CoSchedule Editorial Calendar – Blogging Has Never Been Easier
Today I’m taking a little detour from talking about beauty to focus on the behind the scenes of my beauty blogger life. Running a blog is akin to having three full-time jobs. Planning and creating great posts, videos and photos can easily be all consuming. Keeping in touch with your precious readers, continually marketing the work you’ve done, networking with other bloggers and brands and planning your growth strategies while trying to live so you actually have something to blog about is really, really hard. Because of the time suck that is blogging, anything that helps keep me organized and frees my mind for the bigger tasks is my immediate bae. Enter CoSchedule, an editorial calendar and social media management app for bloggers and marketers.
I’m gonna try to not oversell this but here’s what I think about CoSchedule. I love CoSchedule like I love cooked food.
I’ve been using it for a few weeks and my entire blogger life has been miraculously transformed. Using CoSchedule is like hiring an assistant whose sole purpose is making sure I do what I’m supposed to do, when I’m supposed to do it. AND having a manager/partner who shows me what I’m doing well and where my blind spots are. It offers a real time, macro and micro view of my blogging and social media efforts with stats attached. Real time. Immediate feedback people!
OK, I’ll calm down a bit and give you the skinny gritty.
How Does CoSchedule Work
CoSchedule is a plugin for WordPress users that embeds into your post editor and connects your social media profiles so you can plan your calendar, create your content and schedule all your social media from inside your post. I’ll let you marinate on that for a moment.
Ready for more? It also syncs with Google Calendar, Evernote, Google Analytics, Bitly and Buffer to give you a completely integrated planning/blogging/social management suite. Shut the front door.
[click_to_tweet tweet=”.@CoSchedule changes the blogging game with dead simple social media planning and integration. #blogging #socialmedia” quote=”CoSchedule changes the blogging game with dead simple social media planning and integration.”]
I’m a little late to the CoSchedule game and by late I mean that it launched last year and I just started using it. This hurts my early adopter self to the core but I wasn’t on WordPress then. It’s not my fault!! *crying fake angry tears*
Back to the app. CoSchedule offers a drag-and-drop calendar that allows you to plan and schedule posts, tasks, events and social messages that can then be assigned to different team members, should you have any. I am my team so everything has my name attached to it but that’s more emo for another day. When you add a post idea to the calendar, it gets listed in your draft post editor in WordPress just as if you’d added directly from your dashboard. If you need to reorganize, just drag and drop to a different date/time.
Here’s a view from your WordPress dashboard.
I could gush all day but here’s a quick and easy feature list:
- Drag-and-drop editorial calendar
- Plan and schedule social sharing within each post
- Automated social sharing with optimized images
- Easily share older posts for wider reach
- Work within the app or from your dashboard
- Integrate with social metrics and content creation tools
- Communicate with team members on projects/tasks
- Save time and get your life
UPDATE: Here’s a NEW video showcasing loads of brand new features to make blogging/scheduling even easier!
CoSchedule Pricing
There are three calendar tiers, Solo, Team and Advanced and each one has three pricing structures based on how much integration and automation you require. As I said, I am my team so I used the Solo Marketing version for my trial which is $30/month. You can get the Solo Standard (without some of the integration) for $15/month. Click here for the full CoSchedule pricing breakdown.
Each option comes with a string-free 14-day trial and CoSchedule also offers a great referral program which makes it even sweeter.
In summary, I’ll say that this is one of the best apps I’ve ever encountered. It’s focused, specific and delivers exactly what it promises with a minimum of fuss and bother. I couldn’t be happier with it.
Do you use an editorial calendar for your blog? If you’re not a blogger, what apps have you found to make your missions easier? If you don’t care about any of this, thanks for reading this far and tell me what your favorite lipstick is.
Stay saucy beauties!
RECOMMENDED FOR YOU
Yep! I love CoSchedule! The social media management is awesome and I love the way you can move everything (including social media) around on your calendar. I just have the basic package though – do you find the Evernote integration is actually useful? I just do a copy and paste…
When I first signed up I thought I’d be using the integration with Evernote a lot and I haven’t used it at all. I compose posts in the post editor almost exclusively. Evernote is where my ideas and lists are but I never do more than a few sentences in Evernote.
So the basic set up is really more than enough.
I hear this is amazeballs. I need to try it. Seriously
This sounds like a great way of remaining organized. I’ve just recently began to use a blog planner and it has literally saved my blog.
Great post! The life of a blogger is definitely busy and things like this makes it just a bit easier. Thanks for sharing!
I used the free version one time and I was so confused that I went back to my reg editorial calendar that I use for free on wordpress. I might give it another try again when I can sit down and really get into it. I have heard it helps out a lot
I think it takes a minute to get accustomed to the views and what it all means, but once you figure it out, it’s a game changer! I discover new stuff that it can do every day.
Great post! I’ve been wondering if I should use an editorial calendar and scheduling service. Blogging is a lot of work!!
I think it’s completely worth it. Calendars and schedulers really help keep you organized and on top of things.
Does co-schedule only work with wordpress? I currently blog through weekly…and am desperately wanting to switch over to wordpress…but I have been dragging my feet because I am afraid of what a nightmare it will be!
Hey Amy! Yes it only works with WordPress and as for your switch, do it! I dragged my feet for YEARS before switching from Blogger for the same reason but it was a lot of wasted time. I suggest hiring someone to do the transfer for you. I was still a wreck while the transfer was happening but I could have never done it myself without pulling out all my hair.
I am not using coschedule, but clearly, I need to be! Thanks for the review/tips. Can’t wait to get started!
Yay!! Please come back and tell me what you think.
Good info! Thanks for sharing! Trying to decide if I want to do this or not!
Do it, do it, do it! You’ll love it!
I promise if you do the free 14-day trial you will never look back!
This is seriously one of the best reviews that I’ve ever read, and I’ve been reading CoSchedule reviews for the last year! So glad that you’ve been loving CoSchedule. I had largely the same reaction when I started using it, and let me tell you – it hasn’t abated a bit. I feel like a walking billboard when I’m at food blog conferences, and I’m not even officially there for CoSchedule, but for my personal blog. I just love it so much I can’t shut up about it! It makes working here really easy though, I’ll tell you that much! I shared your review with the team. Happy CoScheduling!
Yay! Thanks Nicole! I’m glad you like it and I’m really honored that you shared it with the team. So cool!