How to Make Blog + Social Media Scheduling Easy: CoSchedule Blogging Tool Review

Finding time to blog is tough, but finding time to blog and post social media for that blog can be even tougher. That’s why I first tried CoSchedule a few months ago, and honestly, I’m in love with it. Here’s a quick video overview of what CoSchedule can do:

I started using CoSchedule a few months ago for Adult Ballerina Project and I also used it as part of my job, too.

What is CoSchedule?

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It is a drag-and-drop editorial calendar for WordPress that puts your blog posts and social media messages on the same schedule. It beats out the normal calendar provided in WordPress (and other calendar plugins) with the social media add-in. I love that CoSchedule has a “drag and drop” option so that if you want to quickly move a post from one day to another, you don’t have to log in to WordPress and change the scheduled date/time. You can also move a scheduled post to drafts and a draft to the calendar.

Key Features:

Here’s a list of other key features CoSchedule lists as including:

  • Drag-And-Drop Editorial Calendar
  • Schedule Social Media While You Blog
  • Save Time, Grow Traffic
  • Easily Re-Schedule Old Blog Content
  • Lightweight WordPress Plugin
  • Automated Social Publishing
  • Simple Team Communication
  • All-In-One Publishing Solution
  • No More WordPress Hacking

What platforms work with CoSchedule?

CoSchedule works with WordPress, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Buffer, and even Google+ Pages (using a to Buffer). One of my favorite was to use CoSchedule is to push posts to Buffer, so that I can re-arrange them using Buffer’s built-in scheduling system (pre-set times set by you). It makes it super easy to rearrange the order of your posts and even remove things last-minute if you need to — like if you discovered an error in a post and don’t want to share it again, but you’re on the go and only have your phone.)

While CoSchedule has no mobile app at the moment (a downside) — if you push to Buffer, you can have access via their mobile app to edit and change things on the go!

Multiple Blogs and Users

I love that you can have multiple blogs (great if you run many of them) and multiple users. While I don’t currently take advantage of these, I’m looking forward to using the multiple users functionality when my interns start. You can even set tasks for users (or yourself, for that matter — I often set tasks for myself so I remember certain things I want to include in social media posts in the future!)

See your top posts

I love that CoSchedule will tell you how often and on what platforms your posts get shared on. I also love that you can see what your top posts are, either over a specific time period or all time. Here’s ABP’s top posts of all time by social sharing:

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Other Integrations

I love that you can connect Bit.ly, Google Analytics, and Google calendar to CoSchedule, too! It makes it super easy to help track of how posts and social media is doing.

Test it Out!

If you want to test to see if you’ll love CoSchedule as much as I do for all your blogging needs, CoSchedule offers a free trial.  You can also extend your trial for every social media account you link up to CoSchedule (which I did when testing it out!

 

#AdultBallet Twitter Chat

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A couple of years ago, I held a few Twitter chats with some of the adult ballerinas I met on Twitter. I want to hold another one, and right now I just want to get a good idea of when might be a good time (once I get a general idea, I’ll hold another poll for the actual date).

I’m also running a version of this poll over on the Adult Ballerinas Facebook group (if you aren’t already a member — go join!).

Quick update about the forums + Twitter Chat

As you may have noticed, the forums are gone. I couldn’t get them to work correctly and they ended up created a lot of spam on ABP. However, we have quite the growing Facebook group going on at the moment. Just request access and then introduce yourself!

Also, I’d love to start hosting Twitter chats again! We held a few about a year and half ago. Let me know if you’re interested in the comments (and please leave your Twitter handle if I don’t already follow you!) I’d also like to get people to co-host and ask questions with me on a regular basis, so let me know if you’re interested in that as well.

Forum? Facebook Group? More Twitter Chats? You Decide!

I’ve toyed around with the idea of having a forum on Adult Ballerina Project for a while now (we even had a baby one for a little while)–but I’m not sure how successful it would be. So I’m debating starting up a Facebook Group for all the ballet dancers out there to chat, share their stories and their blog posts–but I wanted to check to see who would be interested.

So let me know by voting in this poll (and leaving some notes in the comments!) about what you’d like to see most, whether it’d be a Facebook group, a Google+ Community (which does already exist), more Twitter chats (we’ve had a few) or something entirely different!

A Crazy #NationalRunningDay

I know, I know. Enough with the running, this is a ballet blog. I promise there will be more ballet things soon, running has just become a big part of my life and has helped get me more and more in shape (which is helping with ballet too).

Today is National Running Day, and although I got a later start than I would have like (it was already starting to warm up a fair amount), HQ–my boyfriend if you don’t already know that–and I set out to run on the Schuylkill River Trail here in Philly instead of the track here at Temple University. While it’s nice to have a nice, soft, flat surface to run on, running in circles kind of drives me crazy. It doesn’t do much for my motivation either–I always want to quit early. Running on a trail means I essentially need to keep going because I have to get home somehow.

On our way there, while waiting for the subway, we heard a cop tell the subway attendant that a building had collapsed in center city and were interested to see if we could see anything of what happened during our run. We stopped in 30th street station (I had to pee as usual) before heading down to the trail and saw how crazy it looked on the news.

Anyway, it was a good run (albeit slower than I would have liked) and we stopped to take some pictures along the way by the river.

HQ by the river!

HQ by the river!

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And Me!

We decided to run around lunchtime because I learned on Twitter in the morning that my favorite lunch truck in Philly, Mac Mart, was going to be at The Porch at 30th Street. I LOVE this truck–and since my favorite mac and cheese was on the menu for today (Bacon, Ranch and Tomato aka BRAT Mac) I knew we just had to make it part of our running trip.

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The most delicious mac and cheese.

We had planned to walk to Ulta to get some things we had planned to pick up before (but we didn’t have coupons with us–hello broke college student/broke college grad status), so we got to cross over by where the building collapse had happened.

How often is it that you find you can just walk straight down the center of the Market Street Bridge?

How often is it that you find you can just walk straight down the center of the Market Street Bridge?

We were then detoured down to Chestnut Street (which was the direction we were headed anyway) on the foot bridge that connects Market and Chestnut (which I sadly never knew existed despite living in Philly for four years). They still had the rode blocked off there.

An empty Chestnut Street near where I used to work.

An empty Chestnut Street near where I used to work.

Finally we made it to Ulta, which I love now that we finally have one in Philly. I even got an extra workout here as it’s three stories and I probably went up and down them 4 times to get different things. Overall, our journey ended up taking us about 5 miles (3 of them running on the trail). I’d say it was a successful National Running Day!

How did you celebrate if you’re a runner?