3 Things You Must Know About CoSchedule

Welcome to episode 307 of Hit the Mic with The Stacey Harris.

All right guys, 307, and we are doing another tool review. I love social media tools, I think they’re super fun to play with but here’s the deal. There are a ton of them, a ton of them, we’ve reviewed a bunch of them before. I talked about this last week. The one that’s going to work is the one you use. For some of you that might be CoSchedule, and CoSchedule’s what we’re going to talk about today. I’m going to show you the three things you need to know about CoSchedule and I really want you to pay attention. If you are somebody who uses WordPress.org, as in it’s self-hosted, because on .com you can’t have plug-ins. If you use WordPress.org and you need help managing not just your social content but helping with your overall content strategy, and scheduling, and editorial calendar and stuff like that, this is going to be worth listening to because I’m going to break down why this might be the tool for you.

Again … 100% again, there is not one tool to rule them all, that’s uniform for everybody. There is however maybe one tool to rule them all for you, and this might be it. Again … Again, again, again, it’s about the tool you will use. Check out CoSchedule if you listen to this and you think, “Hmm, that sounds really fantastical,” then great, check it out. However, if you listen to this and you’re like, “I’m happy with the tool I’ve got, it seems like everything …” Then stay with the tool you’ve got. This is not me saying everybody needs to use CoSchedule. Full disclosure, I don’t use CoSchedule. I used it for the purposes of telling you guys about it today but I’m going back to my tool, eClincher, because that’s the tool that rules them all for me.

Again, everybody’s different and there’s no wrong choice here, just do something. Cool? All right, now I will get off my soapbox on that one, put it away for now, and let’s dive into the three things you must know about CoSchedule.

Number one, CoSchedule, not just a social media management tool.

That’s right. What’s cool about CoSchedule is it really does a great job of bringing together … I’m actually pulling up the website in front of me so that I can tell you guys some specific features that I really loved. It actually does a really good job of bringing your content marketing plan into one place. What’s cool is it will actually live inside of your WordPress site. When you pull up a post you can see your scheduling stuff. You can pull up your CoSchedule calendar so you can schedule from there.

What I really loved about this tool is, again, if you’re looking for a one stop shop kind of vibe and you want to be able to jump in, get it done, rock out your content, rock out some social and be out of there, this very well might be the tool for you because this makes that super, super simple. What you’ll see once you install the plug-in is on each of your posts down at the bottom you’ll actually see your calendar. You can connect your social profiles there and then you can set up your shares to go to the different places. It really allows you to do it right inside of your actual site. You don’t have to take your link and go to another site, figure it out there, and so on and so forth, keeping jumping through the tasks.

What’s cool is there’s two levels, there’s a team level and a solo level. If you’ve got a marketing team in place, maybe you’ve got a VA that helps you with your marketing or maybe you have somebody who helps you who’s in a marketing role. You can give them access as well and they can go in and take care of this stuff, but you still have the admin access that can go in and review everything, set some things up, assign tasks. Again, this is not just a social media tool, it’s literally a whole marketing tool. Some of the things that are really cool about it is it’s going to be your content marketing area, your social media marketing area, your marketing project’s area as in there’s a calendar for you and your team to work from, and also your blog management. Your editorial calendar where you plan it, where you promote it, where you push it.

What’s cool is you write the content, you set up the stuff in CoSchedule for social, you hit the button and away it goes. It schedules the post and then it schedules all the social and actually puts out that social. Again, that’s really, really powerful if you are somebody who’s overwhelmed by having all the choices or all the tools or all the places you have to go. Check this out for that.

The number two thing I want you to know is there’s no social listening.

One of my favorite things about the tools I use, one of my favorite things about a solid social media management tool is the listening part. I would consider CoSchedule a social media publishing tool, not so much a social media management tool because, again, there’s not anything where I’m seeing replies on Twitter or people engaging with the content, or comments onto my Facebook page or things like that. All I’m doing is I’m actually extending the marketing of my content, which is critical from a content marketing perspective. Content is only as good as sharing it and stuff but it leaves some money on the table when you start talking about listening, and engaging, and cultivating community.

For me, I would need to use this paired with another tool which, if you’ve listened to this show before, one of the things I love about the tool I use now is it allowed me to go from multiple tools to just one tool. That’s something to consider when you’re thinking about CoSchedule. You’re going to need something like Hootsuite or something like that to actually do a social listening or you’re going to go into each of your networks and check things. That is a really, really important thing. However, from a social broadcasting perspective, from a publishing perspective, this is a great option, again, if you wanted all the things in one place.

Be aware you’re going to need a different tool to do the engagement, you’re going to need a different part to do the listening. Please, please, please … Pretty please, with sprinkles and cherries and all that good stuff, don’t forget the listening part. It’s absolutely critical that you go in and you engage. You don’t want your content falling on deaf ears. Worse yet, you don’t want it falling on ears that genuinely don’t care. That’s what happens when you leave a community unattended, so to speak. Don’t forget that social media listening part but that’s not something you’re going to be able to get in CoSchedule.

The number three thing I want to talk about is the two ways you can engage with this tool.

As I said, you can actually engage with it right inside of your WordPress site. You can actually go into WordPress, write out your post, upload your podcast, whatever it is for you content-wise, embed your video, whatever it is for you content-wise. Then right on that same post page you can go in and you can schedule your social. Easy breezy, easy breezy, easy breezy. That’s awesome! However, you can also go to the calendar inside of your WordPress site and see your activities and your top posts and manage your team. That can all happen, again, right inside of your website.

In addition to that, you can actually go to the web based app … It’s just app.coschedule.com so it’s not like any sort of crazy far off land, and actually manage things from there as well. You can see your calendars, you can see top content, you can, again, manage your team. That allows you to get some analytics, some information about what’s been shared and how often it’s been shared. It allows you to get some love, some attention for what’s happening because maybe you don’t always want to manage it from your website. Maybe you want to go in and specifically pay attention to some of the things that are happening with your analytics and things like that. Well, you can do that in your app.

Well, there is two ways to engage with this. If you’re not always wanting to be in your website you can do it on the website on their web based app. If, again, you want to have all the things in one place you can actually manage this tool right from your website as a plug-in. Again, it’s got to be WordPress.org because it is a plug-in. Installing the plug-in took me literally two seconds. It’s really, really simple. When you set up your CoSchedule account it will prompt you to download the plug-in. You just have to upload the plug-in into your WordPress site and away you go, there you go. You just have to log in from there and it’s all right there, it really is that simple. If you’re somebody who’s a little tech-phobic this has a really low barrier to entry and, again, allows you to go in less places. You can manage it from your website or you can manage it from their web based app, which is really cool.

Those are the three things I wanted to touch on. What I want to kind of recap is my final thoughts for CoSchedule. CoSchedule is a really great tool and it’s going to be a really powerful tool for a lot of the people who listen to this show and who email me and are like, “I just want one thing.” Here’s your one thing with an asterisk. Meaning, you do need another tool for the social listening or to go into each of your profiles and listen manually, for lack of a better term. The pricing for CoSchedule is really, really reasonable. It starts at $15 a month when you bill annually or $19 if you bill month-to-month. There is a 14 day, risk free trial that doesn’t even require a credit card which is really cool, and that’s the solo standard.

Again, you can set it up so you work solo. Great, you can use the solo levels or if you have a team in place and you want to be able to really manage your whole content marketing and manage the team’s involvement all from one place, you can do that with the team level. The solo level is … I’m going to give you the month-to-month price but it’s $19 for solo standard, $39 for solo marketing or $79 for solo automation. I think the solo automation is really, really cool. For $79 a month you get a lot of information. Again, this is going to give you an all-in-one place, content marketing strategy.

They’re rolling out autopilot publishing which I don’t have the details of but I’m thinking that may be something similar to the cues we have or the libraries we have in Edgar or eCligner because the description says easy republish, evergreen content with social automation. That will be a game changer feature that will be available in the solo automation level. Again, that one’s $79 a month of $60 a month if you bill it out annually. When I first start using a tool I like to do the monthly to make sure the tool’s going to work for me over time. I’ll go about a quarter to make sure, and then if it’s working then I’ll switch to annual or, yeah, switch to annual building. Something to consider if you’re looking at this investment-wise. Again, that solo automation is going to be really cool.

Again, solo standard, $19 a month for the month-to-month, one user, five social profiles. For a lot of you who are just starting out or who are trying to get ahold of some of this automation and some of this content marketing, this is going to be a really fantastic entry level tool that will grow with you really nice, especially when you consider you can then move to a team level. The team level starts at $79 a month which gives you five users, 10 guests, and 10 social profiles. You’re going to be able to have workflows, you’ve got social media templates, there’s some premium integrations. If you have a team in place or you’re working towards that this is going to be a really powerful option when it comes to getting it done, when it comes to getting this scheduled and out there. Again, this isn’t just your social, this is your whole enchilada. This is your content marketing.

Again, I think CoSchedule just like every tool, not perfect, not for everyone but for a lot of you this is the episode you’ve been waiting for. This is the tool you’ve been waiting for me to talk about because this is going to be the one that really flips the switch and makes it easy for you to understand. Check out CoSchedule.com, all one word, check it out.

I can’t wait, I cannot wait to have you join us backstage. We’ve been working on Hit the Mic Backstage, making it even better for you guys. We added descriptions, we’re working on and there are some in there already, transcripts of a lot of the trainings. We’re doing some major community upgrades in the next few weeks. I’m going to have a big announcement today … I’m sorry, no, next week actually inside of the Facebook group for the next round of upgrades that are happening in the community.

I’d love to see you get in now so that you can really be a part of this growth, really be a part of this evolution, and get in on some pretty killer content. Last week we talked about setting up your recycled content so speaking of those libraries and cues in things like Edgar and eClincher. I actually showed you guys how to set that stuff up. Of course, that’s exclusive inside of the membership. On the 25th we’re talking about using free challenges to grow your email list, some do’s, some don’ts, some lessons learned. Promoting it, setting it up, the whole thing. Again, that is exclusive for members. If you want to be a part of this and you want to learn this stuff the only way to do that is come behind closed doors. That’s at hitthemicbackstage.com. I cannot wait to see you there and of course I’ll also see you on Tuesday. Bye.