We recently released an updated flow for creating, reviewing and publishing content in Hail, alongside third-party connections to publish to.

Many of our beta-testers told us they understood the reasoning behind the article creation flow, but found it a little confusing to use. So when it came time to add third-party publishing options within the Hail backend it made sense for us to revisit the user interface for article creation and reviewing too.

We haven't changed the flow per se, you still create Draft articles, which can be made Ready for the group before Publishing to the world, but the stages are now much clearer and it's easier to understand who can see what.

Another often requested feature, that has just been rolled out alongside the new flow, is the ability to publish articles and publications straight to third-party social channels like Twitter and Facebook.

It's all very easy to set up from within Hail itself — you're painlessly guided through the authorization process with your chosen services and once complete you have one button publishing. Hail does all the hard work of packaging up your content and perfectly optimising it for each channel.

You can now even send out your publications as beautiful MailChimp email campaigns, branded with your logo and formatted for both desktop and mobile email clients.

Emailing publications through MailChimp gives you all their powerful tracking features and ensures you are complying with anti-spam laws. Plus, did you know that with MailChimp you can send up to 12,000 emails per month to 2,000 subscribers for free! No contracts, and no credit card required. You simply connect Hail with a MailChimp list and publish away, your subscribers will receive your publication, including feature and article teasers, with photography and your editorial/notices direct to their inbox.

All of these powerful new features are available now to all Hail's users, so why not sign in today and explore them, or if you haven't tried Hail yet sign up for a free trial here.

Hero image by Dave Fayram