How Airtable Runs Our Content Marketing Behind the Scenes

An Airtable content marketing system is a connected database that keeps content inventory, performance data, contacts, keywords, and promotion work tied to the same set of URLs.

This is how Airtable runs our content marketing behind the scenes: it gives a growing team one dependable place to answer practical questions, from which articles need promotion to who has linked to a post. The system can also hand repeatable work to Process Street, a single Compliance Operations Platform with Docs and Ops capability areas plus built-in AI.

Why we created a content asset database

As our marketing team grew along with our blogging output and backlink count, we found we were losing track of exactly what assets we had. How many posts had we written for the Process Street blog? How many guest posts did we have on other sites? Which posts had the most shares and backlinks? Who’s sharing and linking? Which keywords were we ranking for, and which needed more promotion? Before we created our Content Asset Tracking (CAT) base in Airtable, the answers were often either “no idea” or “let us spend an hour assembling a report from several sources.” We used to manage this kind of data inside Google Sheets, or with 50 different Trello boards… Now, it’s just a case of going into the CAT table, finding the right view or applying the right filters, and getting the data on-screen in seconds. The results have been amazing. Since using the CAT table in early 2016, we’ve seen key marketing metrics such as referring domain count rapidly:

Previously, we found ourselves linking back to whatever random posts we remembered instead of making metrics-driven decisions alongside SEO data and keywords. And, for blogger outreach, we were just making temporary spreadsheets of contacts and pasting them into our CRM instead of keeping track of who we linked to, where we linked to them, and whether or not we’ve contacted them yet. Before the CAT table, the marketing team’s employee count and output was growing at such a pace that we’d gone off the rails. This guide explains how we centralized marketing data with Airtable, and how another content team can build the same core system. With this method you can:

• Track all your content, guest posts, mentions, search rankings, and organize them by popularity, position, etc.
• Keep a record of everyone who shares your content so you know who your biggest promoters are
• Organize your media contacts into categories to easily get a list of who to pitch your ideas to
• Have a big list of posts to load up into your social media scheduler
• The ability to pull up a list of priority posts and keywords for backlinking

The tools you’ll need for this are:

• Airtable for the connected content database
• Ahrefs for backlink and search-performance analysis
• An integration or API layer for moving approved data between systems

Plans and limits change, so choose the smallest setup that can maintain accurate records and a clear owner for each update. Here’s what we’ve ended up with after implementing this system:

A database is ridiculously difficult to show in a gif, but what you’re seeing there is the table that summarizes data from the rest of the base, and can be filtered to show things like post by popularity, post by domain, post by author, and who we linked to inside that post. The database has four central parts:

• A ‘post info’ table, with keywords, share count, link count, categories, mentioned contacts, etc.
• A list of everyone we’ve ever mentioned in our content, with a checkbox that fires their info to our CRM
• All tweets that mention us and the handles of people who talk about us on Twitter
• A list of all the keywords we rank for, mapped against the URLs in post info

The sections below show how the system works at Process Street, including how information enters the base, how linked records connect it, and how saved views create useful queues and reports. But to start, you need to get all of your posts into Airtable. Let’s go!

Create a database of all your content

Start with a canonical list of published assets. For each record, capture at least the title, full URL, content type, author, category, publication date, status, and owner. This inventory is the primary table because every performance metric and relationship should attach to a stable content URL.

For WordPress, use a maintained export tool such as WP All Export, the built-in export, or the WordPress REST API. Google Search Console is valuable for validating indexed URLs and search performance, but it is not a complete content inventory.

Clean the export in a spreadsheet before import. Keep only durable fields, normalize authors and categories, and build the full URL from the domain and slug when needed. Remove revisions, attachments, autosaves, and drafts unless the base is also intended to manage work in progress.

Import the cleaned CSV into a new Airtable base. Set the URL as a unique field, use single-select values for controlled statuses, and turn repeated entities such as authors, contacts, companies, and keywords into linked records instead of duplicating text across rows.

Create a saved Published view that excludes non-public records. Add off-site guest posts and meaningful third-party coverage from an approved backlink export, then deduplicate on canonical URL. A short weekly review is usually safer than importing every discovered link automatically.

That gives the system a reliable starting point: one record for every content asset that the team intends to measure, promote, or maintain.

Aggregating a summary of your content alongside useful information: the post info tab

We could only get so far with just a list of URLs and titles. It’s useful for quickly seeing everything with a certain tag or category, or for scheduling out your whole archive on social media, but we need to be able to get deep insight into our organic SEO and social performance, pull up a list of all our guest posts, or filter posts by category… The post info tab is our single source of truth for all things related to our post’s metadata, social metrics, and SEO information. It uses Airtable’s record linking to pull information from the rest of the table and summarize it neatly. An example use case for this tab would be to get a list of every guest post we’ve ever written, find the names and emails of everyone we linked back to in a specific post, or sort our posts by backlink and share count.

How post info is populated & updated

After the initial import, add new posts through an Airtable automation, an approved integration, or a small REST API job. The important controls are a unique URL key, an explicit published-status check, an owner, and a review path for exceptions. This zap grabs as much information as it can from the RSS feed, and adds a new row in the table. Off-site content is detected by BuzzSumo, which generates its own custom RSS feed of detected backlinks and adds them via Zapier to Google Sheets. A weekly reviewer can approve the important URLs based on domain quality, content relevance, and the nature of the link. That small manual step prevents low-value or malformed records from polluting the database. As well as updating post info with new posts, it also needs to be maintained with the correct and current number of shares and links. To do this, we use Ahrefs’ Batch Analysis tool and manually update the records.

Aside from this, the table also has a column to tag it as a Process Street blog post, our own guest post, or a 3rd party link, so we can easily filter it. As noted above, a lot of the data inside post info is pulled out of other parts of the database and automatically mapped against the URL. Because of this, it would be better to explain how it’s populated in the sections below.

Automations inside post info

Inside post info, a controlled trigger can start a content promotion workflow in Process Street. Process Street is one Compliance Operations Platform with Docs and Ops capability areas plus built-in AI. Docs can govern the promotion procedure, Ops can run the repeatable work with owners and approvals, and built-in AI can help classify inputs, summarize research, and draft working material inside those controls. Here’s the checklist template we use: You can use the zap below to run checklists for new Airtable entries, or you can edit it so you only trigger it when you check the box in Airtable:

Views inside post info

Views are a specific set of filters on the main data set that you can quickly apply repeatedly. For example, by creating a new view in post info, naming it ‘public templates’, and applying a filter to show only records where the URL contains ‘/checklist/’, we can collate a list of our public Process Street templates that you can go back to again and again:

The same applies for seeing all of our guest posts (filter: where URL does not contain ‘process.st’). To make views easier when using data that isn’t pulled into post info, we also have a tag column, which is just a multi-select dropdown. One useful reason for tagging records is to mark them as an under-promoted post with potential: A useful view highlights URLs ranking just outside the strongest search positions for relevant, valuable queries. Tagging those records for optimization or promotion gives the team a repeatable queue instead of an ad hoc spreadsheet. No more scattered spreadsheets. If the data exists in part in Airtable, it’s best just to build your database out to be the single resource. That way, you can easily give access to everyone who needs it and cut down on time wasted searching around separate, unlinked files like Google Sheets.

Building a list of contacts mapped against your content: the contacts tab

Whether we need a list of everyone mentioned in a specific post so we can do outreach, a list of media outlets, or a list of friendly people who have linked back to us in the past, we can see it all in the contacts tab. Previously, we’d use temporary spreadsheets or inconsistently labeled contacts in our CRM. Now, using the contacts tab, we can automatically add select contacts into our CRM alongside the URL we mentioned them in. Then, in the CRM, we can pull up every contact for a post, and write emails to them showing them the post. This has worked well for us in terms of getting more social exposure and building relationships with other blogs.

How the contacts tab is populated & updated

The contacts tab is maintained manually but uses a series of tools and processes that keep things quite painless. The first step is to take any new URL added to the post info tab and scrape every link from it using a current browser link-extraction tool or a small crawler approved by your security team. Then while one person manually adds each contact’s name and company domain to the tab, mapped to post info by linking the records, a team of virtual assistants use our email finding process to add in the email address.

You’ll notice we have a column on the right-hand side of the screenshot showing all the posts in our database that the particular contact has authored, too. When you have consistent, linkable records in a database like Airtable, you can pull data in from any part of the table to build out other areas. The blue boxes around the records show that it’s being pulled in or link to from data elsewhere in the database. Here’s a quick explanation from Airtable:

(And here’s their official guide.) Since there’s a high margin for error when dealing with people’s names and email addresses, it’d be much harder to reliably automate this part of the database. All contact information is linked to a URL in post info, so when summarizing the data in the post info tab, it’s easy to see which people are linked.

Views inside the contacts tab

We have thousands of contacts in our database, some of which are added purely for the purpose of outreach for a specific project. For example, our view for our ebook on how to use Zapier had a few hundred people who we thought would be interested in reading a draft and giving feedback. By scraping the contacts into a Google Sheet using BuzzSumo’s influencer search, it was easy for a VA to come into the sheet, add email addresses, then paste them into Airtable with a unique tag that let me create a view and filter them:

We have similar views for all major outreach projects so we can grab a complete CSV export, import them into our CRM, and track communications from there on (or, to fire that process automatically, as the next section explains).

Map post URLs to contacts and companies with the URL mapping tab

The URL mapping tab is where we paste URLs and then get summaries of the URL’s known information, including where we linked that URL, and which contacts are associated with it. It allows us to group multiple contacts into one company, and get data on that particular company, not just an individual. Most of all, it’s for the purpose of linking together other bits of the database so they can be better summarized in the post info tab.

How URL mapping is populated & updated

URL mapping is updated manually, but fills in data automatically. Since we already have data on contacts and post URLs, it means we can paste a new URL at the bottom on the table and instantly get a summary of all available information associated with that URL. It works by consisting mainly of columns that link to records in other tabs. For example, ‘Outbound link to’ comes from post info, and ‘Contacts linked to’ comes from the contacts tab. It’s just a case of naming the columns so they match the data you want to link to, and configuring the column to ‘link to another record’.

Automations inside the URL mapping tab

The URL mapping tab is what we use to control outreach automations. Paste a URL at the bottom of the table, and it will reference other tables, pulling out the company, contacts, and where we mentioned them. Over to the right of the table, there’s a dropdown box linked to Zapier that adds contacts to Close for outreach, and it works like this:

The zap we created is quite simple (but unfortunately not part of Zapier’s pre-made library): When ‘initiating zap’ is selected from a row’s dropdown menu, Zapier grabs the email, company name, contact name, and mentioned link, and maps them into a new lead in Close. The URL goes into a note or snippet so you know how to filter the contacts for your emails. This same idea would work with any CRM, not just just Close.

Views inside the URL mapping tab

Since the tab maps contacts to URLs, it makes it simple to create a view to aggregate all contacts that were mentioned in a specific set of URLs. For example, when we released our business process management ebook, we needed a list of everyone who was mentioned in all of the posts that went into the book. When the data is already there, it’s a quick job to create a view:

We also use views to help us build the table out properly. There’s one view in particular , ‘Needs URL mapping’ , that will show every URL that doesn’t have information associated with it. This helps the person in charge of up-keeping the database to see what work is left unfinished.

Group contacts by organization in the companies tab

Whenever a company is referenced inside Airtable, it’s being pulled from the companies tab. The companies tab creates one record for every unique company name that appears in the contacts tab, and maps every contact to that company, like shown in the linking records video from Airtable earlier in this article. The companies tab is a list of companies and the data we know about them, such as how many times employees from that company have linked back to us or shared our content, and which contacts we have at that company for outreach or pitches.

How the companies tab is populated & updated

The URL mapping tab explained above takes raw URLs and formats them into company names. The company names are connected to the URL, and pushed to the companies tab with the company name as the main record. From there, over to the right hand side of the table, all known information about that company from the contacts tab and others (name, contacts, primary contact, emails) is inserted automatically because it’s all mapped together using linked records.

Tracking SERPs and keywords against content URLs: the keywords tab

The keywords tab is useful when the team needs relevant internal links or wants to rank promotion opportunities by priority. Since it’s always better for us (whenever possible) to link back to something we’ve written or links back to us, we can use Airtable’s filters to show only keywords with certain terms, like ‘content’ or ‘software’. The tab was created by linking the post info keywords column to a new table. Breaking down the information, it lets us see every keyword individually instead of seeing multiple keywords tied to one URL. Both are useful, but for assigning priorities to individual keywords so we know what to try to get more backlinks to, it’s best to get a keyword-by-keyword view.

How the keywords tab is populated & updated

All of our SEO data comes from an Ahrefs export manually pasted into the post info tab, as explained earlier in this article. But, since it’s all summarized by URL, you can easily make it more readable and sortable by creating a new table from the linked record. This video explains how:

Once all of the automated information is filled in, it’s time for an actual human to process the data. After the monthly SEO data update, it’s a team member’s task to come in and assign priority to the new, unprioritized keywords. We do this by deciding how closely related to our product these keywords are, and how much traffic they bring in for us already.

Views inside the keyword tab

As you might expect with all of the Ahrefs analysis we do, we have an unearthly amount of data in this tab. The best way we’ve found to organize it is by creating a dropdown column called ‘priority’, and then filtering the highest priority entries into a view:

And, as well as views for the marketing team’s benefit, we again set up views that help the members assigned to database maintenance track their work. For example, all keywords which haven’t yet been assigned a priority go into one view, making it easy to see the work that needs doing.

Maintain a list of social mentions in the mentions tab

Use the Twitter mentions tab as a platform-neutral social mentions feed. Direct Twitter-to-Zapier workflows were discontinued, and the platform is now called X. Use an approved social-listening provider, a monitored RSS source, or the X API where its terms and access level fit the use case.

How the Twitter mentions tab is populated & updated

Capture only the fields needed for a defined marketing purpose, such as the public handle, canonical post URL, mention URL, timestamp, and engagement count. Route matches into a review queue before they become durable contact data, and document retention and deletion rules.

Queries can cover brand handles, product terms, and canonical domains. Review false positives and URL variants, and avoid treating every public mention as permission for outreach.

Map social mentions to contacts in the people tab

A linked people table can aggregate approved mentions by public account and show which content each person referenced. The useful pattern is the relationship model: one person can have many mentions, and one mention can point to one or more content URLs.

How the Twitter people tab is populated & updated

Link the normalized public handle in the mentions table to a People table. New approved handles create new people records; repeat mentions roll up to the existing record. Keep the original mention URL so reviewers can verify context.

Views inside the Twitter people tab

Views can surface frequent external advocates, segment mentions by topic, or show records that need review. Exclude employees and owned accounts, use public data proportionately, and make outreach a deliberate human decision rather than an automatic consequence of appearing in the feed.

In conclusion…

Airtable can turn content marketing from a collection of aging spreadsheets into a connected operating system. The value comes from the relationships: URLs connect to keywords, contacts, companies, mentions, and the work needed to improve or promote each asset.

Start with a clean inventory, add only the fields the team will maintain, and give every automated input a review rule. Saved views then become practical work queues, while linked records make it possible to answer questions without rebuilding the same report each time.

The database organizes the evidence. Process Street can govern and run the repeatable procedures that act on it, from content intake and review to promotion, outreach, and maintenance. For a broader look at that execution layer, see this guide to content workflow software.

Airtable content marketing FAQ

What should an Airtable content calendar track?

Track the canonical URL, title, format, status, owner, publication date, audience, campaign, primary keyword, and next action. Add performance data only when someone owns its update schedule.

Should Search Console be the content inventory?

No. Search Console is useful for indexed URLs, queries, clicks, and impressions, but it is not guaranteed to contain every content asset. Start with the CMS export or API and use Search Console as a performance source.

How do linked records help a content team?

Linked records let one content URL connect to many keywords, contacts, companies, and mentions without duplicating those entities. Rollups and saved views can then summarize those relationships into useful reports and queues.