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. WordPress seems like a great site to get my blog writing on, plus I can access some WordPress marketing tips to take it to the next level when I am ready, so it is a win-win for me it looks like!
Boy, there are 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. One of my friends recommended AEM logs the other day, and when I read about them, I was instantly intrigued. Isn’t it cool if my messages could be written in one physical file according to my specifications using a logging writer? Might have to check it out soon. For now, I have more pressing matters to attend to. The fact that I have to log in to several different accounts each time makes me wonder, wouldn’t it be nice if it were all in one place where I could do everything in one go? The answer is yes – and you can do it. 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. I can only imagine what bigger companies with many social media handles do to manage all of this post scheduling-ensuring that the content is written; making sure the timing is right; that posts are scheduled for all social media platforms; and more. I’m pretty sure they have an entire team dedicated to it though, or an outsourced company that provides social media marketing jacksonville fl and in other locations. It’s not easy to manage social media all by yourself! But, 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:
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!
This is officially amazing. My to-do list today reads “get future posts organised. somehow’ – and I stumbled across here and found the solution! Thank you so much! Off to install now…
Woohoo, glad I could help out! 😀
Claire, that’s so awesome! I’m so glad CoSchedule can help you with that problem. Thanks for checking us out!
I’ve been on WordPress for a few months, but there are so many plug-ins it can get overwhelming fast. I’m so glad that you shared this one!
I’m glad to help! I’ve found some of the plug ins overwhelming too. This one can cost a bit more depending on what you do with it, but I haven’t found a good one that compares to it. Plus they do discounts for referrals and writing about it which helps!
This information is great Angie! I am needing a service like this – life is getting a little chaotic trying to manage a blog and all the social media accounts!
That I can totally relate to. It’s become like a second job, so anything I can do to make it easier I’m going to try! lol Glad it could help!
I love being able to schedule my content and social media. Right now I am not a self-hosted wordpress, but I plan to be soon 🙂
I recently made the switch, and while it’s not easy, it was so worth it!
CoSchedule TOTALLY changed my blogging/social media habits. I love it and can’t imagine life without it!
Yay! Glad to hear that!
This is a great idea! I just didn’t thought of doing this and forgotten all about it. I only used wordpress’ schedule that is right there on the right side where you publish it yourself. Other scheduling apps I use is Buffer for social media. I’ll check this out! Thanks for sharing! 🙂
I was using HootSuite before, and it’s a little cheaper, but it doesn’t have the editorial calendar like this one does. This one does both the editorial calendar and the social media which is super nice.
Wow, Angie! Thanks for writing this awesome review of CoSchedule! We appreciate it!
You’re welcome!
Wow, this is great! Thanks for sharing, Iv definitely been trying something to organize and share my posts!
It’s definitely super useful for that!
This is some great info, thank you for sharing! Will share with other bloggy friends!
Awesome! Hopefully you’ll find it useful!
This is great information! I had been wondering about co-schedule and how it worked. I do use their Headline Analyzer, which is another great tool.
Is that like an SEO tool?
So glad you’re loving it! Wow, looks like you are better at using it than I am. Haha
It’s pretty great, but there’s still a lot I haven’t done yet. lol
angie this does look very useful and easy to learn! =) i will check it out!
It wasn’t hard at all! Good luck!
This is such great information Angie! I’ve heard of CoSchedule before, but this is really detailed, thank you! I hope to make a big transition with my blog sometime over the next 6 months… but we’ll see. I’m definitely pinning this for the future!
You should totally make the transition and try this out. So useful!
I read about CoSchedule months ago, but was sad because it doesn’t work with Blogger
Yeah, that’s a bummer. I heard recently they were working on trying to get it to, but there are some issues they run into with Google and what google will allow apparently.
Hey Talitha! We recently added our very own content editor so that anything from CoSchedule can be exported as html for other platforms such as Blogger! Maybe this would be a solution for you? Here’s more info on just how it works: http://coschedule.com/blog/marketing-calendar-google-docs/.
Let me know if you have any questions, I’d love to help!
Hey that’s super cool! 😀
you’re a blog master!
I started using CoSchedule not too long ago. It’s been great!!
This is great. Thanks so much for sharing, Angie! I have been so tempted to add CoSchedule to my site & finally took the plunge about 15 minutes ago. I’m already in love & can’t believe I waited so long!!
Yay! I’m so glad you like it. I can’t really imagine blogging without it now… lol