Are you looking for an easy way to free up more time to write, get organized, and create a social media promotion schedule? I found the ultimate solution in one tool.
Disclosure: I received a discount on my subscription in exchange for writing this post. All opinions are my own. Affiliate links used.
I’ve been blogging for five years as of June 2016!
Some of the posts I wrote in the early days were short, bad, or both! As time progressed, my writing improved, my images have improved, and my growth strategy has improved.
Related: How to Automate Your Blog Promotion and Skyrocket Your Pageviews
One of the things I’m hearing more and more about is spending more time promoting content than I spend creating content. But, guess what? I don’t have more time.
My Biggest Blogging Struggles
- Not enough time to write
- Lack of organization
- Lack of promotional schedule
I feel like I’m keeping myself stuck because of the limited time I have to spend on the blog.
Although I am passionate about my audience and serving its needs, but haven’t quite figured out how to make that happen while working full-time, raising two children, and being a great partner to my husband.
What is CoSchedule?
CoSchedule is a drag-and-drop editorial calendar for WordPress that puts your blog posts and social media messages on the same schedule.
How CoSchedule Gives Me More Time to Write
CoSchedule helps me have more time to write because I don’t have to manually schedule social media updates.
This screen shows basic post information along with any upcoming social media shares I’ve scheduled, social analytics, and that circled number represents the score of this headline using the “Headline Analyzer.” It is a free tool that will score your overall headline quality and rate its ability to result in social shares, increased traffic, and SEO value.
CoSchedule provides tips on maximizing your available time to write, planning out blog posts, and repurposing content.
With the “Top Posts” feature, I can get a quick overview of which posts have done the best on social media and quickly set up several re-shares.
How CoSchedule Organizes My Blog Life
I’m more organized with CoSchedule. I can organize my ideas, see the big picture of blog posts I have planned for the month (AKA my editorial calendar), get a feel for how many social media posts I have scheduled (AKA social media campaigns), and have a list of tasks to complete for each post.
CoSchedule‘s recommended list of tasks to complete before scheduling a blog post:
This helps me stay consistent with my blog posts and social media schedule by pre-planning days, weeks, and months in advance with reusable social templates.
How I Use CoSchedule for My Promotional Schedule
On an average 30 day period, 87% of my visitors are new. That means that only 13% of the visitors have ever been to my blog before.
Yes, it’s great to create fresh new content. But, let’s face it, only 13% of the readers know that this is a new post.
So, I’m doing myself and the new readers a disservice if I don’t let them know about the content I wrote the day before, the week before, last month, and last year.
Here’s an empty “social queue.” Using the queue, you’ll be able to easily share your content on social media more than once and create a steady drip of traffic back to your site. You’ll also be able to easily share your older posts with the world.
How do I know how often to promote my posts on social media? What days and times are best?
I use CoSchedule‘s Social Templates.
I can go back to an old post and apply a Social Template. My current template includes:
- Twitter, today, at the best time for my followers
- Twitter, today, in 5 hours
- Pinterest, today, at the best time for my followers
- Facebook, today, at the best time for my followers
- Twitter, next week, at the best time for my followers
- Twitter, next month, at the best time for my followers
- Facebook, next month, at the best time for my followers
This takes me literally one second to apply the Social Template. That’s four tweets, one pin, and two Facebook pages, in seconds!
I can edit any of the messages if I want, or I can leave them alone and publish as is.
CoSchedule guides me on the appropriate number of social posts to create. I based my schedule on CoSchedule‘s recommended schedule:
I’m going to assume that a percentage of my blog readers also follow me on at least one of the social networks. So now the reader will see a new post published today along with an old post I published (that he or she has never seen before).
How CoSchedule Makes Sure I’m Not Overwhelmed
It’s like having a virtual assistant.
Every Saturday morning, I get an email from CoSchedule recapping how many blog posts and social messages I posted during the week.
There’s a link to the posts, a total of the Social Shares, Incomplete Tasks, and Upcoming Social Messages. There’s even a warning/reminder to “Schedule additional social messages to increase traffic.”
The email also includes a recap of what’s scheduled for next week and a prompt to “Re-Share Top Posts.” CoSchedule maintains a list of your top performing blog posts. They recommend sharing these posts regularly to gain steady traffic with links to a few of your best posts that could use some additional promotion.
Why I Recommend CoSchedule
I’ve been using CoSchedule for nearly two years. In that time, they’ve added Pinterest integration, Social Templates, Social Campaigns, a Google Analytics Custom Dashboard, the Social Media Schedule Gauge, Best Time Scheduling (a tool that takes the guesswork out of what time to post your social media messages), and more!
Check Out CoSchedule for Yourself
They offer a free 14-day trial so you can try it for yourself, but after that, it’s only $19/month or $180/year (if you prepay, which makes it $15 a month).
Could you hire a virtual assistant, social media manager, or managing editor for $19 a month? No! Get started now for free.
Have you used CoSchedule? How have you overcome your blogging challenges?
Even though I use CoSchedule, there’s a lot I still don’t know about it like using Social Queue. I’ll definitely have to look into their recommended schedule. Probably would’ve helped if I took their master class! Visiting from Talk of the Town.
Hi Victoria!
Thanks for visiting.
You can try CoSchedule’s recommended Social Sharing Schedule Timeline:
On publish to Twitter, Facebook, Google+, and Tumblr
Same Day, 2 hours later to Twitter and Tumblr
Next Day to Twitter
Next Week to Twitter and Google+
Next Month to Twitter, Facebook, and Google+
Two Months later to Twitter
Set this up one time as your “template” and then simply apply it each time you publish a post. If you apply this to an already published post, CoSchedule automatically changes the “on publish” to make everything relative to today.
Their master course videos are here: http://help.coschedule.com/hc/en-us/sections/201121448-Master-Course-Videos
Please let me know if you have any more questions. I am happy to help!
Best,
Raki
This is amazing information.
I don’t use WordPress-
I wonder if blogger offers anything like this.
CoSchedule doesn’t currently work with the Blogger platform, but they are always making updates. May be available in the future.
Thank you for sharing this at Thoughts of Home.
We love having you.
I love anything that will help me get organized (especially with blogging). This looks like a great tool! Thanks for sharing at Welcome Home Wednesdays!