Building my business is really hard work. One of my biggest pain points for me is writing great content on this blog and promoting that content to my audience, social media subscribers, and my email list. For me, I’ve been using Evernote in a process to create and publish blog post articles, but I still have problems promoting the posts on social media. So, I am adding CoSchedule to my workflow for content creation and marketing.
For me, the reasons are clear. I needed a way to integrate my process in Evernote with my blog built on WordPress. Further, I needed to add features like ReQueue so that older posts and those with more evergreen flavor could be added and promoted without my direct involvement.
What else did I find helpful? Read on for my review of CoSchedule.
What is CoSchedule?
I could use words, but like Kevin in the Office Says, why use many words when few words do trick? Watch this video for more about CoSchedule:
Process
I’m a big process guy and love making sure things are done according to a plan. What I love about CoSchedule is that I can create a number of processes for my work. CoSchedule allows me to create new checklists in CoSchedule that I can follow when writing my posts, like the one shown below:
When you create a new post and apply the new checklist, CoSchedule creates a cool percentage bar to motivate you to complete your post. I’m sure that you can create other checklists and workflows for other content types.
Calendar View of Your Social and Blog Posts
In this image you can see how CoSchedule uses the calendar to show you when tweets are going to be tweeted, and other social media. Because I’m just getting started, I don’t have much to share, so I used their stock images. CoSchedule will schedule all the social media posts for my Twitter account, Facebook Page, LinkedIn Profile, and configure Instagram posts to publish as well.
Perhaps the greatest feature of CoSchedule is that I have a month by month view of when posts are going to be scheduled and posted, and when subsequent social media posts will be completed. This way I have not only a per-post view on content, but I also have a more birds’ eye view of my monthly calendar content. I can begin to flesh out stories, themes, and ideas within the month and reminders to get the work done too.
Additional Features
There are a number of services that CoSchedule plays well with, and if you do decide to use CoSchedule, you’ll want to add them when you get set up:
Google Docs
If you’re a Google Docs user, you can use Google Docs and Google Calendar to manage your content marketing schedule and content all within Google using the integration.
Evernote
This is what convinced me to use CoSchedule, that I could use Evernote with CoSchedule. I was able to sync up a notebook with my existing blog posts written, and import the note into the blog post. I simply format the post and schedule now!
WordPress
CoSchedule has the ability to manage the content creation process within it’s own ecosystem online, but some people may be comfortable or find it easier to write content right in WordPress, so it’s a no-brainer that CoSchedule would work seamlessly within WordPress.
Google Analytics
A crucial part of content marketing is your hits, shares, and metrics on Google and how the content performs. You can easily add your Analytic ID to CoSchedule to track performance. Plus, CoSchedule automatically adds UTM parameters to track links shared on social media.
Headline Analyzer
Just like the subject line of an email, a blog post’s headline must entice the reader to click, read, and share the content. CoSchedule has created a Headline analyzer to help you craft the perfect headline for your post.
Social Integrations
After crafting my content, I need to get it to the eyes of my social media subscribers. CoSchedule integrates with the following social media accounts:
- Tumblr
Final Thoughts
I chose to go with CoSchedule because people I respect, Michael Hyatt and Jay Baer specifically, endorse the product. The calendar feature as well as the integrations convince me to add this to my workflow and services I use daily. It has the ability to scale with my organization should I want to add someone to help write content or help develop my content in the future.
If you would like to sign up for CoSchedule, sign up here.
