Are you looking for a way to expand your social media presence without spending a lot more time and effort? If you’re using WordPress, I think CoSchedule can help!
CoSchedule calls itself a social media calendar for WordPress — but I think of it as an awesome way to super-charge your blog’s social media presence without spending hours and hours you should be curating and creating excellent blog content.
CoSchedule is an EPIC WordPress plugin for churches, ministries, nonprofits and pro bloggers to prepare social media messages, across many platforms, straight from the WordPress Edit Post screen.
Check this out:
CoSchedule — A Social Media Editorial Calendar for WordPress
After taking advantage of CoSchedule’s 14-day free trial, I was sold. Right from the very start, I could see how CoSchedule could make for a better social media reach for blog content, but also save me time.
Before
Before I started using CoSchedule, every few days I would pull-up every blog post and re-share each bit of content across Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn and Pinterest. It was laborious, but a necessary evil to maximize social media reach. This tactic had several pitfalls. Each Pinterest pin and social media share took time for each app to load and I usually had to re-read parts of each blog post to find quotes and other bits of extra awesome. The frustrating part was, all of these posts I had read before when I prepared them for posting the first time! I was replicating work I had already done; moreover, when I was on vacation, social media would go ‘dark’ for newer blog content. All-in-all, it wasn’t working.
After
Now it’s super easy-breezy to prepare social media shares for each blog post. Just after editing a blog post—whether it be one that I’ve written or someone elses—I can pull quotes and add them to additional social media shares, add pins to Pinterest when the blog post is posted or days after. There are so many options, and it’s all done from the WordPress Edit Post screen:
You can specify if it’s a ‘Text Post,’ ‘Image Post’ or ‘Link Post’—I love how easy this is!
Less Plugins #FTW!
Before using CoScedule, I used the Jetpack module for automatically sharing blog posts and the ol’ standby, Revive Old Post to retweet older blog posts on Twitter. While the Jetpack module was just fine, sometimes it’s nice to add a Twitter mention when a blog post drops specifically on Twitter, instead of all social media accounts; plus, it’s always better to run your WordPress install as lean as you can.
So switching from the Jetpack module to CoSchedule for this task only made sense. As for the Revive Old Post, I now have more control over what is shared in future days, weeks and even months, across all social media channels, something that Revive Old Post is not capiable of doing. And as before, giving the chance to cut back another plugin always feels good.
Behold the Power of CoSchedule
If you think CoSchedule sounds super-cool now, wait until you start digging into the other options! You can view your entire editorial calendar:
And you can make changes to blog post meta data, view social sharing data, and other cool options in the CoSchedule admin:
Conclusion
I’ve been following CoSchedule ever since they invited me as a beta tester and they have consistently improved, streamlined and even added more robust tools that compliment this already stellar WordPress plugin. When you consider how much better your social media sharing of blog content will be with CoSchedule and couple it with how much time you may save, CoSchedule’s $10 per month price tag is well worth the expense.
Michael Beil says
CoSchedule is great.
Eric Dye says
Yes. Yes it is. 😀
Chris Wilson says
Wow, this looks like a really impressive tool. I’ve seen a few people mentioning about it but the price put me off…now I might have to consider it again.
Eric Dye says
I was the same way, but when I consider the time it saves me and the ease that it gives, I had to give in.
Garrett Moon says
Great to hear about your experience as a beta tester and now customer of CoSchedule! We really appreciate it Eric. I am thrilled to hear that we are saving you some time and helping you promote ChruchMag 🙂
Eric Dye says
🙂