Without a doubt, CoSchedule is one of the few tools I’ve encountered in my 3 years of travel blogging that have TRULY been a game changer.  For those that are already using CoSchedule, you’re nodding in agreement with me.  For those that don’t know about CoSchedule, get ready for your mind to be blown.

Tell me if this sounds familiar.

  1. You started your blog as a hobby but you’ve begun to take it seriously after seeing traction.
  2. You continue to write but you wonder how you can grow your audience and traffic.
  3. Eventually you realize that social media is the place to be in to build your brand and drive more traffic to your site.  Facebook is easy because you’re using it already but then you also have to pick up Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram and maybe even Google+.  You start digging deep.  You might also discover an incredible community of like-minded bloggers on uber helpful Facebook groups.
  4. There’s excitement all over so you try to do a bit of everything.  A little bit of Twitter…Facebook…Instagram…Pinterest…and maybe even Google+.  You might even get involved in the sharing threads on FB too.
  5. Slowly all of this social media management starts eating up A LOT of time.

Before you know it, you’re spending more time tinkering with social media than you are improving your site and creating content.  Where did all that time go?

This comes from straight personal experience.  I got to a point where I understood the power of social but to be everywhere at once and maintain a consistent level of activity was dragging my productivity down.  What was happening was that my day-to-day consisted of trying to catch up with social.  On days I had a new post come out, things got even crazier because I’d end up spending a couple hours that day doing going into each of my social platforms and scheduling out my promotion in a very manual way.  It was that unsettling feeling of constantly having to keep up that I hated the most – like being on a treadmill and not actually moving forward.

There has to be a better way right??

CoSchedule to the rescue!

I’ll be honest, I was a bit thrown off by the name at first.  It sounds more like a tool that’s used when there are multiple authors involved but it’s so much more than that.

In a nutshell, CoSchedule is a super plugin that goes right into your WordPress site that not only gives you a fancy looking calendar that helps you plan your blog posts but more importantly allows you to schedule social media messages right in the post editor.

Yes we’re talking about SERIOUS productivity here.  Write, edit, schedule, Tweet, FB and G+ post all in one spot.  Hallelujah!

My workflow with CoSchedule

Without going into every single little fine detail of CoSchedule, I think the true awesome power of CoSchedule can only be explained through an example.  Why not an example for this exact post?

The beauty of CoSchedule is that while I’m in the mindset of writing an post for the blog, I can get all of my social messages out of the way right then and there instead of having to come to it after.

Step 1:  Write my post, add tags, categorize, upload feature photo, fill in Yoast SEO details as usual and schedule the post for the desired date.

CoSchedule WordPress Post Written

Step 2:  Start with Twitter messages in CoSchedule.  All tweets are image tweets using the feature photo.  I fill it out so that I have a tweet every single day (minus weekend) for 2 weeks.  I usually time my tweets for the morning (8AM – 11AM) as I’ve found that to be the most effective.

CoSchedule Sample Image Tweet

Tweets all filled in on CoSchedule

Tweets all filled in on CoSchedule

Step 3:  Next I do my Facebook page message.  I’ve tinkered with doing it as an image post vs link post and haven’t noticed any major differences.  I have to craft the message a little different here because if it’s a link post, I remove the {permalink} portion.  I also remove all hashtags and handles.

CoSchedule Sample Facebook Page Link Post

Step 4:  I don’t have a Google+ account linked to Travel Blog Breakthrough but if I did, I’d do that next with a similar type of message as Facebook.  I find longer messages sometimes work well with Google+ so feel free to write more.  Also you can wrap an asterix (*) around text to make it bold with Google+.

Step 5:  I then work on the Facebook groups last.  Yes it actually can connect to Facebook groups!! There are several Facebook groups that allow self-promotion so I click all of the ones I want to share to and put together the same link post for all of them.  For Facebook, I’ve had more success with messages later in the day so I usually send them out at 3PM – 10PM.

CoSchedule Sample Facebook Group Link Post

And done!  The beauty in all this is that I literally don’t have to worry about any being on top of social messages when a new post goes out.  Once all this is scheduled, it just shoots out the message when it’s scheduled.  All I have to do is sit back and relax.

It does more??

Now I’m feeling like this is some sort of infomercial but I swear there really is more!

For me, I was totally sold on the fact I could schedule social media posts as part of my writing workflow in WordPress.  But yes there are a bunch of other neat features that I probably shouldn’t overlook.

  1. CoSchedule has its own web app on coschedule.com so if for some reason you can’t access wp-admin, you can go to CoSchedule and do the exact same things as you would be able to in WordPress.  If you have multiple blogs linked to CoSchedule, you can see them in one spot on the web app instead of logging into each one in separate tabs.  Brilliant!CoSchedule Web App Dashboard
  2. CoSchedule keeps track of all your social shares so whether within WordPress or on the web app, you can see how your posts are doing on social.  You can also see your top posts at any point which allows you re-share those that have done the best.CoSchedule Top Posts
  3. I haven’t even talked about the editorial calendar yet.  Through the calendar I can see every single blog post and social share all in one spot.  The genius behind all of this is that you can drag and drop your posts from one date to another.  Because all of your social shares are relative to the scheduled post date (i.e. one day later, one week later), even when you drag and drop your post to be scheduled on a different date, all of your social messages will also move accordingly.  Drag and drop works for individual social messages too! CoSchedule Calendar
  4. If you are collaborating with other writers, CoSchedule allows you to assign tasks to specific people and leave article specific comments.  You really don’t need any other editorial calendar tool after CoSchedule.CoSchedule Tasks and Comments
  5. I use bit.ly as my link shortener and CoSchedule can connect with it to ensure that every social message goes out with my custom goaw.pl shortened link.

What could be improved

I’m totally nitpicking at this point but if I were to point out a few things CoSchedule could do better they would be:

  • The biggest thing for sure is the fact that there currently is no integration with Pinterest.  That would be one less step I need to worry about if they had it built in.
  • It’d be nice if it connect with Google+ personal pages instead of just the company pages but meh Google+ isn’t that important to me right now so not too big of a loss.
  • Make it easier to add social messages to fill out the week instead of only having quick access to Day Of, Day After, Week After and Month After. What about 2 days after or 3 days after etc?
Video demonstration
If you want to watch in-depth videos, don’t miss out on my online course that explains exactly how to set up, use and incorporate CoSchedule into your blogging workflow + 9 other amazing tools that every blogger needs to know about.

How much does it cost?

CoSchedule Annual PricingThis is what the pricing structure looks like today.  I’m on the $9 per blog per month billed annually.  If you elect to go the monthly route, that goes up to $10.  For the value it brings and the time and stress it saves me, CoSchedule is totally worth it.  It’s also full access to everything at the price.  No stupid limits to the number of messages you can send out or restricted features.  The only big differences for bloggers is the number of social profiles, users and guest authors.

Try it for free for 14 days and you can tell me what you thought of it.

Getting CoSchedule set up is also a cinch.  It literally took me a whopping 10 minutes to get it all integrated.

How else can you augment this kind of automation?

Looking for more automation?  Don’t miss my posts about automating TwitterTriberr and the power of Facebook Groups.

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About author View all posts Author website

Will Tang

I'm the writer behind Going Awesome Places and through its growth, I've learned a heck of a lot from trial and error. I have a passion for helping others succeed and through TBB my hope is to empower you with what works (and what doesn't) so you know exactly how you can take your blog to the next level.

13 CommentsLeave a comment

  • I’ve heard plenty of great things about CoSchedule in the past but was stuck in that mindset of ‘why pay for something I can do myself.’ But you totally just sold me with this post! Having the social media integration is a game changer vs me scheduling in time when my posts are going to be published so I can then schedule social media!

    • Thanks for those kind words Marissa. Anyone you talk to that’s using CoSchedule now will tell you that they really can’t go back. I just can’t imagine having to do all that scheduling manually anymore. Productivity is key! 😀

  • Hey Will,

    Thanks for the awesome review! We really appreciate hearing all the ways you use CoSchedule since it helps us know we’re on the right path!

    I’ll definitely take to heart the few areas for improvement (we have our founders at Google today, so fingers crossed for deeper Google+ integration).

    Thanks again, and happy blogging!

    -Nathan from CoSchedule

  • Howdy Will,
    Glad you like the product and thanks for the great review and critique. I just wanted to comment about the third point of improvement “What about 2 days after or 3 days after etc?”

    This feature is available, just not as a top level button. When adding a social message (from any of the add buttons) you can select ‘__ Days’ option in the drop down. As shown in this image: http://bit.ly/1arfDdO

    After selection, the field entry changes to allow one to enter a numeric value as shown in this image: http://bit.ly/1bU1ztJ

    After saving, the messages will appear in the social queue grouped accordingly.

    If you have any questions about this, do not hesitate to contact CoSchedule support. We are here to help. 😀

    • Hey Jason,

      Thanks for stopping by! Yes I do know about the other feature but what I meant to say was that it would be more convenient if options could be made available to make it more convenient to do 2/3/4/5/6 days later. For now it’s fine as I just manually do it. The reason I need it is because when a new post comes out I typically make sure I get a tweet out a day for it.

  • Looks like a really useful app. I love how your blog is not just about the places you visit. You also help fellow travel bloggers make a business out of what they love.

  • Hi Will,

    Excellent review. I just signed up for a trial from your link. The price has gone up quite a bit since your post, but I’m excited to try things out.

    p.s. You have a great site. I’ll be back.

    • Hey William, ah the byproduct of success I suppose. Yes they’ve changed their pricing structure quite a few times since I started paying for them. The unfortunately thing about the plugin is that because of FB rules, I can no longer directly schedule to FB groups that I don’t admin. That has nerfed the product a bit but I continue using it as the social scheduling to my own accounts is still golden.

  • I was pretty much sold on CoSchedule based on your post, but when I went to their site, I saw that they’ve raised the price considerably (it’s now $20/mo for the most basic plan, with only 1 user and 5 social profiles).

    Now I’m not so sure..

    • Hey Sujeet, yeah they changed their pricing plan last year and while I’ve been grandfathered in, there are a lot of new features I don’t have access to as a result until I “upgrade”. That being said, they’ve been continuously adding more useful features. Considering how much I leverage CoSchedule for both my blogs, $20/month is well worth it because of how much time I save in my blogging process.

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