I love blogging, and I love finding new things that make blogging even better. I am always grateful to learn of some new plug-in or layout or company that will help me grow my business and save time! That’s why I was thrilled to learn about CoSchedule. (These links are my personal referral links. Thank you!)
CoSchedule
CoSchedule is an editorial calendar and social media calendar accessible right from your WordPress.org blog dashboard. It allows you to easily click and drag and move around posts and drafts in your editorial calendar. If you have a last minute change in your editorial calendar, and wanted to move a scheduled post to a later (or earlier) day, all of those social media shares through CoSchedule will follow that post! You won’t have to change anything! It’ll automatically adjust the days and times of your tweets, pins, and shares! This is by far one of the greatest advantages of CoSchedule to other social media scheduling tools. No more having to jump over to Buffer or HootSuite or Facebook’s auto-scheduling tool and make changes. In fact, you won’t need those other sites anymore, and most of your blogging can be done right were your posts are created.
You can either go to the tab on the left, or scroll down to the bottom of a post draft/edit screen for the CoSchedule sharing box that looks something like this:
With CoSchedule you can also easily share old posts as well, and then can see how well a post has performed on social media, too.
Some of the great features of CoSchedule is that is also automatically pulls up your posts photos, allowing you to choose which one you want to share. This is especially helpful when sharing to Facebook as they don’t always pull up the desired image. It also auto-supplies your post title and the url in the shares, written as {title} and {permalink}. The permalink will be shortened using a bit.ly link (a new feature) even with Google Analytics tracking. You can share your post as a text link, an image post, or a link post. The text link is best for Facebook shares and tweets. The link post should always be used (and the {permalink} deleted) for shares to Pinterest. And the image post can be used for just about anything else. You can also do specific times for your shares (_ hours after post), or generic time spans (between 11am-3pm). You can choose to post the same day as post, the day after, a week after, a month after, or _ days after. You can even schedule posts via Buffer if you prefer!
I use CoSchedule to share to my:
- Facebook Fan Page
- Facebook Personal Profile
- Pinterest (Multiple boards can be added)
- Google+ Fan Page (Not Profile page unfortunately)
I really like how easy CoSchedule makes sharing pictures to Twitter too! I never add pictures to my tweets normally, but when it’s super easy, why not?
When it comes to Google Plus, I end up just sharing from my fan page (which has three followers) to my personal page which has over 1000.
Even though you can add multiple Pinterest boards to CoSchedule, right now I only have my What’s up Fagans? blog Pinterest board linked in. That’s because I prefer to schedule pins through ViralTag and Ahalogy. But, because all of my other social media shares can be done from my dashboard, it means I only have one social media network to share to after my post is published – Pinterest – and I am still saving a huge amount of time!
Freedom!
I recently moved across the country and honestly most people wouldn’t know because I had posts scheduled like normal during the two weeks I got situated and moved in. While some of that was planning ahead and getting posts written or having some guest posts, all of my social media shares were done ahead of time straight from the blog post itself thanks to CoSchedule. I didn’t have to worry about my stats dying off because my posts weren’t being shared. In fact, my stats held steady for the week and a half I was without internet and my desktop. Because of CoSchedule, I don’t have to worry about being on my computer to share to Facebook or Twitter at key times of the day. That to me is priceless. That is why I decided to pay for the membership.
CoSchedule Free Trials and Paid Subscription
CoSchedule wants people to try them out, so they offer you a two-week free trial. I really loved it after the two weeks (you can get it extended if you ask as well) and decided to pay the $10 a month to keep it on my dashboard.
Part of why I chose to keep it is because it allows me more freedom to be away from my computer. This means I am finding a better balance between playing with my kids and taking care of my home, while still sharing on social media, and running this blog.
I also love their awesome, helpful, customer service! After I signed up for the subscription, I got a free little notebook in the mail and a little welcome card. They also have people standing by to message and chat with you should you have any problems or concerns about your service. I found them very helpful in answering some questions I had during my free trial.
If you think $10 a month is too much, the good news is that they also offer a cheaper yearly plan which will save you $20. Also, you can refer your friends (these links have been my referral links) and if they sign up for the paid subscription you will receive a 10% discount off your monthly or yearly price. You can also write a review and save 50% off of your subscription for an entire year! (Disclaimer: That’s what this post is).
Oh, and their blog is full of awesome blogging tips too!
Sign up for a free trial and let me know if you like it!
What tools do you use to schedule your social media shares?
Katelyn Fagan is a young momma of three young kids – twin preschoolers and a one year old. She blogs over at What’s up Fagans? about parenting, her less than perfect self, money saving tips, and more. She loves blogging, reading books, the great outdoors, her husband, Jesus Christ, and smiling, because life is good. Follow her on Facebook | Pinterest | Twitter | Google+.