Smartsheet is a leading online collaborative work platform that enables teams to plan, capture, track, report, and automate complex work. At its core, Smartsheet is a flexible spreadsheet interface for building automated workflows, capturing data, and managing projects. As a content writing platform, Smartsheet offers a number of capabilities to help streamline content production workflows.
Some of the key benefits Smartsheet provides for content writing include:
Collaboration – Smartsheet’s built-in collaboration features let multiple writers, subject matter experts, editors, and other stakeholders work on content simultaneously from any location. Team members can see edits in real-time, comment and discuss work, and review changes with traceable audit logs. This streamlines feedback cycles and speeds up content development.
Templates – Reusable templates can be created for different types of content like blog posts, white papers, eBooks and more. Template fields ensure consistency across content types and make onboarding new writers easy. Template rollouts save time compared to building out content from scratch.
Task Management – Complex content production processes involving research, writing, review, revision, publication and more can be broken down into discrete Smartsheet tasks with assignees, due dates, descriptions and item tracking. Team progress is visible to managers in an automated Kanban-style board view.
Approvals – Multi-level approval workflows incorporating automatic notifications and escalations help shepherd content through technical, legal and other reviews. Automatic approval notifications keep production schedules on track.
Reports – Smartsheet’s reporting features provide insight into team productivity metrics like task completion rates and who is blocked on what. Timeline views help managers identify bottlenecks. Custom reports can also track important content KPIs.
Integrations – Connections to tools like Google Drive, Dropbox, Microsoft 365 and Slack let content be stored, reviewed and discussed across systems. Writers have flexibility in their workflows. Integrations with CMSes automate publishing.
Automation – Conditional formatting, formulas and automated tasks based on cell values streamline repetitive production tasks. Approval emails, slack notifications and other common actions can be automated.
Checklists – Reusable content checklists embedded in sheet rows ensure style guides, voice and tone, accessibility, SEO best practices and other quality standards are consistently followed by writers.
Version History – Every change to sheets is tracked so previous content iterations are accessible. Rollbacks prevent losses from accidental deletes or overwrites. Consistent source of record for compliance.
Permissions – Granular access controls let managers share sheets read-only as briefings or make certain cells/rows editable for assigned tasks only. Reduces accidental edits and confusion.
Offline Editing – The Smartsheet mobile app lets writers work from any device even without an internet connection. Changes sync automatically when back online.
To provide some real-world examples, here are a few ways large companies are using Smartsheet for content production:
An AI training company managing dozens of eLearning modules captures subject matter expertise and lesson plans in Smartsheet. Automatic checklists ensure ADA compliance. Approvals move content to their LMS.
A software documentation team of 20 writers, SMEs and editors simultaneously develop 400+ product help pages in a single Smartsheet template sheet. Strict workflow tracks updates for monthly releases.
A research organization producing 50+ white papers annually plans research topics as tasks. Smartsheet triggers web conferences, collects outlines, and routes papers through a multi-round peer review process.
An investor relations firm keeps financial analysts briefed via a permission-controlled Smartsheet rolling out SEC filings, conference materials, and earnings transcripts on publication-ready templates.
A university maintaining 600+ web pages overhauls content processes by organizing writers, assignment criteria and markups for each departmental site into separate, integrated Smartsheet sheets.
Smartsheet’s built-in collaborative capabilities, reporting tools, automation features and workflow flexibility make it a compelling platform for teams producing large volumes of content at scale across many departments and projects. Its combination of structure and open-ended flexibility addresses the varied needs of technical documentation, marketing content, academic writing and other complex multi-stakeholder productions. For companies managing content as a strategic asset, the insights from Smartsheet help optimize processes and quality over time.