How Walks and Devour Brought Order to 2,000+ Content Assets with Relato

As Head of Content at Walks and Devour Tours, Cassandra Gambill had her hands full.

Thousands of content assets, a global team, freelancers in the mix, and 20+ destinations worth of stories to tell.

The work was high-quality, and the effort was constant. But keeping everything and everyone aligned on timelines, brand voice, and priorities was another story.

“We found that we weren’t always rowing the same way,” Cassandra said. “It was hard to give visibility across all the content verticals — let alone ensure we were aligned on North Star goals.”

Walks and Devour ran content for 20+ destinations across Slack, Google Drive, Docs and SharePoint, then tried to pull it together in Asana. Task tracking worked. The editorial workflow and the freelance bench did not. The content programme moved to Relato, and 2,000+ assets now sit on boards grouped by brand and channel, each one carrying an owner, a deadline and a status.

The struggle to stay on the same page

Like many marketing teams, Cassandra’s crew had content everywhere: Slack canvases, Google Drive, Docs, and SharePoint, with no centralized content operations platform to bring it all together. This is the same fragmentation problem we break down in the hidden costs of content friction, where scattered tools quietly tax a team’s time.

As a result, the team wasn’t making the most out of their content investment. Visibility suffered, duplication crept in, and priorities blurred.

So when they started looking for a better way to get aligned, they figured they’d begin with something already in their toolkit: Asana.

But that came with its own complications, especially with freelancers. Cassandra’s team relied on a wide network of external contributors, and the only way into Asana for someone outside the company is guest access, which is scoped narrowly by design. The workarounds were manual, and they cost the internal team time.

“The biggest challenge Asana presented was integrating freelancers. It was complicated and, while we could find workarounds, they were clunky, manual, and expensive.”

What they needed wasn’t another patched-together process.

They needed a real system, the kind of single source of truth that keeps a whole team pointed at the same goals.

A platform that could:

• Integrate a wide network of freelancers
• Deliver an intuitive experience that was useful for the entire team
• Offer visibility across projects, brands, and teams

Asana vs a content operations platform: what changes for content work

A project management tool like Asana is built to move tasks forward. A content operations platform is built for the specific shape of content work, where hundreds of assets and a rotating cast of freelancers all need to stay visible in the same place. That difference is what pushed Walks and Devour to switch.

The first split is access, and the money is not the problem. Asana does not charge for external collaborators. Its paid plans include unlimited free guests, and guests do not count toward your seat total. What Asana restricts is scope: Asana’s documentation states that a guest sees only what is explicitly shared with them, and that guests cannot create or own rules, cannot create or edit task templates and cannot create or edit custom field settings. That is a sensible default for a client reviewing one project. It is a poor fit for a bench of writers, because an admin has to share each project by hand and share it again every time the work moves, and nobody outside the core team ever sees the programme around their own card. That is the same gap a writer describes from the other side in the ten pains of the content marketing freelancer. Relato includes unlimited collaborators on every plan, with permissions that decide what each person sees, so bringing a contributor in is a setting rather than a chore. Whether you collaborate openly or ration access is the tension we cover in the freelancer to content partner collaboration blueprint.

The second split is visibility. A generic task list tells you what is due. A content operations platform shows owners, deadlines and status across every brand and channel at once, so a global team can finally row the same way. Getting distributed contributors aligned around one shared view is a problem in itself, and it is the core of aligning distributed content teams.

The third split is the editorial stage. On a project board, “ready for review” is a label somebody dragged a card onto. It says nothing about whether the brief was followed or whether the reviewer opened the draft. At low volume that gap is harmless, which is why the honest verdict is to keep the project tool for general work and outgrow it for editorial rather than rip it out.

What content work needs	A project tool like Asana	Relato
Task tracking, dates and assignees	Built for it	Built for it
Cost of an external contributor	Unlimited free guests on paid plans, not counted against seats	Unlimited collaborators on every plan
What an external contributor sees	Only what is explicitly shared with them, project by project	Scoped by the permissions you set
Who can own automations and templates	Not guests	Set by your plan and the permissions you give
Editorial stages	A status label on a card	Workflow stages, with approval gates on the Business plan
One view across brands and channels	Per project or per portfolio	Boards grouped by brand and channel

Every Asana detail above was checked against Asana’s own pricing page and Help Center in September 2026. Plan contents move, so check them yourself before you decide anything on the strength of a table.

Why a B2C team took a bet on a B2B tool (and never looked back)

Cassandra followed Relato’s founder, David, on LinkedIn for a while. His posts about content mayhem were intriguing and relatable, but she still wasn’t sold. Relato looked like it was built for B2B teams, and Walks and Devour Tours is B2C.

But the more she read, the more she realized David was describing her team’s exact pain points. Cassandra knew Relato was the solution. Now, she just had to get the rest of the team on board.

“Understandably, there was some hesitation about adding another tool when we already had so many,” Cassandra shared.

But once Cassandra dug into the features, the team started to get excited. There were three factors, in particular, that really won them over:

Cost-effectiveness: Relato doesn’t charge per seat. When the team realized they could incorporate all their freelancers into their content workflows at no additional cost, Relato felt like a no-brainer.

Visibility: Everyone wanted better visibility into what was happening across different areas of content creation. On Relato, it was easy to see what the team was working on.

Collaboration: As a growing platform, Relato was releasing features fast, and Cassandra’s team saw a chance to help shape what came next.

“It felt exciting to be part of something that’s evolving and to know we can give feedback and actually see the platform improve based on our needs,” Cassandra said. “You just don’t get that with bigger tools.”

The team tried the platform for a couple of weeks, and then David hopped on a call to lead their formal onboarding. He sent a custom agenda in advance, adapted it to their questions, and showed up ready to dig in.

“The contrast between our onboarding with Relato and another platform we’d just rolled out was night and day. The session was so energizing, and the whole team walked away excited about the possibilities.”

How the move off Asana actually went

Four steps, in the order Cassandra’s team took them:

1. They trialled the platform on real work for a couple of weeks instead of deciding from a demo.
2. David ran a formal onboarding session, with a custom agenda sent in advance and adapted to the team’s questions.
3. They rebuilt the work as boards grouped by brand and channel, each tracking owner, deadline and status. That is what turned 2,000+ assets into something readable at a glance.
4. Freelancer access came last, once permissions and workflows had settled.

None of this needed a migration project. The hard part was deciding what the new home was for, then moving the programme into it in an order that did not break anything mid-flight.

Using Relato to get 2,000+ assets under control

Today, Relato is the team’s home base for more than 2,000 pieces of content, from blogs to LinkedIn posts to YouTube scripts and more. Everything lives on organized boards, grouped by brand and channel.

Each board tracks owners, deadlines, and status, giving the team a real-time view of what’s happening and where support is needed. This makes it easier to spot overlaps, shift priorities, and make smarter use of their work. It is the practical version of the content operations discipline: one connected system instead of a pile of disconnected tools.

“We can finally see what’s happening across campaigns, spot overlaps, and make smarter use of our content. It’s made alignment and communication way easier.”

They’ve also started testing freelancer access. Thanks to Relato’s no-seat-limit model, they can bring in as many collaborators as they need without extra license fees or complicated workarounds. With flexible permissions, Cassandra’s team controls who sees what. Contributors stay focused on the work that matters without the noise.

“It’s so flexible,” she said. “We’re finalizing our workflows now, and soon, more freelancers will be onboarded. We already know Relato can scale with us.”

A calmer, more connected way to run content ops

That sense of momentum of finally having a system that works changed everything.

Before Relato, content lived in too many places. Tools overlapped, visibility lagged, and keeping the team aligned took more time than doing the actual work.

Now?

“Now that we’ve got Relato, there’s this sense of calm,” Cassandra said. “Our process feels more methodical. Not rigid — just steady. Like we’ve finally tamed the content beast.”

Looking to bring clarity to your content operations? Start your free trial of Relato today.

Frequently asked questions about content operations for content teams

What is a content operations platform?

A content operations platform is the single place a team plans, assigns, reviews, and tracks every content asset, rather than spreading that work across a chat app, a drive, and a project tool. It shows owners, deadlines, and status in one view, so nobody has to ask where a piece stands. Walks and Devour uses Relato this way for more than 2,000 assets across brands and channels.

Why did Walks and Devour move off Asana for content work?

Two reasons. Asana tracked tasks well but did not model an editorial workflow, so nobody could see where every piece stood across brands and channels at once. And bringing freelancers in meant guest access, which Asana includes free on its paid plans but scopes deliberately narrowly: a guest sees only what is explicitly shared with them. Sharing each project by hand was clunky and manual, and that work landed on the internal team.

Does Asana charge extra for freelancers?

No. Asana’s paid plans include unlimited free guests and guests do not count toward your seat total. What you trade is scope rather than money. Asana’s documentation states that a guest sees only what is explicitly shared with them, and that guests cannot create or own rules, cannot create or edit task templates and cannot create or edit custom field settings. For a rotating bench of writers that means an admin shares each project by hand, and nobody outside the core team sees the programme around their own card.

What does moving content work off a project tool involve?

Less than most teams expect. Moving the data is the easy half. Deciding what the new home is for takes longer. Walks and Devour trialled Relato for a couple of weeks, ran a formal onboarding session with a custom agenda, then rebuilt the work as boards grouped by brand and channel, each carrying owner, deadline and status. Freelancer access came last, once the workflows were settled.

How do you manage freelancers without paying per seat?

Pick a tool that bills by business need instead of by license, then give each contributor scoped access to only the work that concerns them. Walks and Devour uses Relato’s no-seat-limit model and flexible permissions to bring in as many collaborators as they need while keeping everyone focused on their own tasks.

How do you organize thousands of content assets?

Group assets on boards by brand and channel, and make each board track owner, deadline, and status. That structure gives a real-time view of what is in flight and where support is needed, which is how Walks and Devour brought 2,000+ pieces of content under control and started spotting overlaps before they turned into duplicate work.