CoSchedule – What it is & Why You Need it

Some of you may have noticed that I recently made the big move from Blogger to a hosted WordPress, and while I’ll talk more about that at a later date, one of the greatest things I discovered in this process were so many fun plugins and tools that could be used to help me manage my blogs (’cause you all know I have a few) more easily.

Boy, are there tons of different options and products out there to help, and I have been using a few over the years to manage and schedule out posts and social media.  I’ve had several different accounts to log in and use, wouldn’t it have been nice to have it all in once place where I could just do everything at once? Yes, it would-and you can.  I can.  I do. It’s called CoSchedule.

Bloggers, I’m serious when I say that CoSchedule makes it so super easy to manage my blog.  It’s like an editorial calendar and social media manager all in one, and it integrates into my wordpress blog seamlessly so I really only have to log into one place instead of the three or four I was logging into every day before.  It’s amazing.  It currently only works with self-hosted wordpress blogs, but they are working on other integration soon-but if you have a self-hosted blog and you aren’t using co-schedule you’re probably doing more work than you have to be.

Unfortunately when you’re writing blog posts out and scheduling them ahead, it can sometimes be tricky to keep up with which posts will be posted when.  You kind of have to search for the date on the right side, and go into it to see some of the details, and then your page is filled with draft posts and it can be hard to go back and find the current live post or archived posts.  Well, probably not difficult, but time consuming at least.  Co-Schedule makes it super easy to see all of your planned blog posts and social media in one calendar view-which is so beautifully organized looking.  Seriously, anyone who loves organization can totally geek out over this beauty.

 

I can log into Co-Schedule and see an easy layout of what has been published as well as what will be published, and I can plan my posts on all of my accounts accordingly.  It’s crazy easy, and so useful-I can’t believe I’ve been doing it the hard way all along when this beauty exists.  Then if I decide I want to add a post, as I did on Sunday, September 6th for The Weekly Round-Up, I just click on that date and it pops up an easy window allowing me to schedule something out in advance.

As you can see, I don’t even have to write the whole post out at that time. I can simply stick a title in there and schedule it, as well as set up the Social Media if I want to.  This is useful for if I get a big idea for some posts I want to write out for the next week, or I have posts that need to go up on certain dates, since I can just sit down and schedule them all and then go back and write them later when I have time to.  That way when I’m wondering what to post, I can check the calendar and make sure I don’t have something scheduled for that day first.  This is super useful, especially when it comes to posts I do each week or month, such as my Monthly Goals and Musical Mondays link-ups.  When I’m ready to go ahead and actually write the post, I can simply click the Edit Post in WordPress button and it shoots me over to my WordPress composition page.

What makes CoSchedule even greater is that it integrates fully with WordPress.  I don’t even have to log into CoSchedule, I can just access my editorial calendar directly from my WordPress dashboard.  It was so easy to install also, I simply went to my Plugins section, then to Add New, searched for CoSchedule and bam-installed, activated, and logged in and it was all ready to go!

 

The integration doesn’t stop there either.  It’s so much further integrated that when I’m editing a post in my regular Posts > Add Post section of WordPress I can simply scroll down below the post and schedule out all of my social media for it.  This is what shows directly under this post right this moment as I’m composing:

All I have to do is click on the little + Sign there, and then this screen comes up:

From there, I can pick which Social Media profiles I want at the top (in this case, I’ve chosen Google+, Twitter, and Facebook) and preview how it will look.  I can also edit the message or just leave it as the title and link, and I can schedule it to run at the same time as the post, the next day, a week later, a month later, or even set a custom time.  It is so easy for me to just write out my post and schedule the bulk of my social media sharing of it right from the post itself, and not have to worry about it since it automatically posts when I’ve told it to.

What’s even more beautiful about this in-post integration, is that after it has been published and see the metrics for the social media interactions.  Here are the results so far from my Instax Mini Giveaway that’s currently running:

Isn’t that fantastic?  I just love it.  Not only is it making my life easier when it comes to scheduling and composing, but it’s keeping me updated on what is working and what is useful in my social media.  Scheduling reminders for giveaways has never been easier-seriously.  It’s fantastic.

Check out this video explaining a little bit more:

So long story short-what is CoSchedule?  It’s an all-in-one editorial calendar and social media manager for managed WordPress.

[Tweet “Are you still blogging and promoting the hard way? See how @CoSchedule can help! http://coschedule.com/r/23334”]

Why do you need it? Because it will make your life and blog so much easier and more organized.  CoSchedule is perfect for any blogging use, but if you are serious about using your blog for business-whether it’s promoting your shop or making money from your blog-you definitely need CoSchedule.  It will be your best friend, and it will help you go so much further in the world of professional blogging.

Don’t just take my word for it-try it yourself!  They’ll give you a free two-week trial to try it out without committing to anything.  As you can see from some of my screenshots, that’s what I’m currently doing-it’s just about time to upgrade though!