How I Became an Organized Blogger

I always thought I was organized, until I started blogging. Over the last 18 months, my online presence started to suffer. After a good friend recommended the CoSchedule app to help me get organized with my posts, I decided to give it a try. This is a review of my experiences over the last 14 days with CoSchedule and what I’ve learned about social media and myself in the process.

I’ve spent the last 4 years gradually evolving into a food and fitness blogger, without really having a plan. I wasn’t organized. For the last 4 years, it just sort of happened. I got started sharing tips on Facebook and Instagram and then gradually started writing my thoughts out in full blog-style. Sometimes I’d get into such a writing mode that I’d post 3 articles in a couple days… then, the next time I’d post would be a few weeks later. I wasn’t organized at all. I’ve been watching the world do what I’m supposed to be passionate about, wondering “Why didn’t I think of that?” So, I knew I needed help.

What is CoSchedule?

Basically, CoSchedule is a great big and simple interface help you plan, publish, promote, and execute your marketing on one master calendar.

Some features include

• Marketing Calendar – turns marketing plans into real content with marketing calendar software designed to help you publish consistently.
• Social Media Scheduling – Plan, collaborate, and schedule social media better than ever to save time and get the most traffic for hard work.
• Workflows – Helps you and your team turn ideas into real, published content with clear deadlines and easy communication.
• WordPress Editorial Calendar Plugin – Save a ton of time and grow traffic by scheduling social media promotion right from WordPress while you blog!
• Integrations – Create, Manage, Publish, And share awesome content with integrations with WordPress, Evernote, Google Docs, Google Analytics and major social media tools like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Buffer, and even Google+ Pages.
• Google Chrome Extension – helps you share articles, quotes, and links with your followers without ever leaving your browser.
• Headline Analyzer – Stuck for a good blog title or social media headline? This analyzer helps you score your overall headline quality and will rate its ability to result in social shares, increased traffic, and SEO value. How cool is that?

Free 14 Day Trial

I was excited to see that CoShedule offers a free, no credit card required 14-day trial. Yay! If I wasn’t impressed, I wouldn’t have to remember to cancel my account. So, I signed up for my free trial. Here’s what happened over the next few hours and days.

My Initial Experiences

I’m VERY visual. From the moment I opened the CoSchedule app I was attracted to the appearance; clean and simple, without any unnecessary distractors. I immediately liked the feel of the entire site.

In my former life, I was a trainer. CoSchedule makes it a priority to train it’s users from the first minute of sign-up. After opening my account, CoSchedule immediately started showing me the impressive features. There is even a section of CoSchedule dedicated to training called the “Master Course.”

With the simplicity of the CoSchedule training, it actually took me less than an hour to run through all the short and informative videos within the Master Course. I highly recommend using this as your starting point. The Master Course shows you everything you need to know to get started quickly and easily such as, how to rock your CoSchedule Editorial Calendar and how to manage your CoSchedule Editorial Calendar the Easy Way. Seven quick and simple videos! I was totally impressed with the quality of this training AND the bonus downloads you can take advantage of as a CoSchedule Member through the informative CoSchedule blog.

How I’m Using It to Stay Organized

Right now, I’m using CoSchedule to help me develop workflows and come up with a blog post schedule that I can’t ignore. I recently developed a workflow for a recipe I posted called “Italian Style Breadsticks.” CoSchedule helped me remember to share this post on various social media streams over the next few days all from one place. I wrote the posts in a matter of minutes and scheduled them for publication at the “best times” CoSchedule suggested. Easy! Now I really could post on my blog and “walk away” freeing up more time for other things.

CoSchedule also helps me see which blog posts are performing the best. I love that. Now I know which posts to re-post on social media from one application. Brilliant. My site visitors have increased exponentially since I started using this feature.

CoSchedule allows me to work backward so that I have a plan to promote whatever I’m excited about with my followers. I’m very encouraged by this. Now, instead of trying to remember what to post and when to post, I schedule all of my posts upfront, deliver them through CoSchedule automatically and assess their performance. How much better can it get?

And, one of my favorite things about CoSchedule is that I can manage all of my content using drag-and-drop simplicity. Yeah!

What I’ve Observed

Over the last couple weeks I’ve observed a change with my online engagement. As I think in pipelines, I am able to see the success of my marketing endeavors all in one place; whether advertising for an upcoming event or promoting a blog post. Because the workflow is simple to set up, I can spend time doing the things I want to do… without having to micromanage every aspect of my blog. The engagement on my social media posts and blog increases every single day. Why? I’ve finally found consistency! I’m finally organized.

Will I Subscribe?

OH yes! No question at all. I’m in love. I have my life back… less time in front of the computer means more time with my hubbie and more time developing new recipes to share with my fans.