars! In a calendar you can group together social media accounts from different platforms — Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Google My Business, TikTok & YouTube — in one place.”
So while Trello is purely a planning platform, Loomly does have a social media scheduling feature.
For the purpose of this article, we are comparing the calendar functionality of these platforms.
Trello vs Loomly on Pricing
Trello offers three tiers of pricing, as well as yearly and monthly payment plans.
One of these plans that Trello offers is a ‘Free Forever’ Plan.
The next tier is Business Class which is affordable for a freelancer just starting out who has maybe only a handful of clients.
Business Class: $119.88 per year
Business Class: $12.50 per month
Trello Business Class offers the following (see middle of the columns):
Conclusion: I like the fact that Trello offers a forever free plan for those of us who are just getting started. As there is always a learning curve when learning new tools, being able to keep using this tool without having to shell out money is a nice benefit.
Social Media Manager Perspective: Good first tool for a new freelance social media manager. The price is right! The business plan is affordable as well, at just $9.99/month if you pay yearly.
Final Grade: A
Loomy offers the following pricing tiers, including a 14 days free trial. There is no free option beyond the free trial period.
If you are an established social media manager, working with an intern, VA or other team member and serving multiple clients, either the ‘Base’ or ‘Standard’ Plans should not be cost prohibitive to usage.
Conclusion: A free trial is a nice touch, but I would have prefered a free plan.
Social Media Manager Perspective: If you are an established freelancer, have an income, work with clients and you need a good social media content calendar, this might be a good choice for you. At $25/month Loomly is still twice as much as the cheapest Trello plan.However, as previously stated, Loomly does allow for scheduling posts, which is a nice bonus two-in-one functionality, making this tool worth a look, for sure
Final Grade: B+
Trello vs Loomly on Functionality
Trello is an organizational tool with amazing templates to get you started organizing just about anything in your life.
A friend of mine reported she used Trello to plan, pack and coordinate wardrobes for her and her mother for a 3 week European trip!
Trello is easy to use. You create boards with can be either displayed as boards (Kanban View) or as a calendar.
While the possibilities are endless and this tool organizes everything you can imagine, it was not originally designed specifically or exclusively for social media managers.
Watch this demo video to get a feel for how easy Trello is to use!
Conclusion: Whether you are organizing a Podcast schedule, a road trip, packing list or yes, a social media calendar, this tool will help you meet deadlines and accomplish project completion.
Social Media Manager Perspective: From a social media manager's perspective, this is a multi-functional tool. I see using it to share content ideas and a calendar with clients, and using it for internal team organization and idea sharing. The main drawback I see is that while it can create a social media content calendar, you will need an additional tool to schedule and publish the created content to social media.
Final Grade: B
Loomly is not only easy on the eyes, it's easy to use and designed for a busy marketing team. It takes you from a ‘create post' button all the way to publishing. It gives you tips for content ideas as well as post optimization tips, including suggestions on best time to post.
Watch this short video for a quick demonstration on how Loomly functions.
Conclusion: This tool is awesome. As the 3:30 minute demo video shows, Loomly is easy to set up, easy to use and in effect, two tools in one. It's worth a bit of extra money to gain the publishing schedule functionality and did you see TikTok is included?
Social Media Manager Perspective: While the price may be higher than Trello for the business package, the added functionality and straight forward calendar creation is a huge plus for the busy social media marketer. Being able to combine and complete several tasks in one tool is a huge timesaver and well worth the money.
Final Grade: A
Trello vs Loomly on Efficiency Tools
Trello lets you plan out and organize your content calendar. It allows for team members to collaborate and shows several ‘views' including a calendar view. The tool itself will save you time and effort, as you can add recurring tasks, duplicate boards and share boards with team members.
Trello can be used to train employees, organize ideas, and as a project management tool and more. It's an efficient tool for tasks management, allowing for separating each task and each project into smaller tasks on boards with color-coded and named cards.
Conclusion: If you are a visual person, know KanBan or Scrum or the Agile framework, need to get organized or have a team to collaborate with, this tool is a great choice for you. You will need to enjoy laying out plans and using a digital planner.
Social Media Manager Perspective: As a doodler myself, I learn, plan and organize myself best on paper. I love sticky notes! However, as a smart coach pointed out “The world will go back to traveling soon: What will you do when you are on the road and have a need to keep on task?” Trello is the digital version of a really good paper planner. For those who like to use the Agile framework, cards on Trello boards function like sticky notes.
Final Grade: B+
Loomly shines with efficiency by keeping several daily recurring tasks in one place. Social media managers plan, create and publish content continuously. Being able to be efficient at this leaves more room for creativity, sales and scaling a business. Efficiency allows for taking on more clients, bigger clients and getting paid more.
Conclusion: Social media calendar creation is simple, effective, efficient and fast.
Social Media Manager Perspective: Great option if you don't have a scheduling tool you love, need organization in your business and have a need to share content ideas with a team.
Final Grade: A-
Trello vs Loomly on the Interface
Trello's interface is marked by boards, organized into cards. Board represent projects, cards represent tasks thus placing the types of content you might want to create like social media posts and blog posts into separate spaces. By grouping cards/tasks, you create smaller projects within a project, almost like chapters.
As cards can be assigned deadlines and dates, these tasks show up on the calendar view on specific days, making team and tasks management a breeze. Cards can also hold links to tasks outside of Trello, including links to websites, videos, images i.e. social media content, or training modules.
Once you understand the layout and premise of Trello, your either love it, or hate it! I found the Trello interface easy on the eyes.
Conclusion: Trello looks and feels like a digital planning calendar.
Social Media Manager Perspective: Not being able to see the complete social media post as it will be posted to social media, instead only seeing the pieces (link, image, video and copy) might not be a good choice for every social media manager. Having to duplicate and copy the posts into a scheduler, or publish live to social media platforms is an extra step you might not want to take. However, if you need a place to work with an internal team on content management, this is a great option.
Final Grade: B-
Loomly is simple to set up and easy to use as a social media content calendar. Creating a social media calendar IS the main function of the tool. The interface is clean and has a ton of white space. Loomly prompts your through your first calendar entry, making the interface easy to use.
Much like a Trello board, Loomly gives you different ‘views' of your calendar, based on the progress you've made with each of your pieces of content.
Overall, the Loomly interface is nice and bright, clear and fuctional.
Conclusion: Loomly is a great tool to use when you have a need for creating a visual, digital social media content calendar.
Social Media Manager Perspective: Take it from someone who's sat through a lot of tool demos and used many different tools and software in the past 10 years, Loomly impressed me. I would recommend this tool if you are exploring the idea of creating a digital content calendar plan.
Final Grade: A
The Winner is….
Loomly!
This tool allows social media marketers to plan, create and publish content all in one place.
The price is right, the interface is clear and it an easy tool to learn.
While Trello came in second, I highly recommend Trello for all other social media management tasks. It might or might not be the best option for content calendars, the organization will help any social media manager streamline their systems and processes.
Additional Considerations
Trello and Loomly both have an extensive list of tools with which they integrate, automating additional recurring tasks a social media manager might run into.
Trello and Loomly both have mobile apps, which is wonderful! Being able to access and use social media calendars from a phone is of utmost importance to social media marketers. Bravo to both Trello and Loomly for recognizing this.
Last but not least, both tools have capability of collaboration with teams. Again, this is important when you are ready to scale your freelance social media business and hire contractors.
Overall I was impressed by these two tools and can highly recommend them if your need to streamline your work as a social media manager! Let us know in the comments what tool you've used to create a social media calendar.
I am a Certified Social Media Manager, Strategist, International Keynote Speaker, Organic Specialist and Agile marketer! Blogging is my creative outlet. Running, hiking and skiing are how I recharge. You'll recognize me on stage and online by my always present orange glasses, a nod to my Dutch heritage.
