Google+, Twitter, Tumblr, YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Pinterest, Orkut … oh, forget about Orkut, that doesn't exist anymore. Phew!
But still, can you imagine posting to every single social media platform out there? When do you find time to photograph? Or, spend time with your family? You can drive yourself batty trying to be everywhere all the time. (Here is Gary Vaynerchuk's advice to master the four big platforms)
It's true, my wife thinks I am also married to my iMac and I am always sitting in front of it posting to these social media platforms at all hours of the day and night. At some point I experienced burn out. And you will too. It's a sense that all of this “work” you are doing online is really a huge waste of time.
That's just your tired brain aching for a break. And you should step away from it all. Heck Zack Arias gives himself a whole month each year (I believe it is December) when he opts out of all social media circles. And good for him. As the new year approaches, he is ready to give it a big push and has the energy for it too.
As I said, whenever I have done it, it has always felt great. But is it always necessary to give yourself a time-out? While I really haven't missed any of the platforms, there is still a very tiny portion of me that wonders if I could still be engaging with my audience and driving traffic to my site, while I am on that well-deserved break.
The easy way out when it comes to blogging, and several other well-known bloggers have already suggested it, is to simply schedule your new posts in WordPress ahead of time. This very post you are reading was written several days ago.
But that only takes care of the blogging side of the equation. What about social media? I use an application called Buffer with some success, but it requires you to load your articles and links up ahead of time and then have them appear at different times of the day on different platforms.
However, I really wanted a tool that would be in sync with my blog – posting blog posts to different platforms, at different times from the very same WordPress dashboard I was using to write and edit my content.
Thanks to Kim Doyal, I discovered that tool to be CoSchedule. I've now used it for over four weeks now and I can tell you the very reason I am posting this review is because I couldn't do without it. It's a plugin that sits below your content editing area (see screenshot below) and out of the way. It springs into action the minute you want to “Create Your First Message”. The tool is smart enough to pull in your blog post's url and set it up in a way that all you have to do is simply add your own out-going message. Interestingly, when I wrote a message that was longer than 140 characters, the system smartly told me that it couldn't send it to my Twitter feed because it was longer than Twitter allowed.
CoSchedule connects to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and Tumblr. Once you register your account, you are able to create as many messages as you want and thereby schedule the same post to appear a day, three days, seven days or even a month after it publishes, so that your audience will always see it front-and-center.
So, what are the three big reasons why you should use CoSchedule for your social media marketing?
1) Being Consistent
In any business, appearing consistent adds to your credibility and speaks of your reliability. When your posts consistently and frequently appears on all the platforms, your audience (aka. your potential clients) are going to be reassured that doing business with you is going to be a-ok. In CoSchedule, you set it up once and you just move on to the next blog post. You really don't have to do much more than that.
2) Drive Traffic
I don't have to tell you how traffic from Facebook has dropped significantly. The only way more number of people are going to see your blog posts on Facebook is if you make it a point to share your links at different times of the day, allowing for a greater number of people to visit your site. CoSchedule makes this happen very easily.
3) Encourage Engagement
Whether is Twitter, Facebook or even Google+, if your audience only retweets, likes or 1+'s your posts, you aren't going to go very far. What you need is for your audience to engage with your content and in the end, engage directly with you. CoSchedule‘s interface allows you to add your own flavor to the posts, making it possible for you to ask questions or displaying a call-to-action that will help you see results.
Want to know more? Check out this two-minute video overview:
So, do you believe you will use an editorial calendar like CoSchedule for your blogging and social media marketing efforts? Sound-off below to share your opinions with me. I trust CoSchedule will save you time and make you more efficient. It does for me. That's a win-win in my book!
