Creating Ideas in Publlish

Not every content idea is ready to be scheduled the moment you think of it. Sometimes you want to capture an idea, develop it over time, get team input, or wait for the right moment to publish. Publlish's Ideas feature gives you a dedicated space to store, build, and organise content ideas separately from your scheduled queue.

What Are Ideas?

Ideas are unscheduled content concepts — text, links, images, or video concepts — stored in a separate section of Publlish. They're not drafts (which are posts assigned to a channel and a time), and they're not in your queue. They're raw material for future content.

Think of Ideas as your team's shared content bank. Anyone on the team can add to it, and ideas can be developed collaboratively before becoming a post.

How Ideas Differ from Drafts

How to Create an Idea

1. Go to Ideas in the left sidebar of your Publlish dashboard
2. Click New Idea
3. Write your idea — this can be a caption draft, a topic description, a content brief, a link to a reference, or even just a few words
4. Optionally add media (an image or video reference)
5. Add tags if you want to organise ideas by campaign or content type
6. Save

The idea is now stored in your Ideas library, visible to your team (based on permissions).

Developing Ideas Collaboratively

Ideas are a good place for your team to contribute and refine content before it's ready to schedule.

Adding Notes: Team members can leave comments and feedback on an idea using the Notes feature. This is useful for brief-giving, getting approval on a concept before writing it up, or flagging that an idea needs more information before it can be turned into a post. Collaborating with Notes →

Using the AI Assistant on an idea: Once you have an idea captured, you can use the AI Assistant to help develop it into a full caption. Open the idea, click AI Assistant, and use your rough notes as the prompt. AI Assistant guide →

Converting an Idea into a Post

When an idea is ready to become a scheduled post:

1. Open the idea from the Ideas library
2. Click Create Post (or Schedule)
3. Select the channel(s) you want to post to
4. Finalise the caption, add media, and set a time
5. Schedule or save as a draft

The original idea remains in your Ideas library — it's not removed when you convert it to a post. This means you can reuse an idea for multiple posts (useful for repurposing content across platforms or re-running successful content types).

Organising Your Ideas Library

As your idea bank grows, organisation becomes important. A few ways to keep it manageable:

Tags — Apply content tags to ideas just as you would to posts. Filter the Ideas view by tag to see only ideas for a specific campaign or content type. Creating and managing tags →

Search — Use the search bar in the Ideas view to find ideas by keyword.

Regular review — Schedule a weekly or fortnightly content planning session where the team reviews the Ideas library and moves the best ideas into the queue. Ideas that have been sitting untouched for a long time can be archived or deleted.

Ideas for Agencies

For agencies, the Ideas feature is useful for several workflows:

Client content briefing — Ask clients to submit content ideas or topics in Publlish. They add an idea with brief notes; your team turns it into a scheduled post with proper captions and media. This is cleaner than email or Slack for content requests.

Content bank for recurring content types — Store reusable idea formats (e.g. "Monthly product spotlight", "Weekly tip post", "Client testimonial feature") as template ideas your team can duplicate and execute each month.

Campaign ideation — Before a campaign starts, build out the full idea set in Publlish where the whole team can see and contribute. Only move ideas to the queue once they're approved.

Frequently Asked Questions

What's the difference between an Idea and a Draft in Publlish? A draft is a post assigned to a specific channel and time — it's in your queue. An idea is unassigned, unscheduled content that lives in a separate library. Ideas are earlier in the content creation process than drafts.

Can team members see each other's ideas? Yes — ideas are visible to all team members with access to the organisation (based on their permission level). This makes the Ideas library a shared team resource.

Can I attach media to an idea? Yes. Add images or video references to capture the visual direction of the content alongside the copy concept.

Can I use the AI Assistant in the Ideas section? Yes. The AI Assistant is available when working on ideas, so you can develop rough concepts into full captions before converting them to posts.

Is there a limit to how many ideas I can save? This depends on your plan. Check your plan details for any limits.

Related Guides

• Using Publlish's AI Assistant →
• Saving and scheduling draft posts →
• Collaborating with Notes →
• Creating and managing tags →
• Using post templates →
• Using content feeds →