I’m switching gears a bit today and talking a little bit about the behind the scenes blogging stuff! I’ve been so immersed in it lately, and have had a few of you emailing me with questions on various things, so I’ve decided to share one of my favorite blogging tools: CoSchedule
Quick Disclaimer: This is a NOT a sponsored post, and CoSchedule is a blogging tool that I use and pay for each month. However, I will receive a discount on my monthly fee for sharing this review and if anyone decides to sign up for a free trial with this link, I will get an additional credit towards my personal account. Everyone wins, and I’d encourage you to do the same if you also already use and love CoSchedule (or maybe you will be soon!).
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A Little Backstory
For those of you who may not be aware, CoSchedule is an all-in-one marketing calendar that brings your content and social media in the same place. For YEARS, I never bothered with any sort of editorial calendar when it came to blogging. Mostly because, for the first 3ish years of blogging, I basically just lifecasted my life away, sharing posts with you all 3x per day. I never really needed an editorial calendar because I just blogged about whatever was happening that day.
But as many bloggers and blog readers have probably noticed by now, blogging is shifting quite a bit, and the idea of lifecasting is starting to dwindle.
While I certainly still love sharing my life (and do so often!), I also like to mix in my day to day life posts with recipes, tutorials, sponsored content, and other various topics that I try to plan ahead for the days where I’m just too busy (or too boring) to share a day to day.
I’ve also mentioned that I’ve been working quite a bit with the amazing Katy from Make Me{dia} Over, who has been fielding questions from me left and right and also helping me get more comfortable with some of the behind the scenes blogging stuff that takes up more time than just writing a post and hitting ‘submit.’
Why I Use CoSchedule
I’d already been using CoSchedule for well over a year, but it wasn’t until the past few months where I really started to try and utilize all that it has to offer.
For one, they have an awesome WordPress plugin that allows me to schedule and access my calendar right from my blog’s dashboard.
I think it’s safe to say that everyone uses an editorial calendar differently, but for the sake of this post, I wanted to share how I use it, and how I intend to further utilize some of its features in the future
How I Use CoSchedule
As you can see from the screenshot above, I do a lot of my additional social media sharing with CoSchedule. Since additional social sharing isn’t really something I started considering until the last 6 months or so, I’ve been using this tool to both go back to old posts and work with new posts to share out my content a bit more.
So from my dashboard, I’ll go in and create a new social message.
I can choose to share my current post or an older post…
And on this particular day, I decided to share out one of my older posts for Mini Turkey Apple Toddler Meatballs; It’s been doing fairly well (for me) on Pinterest, so a little extra promotion never hurts!
I simply choose what I want to include in the snippet for each social channel, which then also shows me a preview.
From there, I can choose a particular time that I’d like the post(s) to go out.
What Else Does CoSchedule Have To Offer?
So the social media sharing is a big way I’ve been using CoSchedule, but I’ve recently upgraded to one of their newer plans which will allow me to access some new features such as:
- Scheduling to Pinterest
- Social Templates (which I’ve been WAITING for and am SO excited about!!)
- Headline Analyzer (to help with writing better headlines)
- Social Automation (automatically re-share your best content)
- Best Time Scheduling (CoSchedule will choose the best time to publish your posts!)
Other Ways You Can Use An Editorial Calendar?
- Start blog drafts when ideas are fresh and go back when you’re ready
- Brainstorm ideas and topics in advance so you’ve always got ideas at the ready
- Determine your publishing frequency
- Help be more organized with ensuring you’re hitting deadlines for sponsored content, etc.
I’m starting to transition over a bit more to CoSchedule in this regard, as I’ve been using Google Calendar for about a year as my blog post schedule, but I think using the two combined will just help further streamline everything in one place.
Here are some more screenshots that showcase all that CoSchedule has to offer (since I’m still not using all of the features just yet…!)
And here’s a quick 2:00 video explaining it in a little further detail…
CoSchedule has a variety of pricing plans based on what your needs are, but for a solo blogger, their standard plan is just $15/month (I had been paying $10/month on my previous plan before upgrading) and it integrates with all major social platforms including WordPress, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Buffer.
*I would HIGHLY recommend it for anyone who is looking to get their blog content a little better organized and work on the social sharing of their content!
For my fellow bloggers out there: do you use CoSchedule or any other kind of editorial calendar?
Brynn says
Coschesule is the best tool for bloggers in my opinion simply based on the time it saves you! The tool takes all of the things you should be doing and makes it simple, organized and centrally located. I’m a big fan. I also use a standard paper calendar to do my initial planning.
Shawna says
This is all new to me, and I’ve never even considered that things like this exist! I’m lucky I manage to eek posts out now and then at this point! Sounds helpful and effective – I’ll have to look into it more and see if it’s something I would really use or be totally confused about. :) Thx for sharing.
Jill @ RunEatSnap says
I signed up for the free trial of Coschedule but it was so overwhelming, I never used it. Do you write your blog posts through Coschedule now instead of just within WordPress?
Courtney says
No, I haven’t tried writing any blog posts from within CoSchedule just yet. I may try it down the road, but for now, I still like using Windows Live Writer!
Brock says
Thanks for the awesome review of CoSchedule! We loved reading it. :)
Sarah @ Sweet Miles says
I’ve looked into CoSchedule before, but haven’t made the jump to pay for it! I’m not sure how much I’d use it, but you’re pretty convincing! I schedule a lot of social things through Buffer, or at least I used to, and I write everything out in my Day Designer planner by hand since I’m old school! I do need something like this that would bring everything together in one place! I usually keep a huge folder of Drafts in my wordpress back end, so I’m not sure how much CS would help with that?
Lauren @ The Bikini Experiment says
I have used CoSchedule for about six months. I like some of the scheduling features.