So I’ve recently come across what looks to be a pretty fabulous editorial and social media management tool called, CoSchedule. You can try it out for free on a a 14-day trial (Psst… I’ll let you in on a secret though, if you still aren’t sure after 14 days, you can email them and they will extend it for you!), although the $10/month fee is pretty nominal for the management time-saver CoSchedule is!
What You Can Do With CoSchedule ::
CoSchedule is really your one stop for publishing and scheduling not only your blog posts, but the social messages promoting those posts.
One of the biggest benefits of using CoSchedule is the ability schedule your posts and social promos through one interface. However, you can take it a step further, by scheduling subsequent social media messages to drip out over time and bring more traffic to that post over time.
For example, let’s say you have a Summer Camp post going live tomorrow and you really want to drive traffic to that resource. All you would need to do in CoSchedule is create a series of messages timed out over the course of days or weeks or even months once that post goes live. It truly is a schedule it, publish it and forget it solution!
The end goal of using CoSchedule is to spend less time managing your content and social content and more time working on growing your business!
Another huge benefit is the team collaboration element. Invite your team members to join in the calendar and assign them tasks or make comments on scheduled posts. A few examples would be to assign due dates or request changes to posts or even have them document when a post is ready for review in the comments section. This results in less emails back and forth and more effective collaboration ALL IN ONE PLACE!
With CoSchedule, you can also create, schedule and publish social media messages that are NOT tied to your blog content. Yes, this means you don’t have to manage a Tweetly or HootSuite account on top of CoSchedule.
How To Use CoSchedule As Editorial Calendar ::
Your CoSchedule Calendar can be found in your left toolbar. Look for the tab called, “Calendar”.
From the CoSchedule Calendar, you should see all your posts, whether already published, draft status or scheduled laid out according to publish/schedule date in your calendar view.
If you click on a post, you will see a pop-up screen that allows you to do a variety of things with that particular post, including:
- Change Post Title
- Change Author
- Change or Designate Category
- Set Status to “Published”, “Pending Review” or “Draft”
- Set Schedule Date and Time
- Create Your Social Messages for each post on your social channels
- Create Tasks for each post and assign them to other team members (i.e. Add Featured Image, Add Sponsor Links, etc.)
- Add Admin Comments for each post and direct them to other team members (i.e. Sarah have you edited this? Or has this been approved by Sponsor?, etc.)
- There is a “Open In WordPress” button that will allow you to open the Post via the traditional Post editor to modify the content and images.
You can also create posts directly from the calendar interface by clicking on the pencil icon in the upper right corner above the calendar. Here you can create the Post Title, set the Category, select the Author and even the desired Publish Date. Then add Tasks to assign it to one of your contributors. This feature allows you to plan ahead and take any offline editorial calendars online and even integrated with your content, essentially removing a step from the process!
How To Use Social Media With CoSchedule ::
In the Settings tab above your Calendar, you will want to connect your Social Media profiles to make scheduling messages a breeze!
You can connect CoSchedule to the following social profiles: Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest and LinkedIn.
Once you do this, you are even able to schedule independent Social Messages not tied to blog content, but going to the pencil icon in the upper right corner above your calendar. Here select “New Social Message”.
With this feature, you can create your message, attach images and links as well as select which network to publish the post and set a publish date.
Essentially this feature would replace the need to use third party schedulers like Tweetly or HootSuite.
Would I Recommend It ::
Absolutely! If anything, I LOVE the idea of being able to communicate with your team through the Calendar versus receiving 10 – 20 emails each week about posts being ready or not being ready or necessary edits, etc.
From a marketing and blog traffic perspective, the ability to schedule a series of social messages to keep driving traffic to a blog post weeks, months or even a year after it publishes warms my heart! You all have such AWESOME content and it often gets lost as time passes. This feature really allows you to bring new life to older content AND you can preschedule it so you don’t even have to think about it after you create the message! Create it and forget it!
Would Your Sisters Recommend It ::
So far we are really enjoying playing with it. I do not think we have fully maximized it, BUT I like the way that it posts to Facebook and Twitter from within a post if you choose: example here. So as part of the editing process, you can literally schedule social media for that content to your heart’s desire. While I have not yet had time to explore what using the calendar for editorial processes might look like, I love that you can easily choose a day (I am very visual), choose a social media platform (Twitter or Facebook) and then draft your social media content. It’s also neat that you can go back on the calendar and schedule social media for “old” content all within one system. If you are highly visual, the layout is likely to appeal to you … and if you like to “set it and forget it” (i.e. automate Facebook ahead of time) then it is pretty awesome for that.
:: Ashley Angelico, New Orleans Moms Blog ::
Still testing out Co-Schedule but so far it does what it says. You can schedule social media when you schedule the posts themselves which is really handy if the person editing also does social media. It is great for pre-scheduling, because there is no copy and paste of the URL it is just ready to go. I like the feature of looking at an actual calendar. Helps me better visualize the days/weeks/months.
:: Emily Strong, Fort Worth Moms Blog ::
If you want help getting set-up or have further questions, please let me know!