If you ever thought about starting your own blog then you can expect that in the beginning you’ll have a lot of tasks to manage across different areas of activity: creating content, managing social media, scheduling email newsletters, answering incoming requests, creating images, and so much more. How do I know this? Because that’s what I had to do when I just started this blog three years ago.
That is why today I’m sharing with you a behind-the-scenes look at how I organize my blog with CoSchedule — the only way to organize all of your marketing in one place. CoSchedule offers three products to help you get more done in less time: Blog Calendar, Marketing Calendar, and Marketing Suite.
The plan I’m using is called Blog Calendar by CoSchedule. In this post, I’m going to talk about what is so special about it and why I recommend it if you started or planning to start your blog. Let’s dive in.
Planning and Writing Blog Posts
One of the biggest challenges you face when starting your blog is planning and writing blog posts regularly.
The key to success lies in the proper coordination of your writing tasks with everything else on your plate.
That is what CoSchedule allows you to do by providing you with the ability to create projects and schedule tasks.
I’ve been using CoSchedule for three years and tried different ways to plan and write blog posts. But eventually, I settled with two task templates: a blog post in one week and a blog post in two weeks.
I always plan ahead so, if today is Monday, June 1st, I will create a blog post project on Tuesday, June 9th, and apply a project template called “blog post in 1 week.”
Here’s how it looks on the calendar (click the image for a closer look):
Planning and Writing Newsletters to Subscribers
Running your blog is not only about writing blog posts. It’s also about keeping in touch with your subscribers.
Even if your blog is very new and you have only one subscriber, it’s still vitally important to write an email to that one person.
The sooner you start doing it, the easier it will get as more and more people sign up for your newsletter.
And here’s where CoSchedule makes it super easy for you to plan and coordinate writing your blog posts with your email newsletter. You can reuse “blog project” by applying a different color label and use it to schedule all the tasks related to writing emails.
In my previous example, I planned my new blog post on Tuesday, June 9th. What I usually do is send a newsletter the next day after the post is published. So I will schedule my email on Wednesday, June 10th.
And the best part here is that I’ve designed my “Email” projects to coordinate similar tasks with “Blog post” projects: writing, brainstorming headlines, editing, etc.
Here’s how it looks on the calendar (click the image for a closer look):
Managing Social Media Across All Major Platforms
After you’ve written your blog post and newsletter, you also need to promote your content on your favorite social media channels.
And you guessed it right – CoSchedule allows you to create a social scheduling template for this too!
CoSchedule supports Facebook Pages, Facebook Groups, Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and Twitter.
I’ve tried different templates but eventually settled on the one that promotes my blog post on all social media channels for an entire year. With CoSchedule, you can create different templates that will drip your social messages over a time period of your choosing.
Not only that, but you also get a power-up called ReQueue which is available on all plans at no additional cost.
ReQueue allows you to re-share all your existing social messages across all platforms in a natural, non-spammy way.
Here’s how Social Campaign looks on the calendar (click the image for a closer look)
Integrating All Tools In One Place
One of the best things about CoSchedule is how it allows you to integrate all your essential tools in one place.
I’ve already covered writing blog posts, newsletters, and automating all your social media sharing. But it doesn’t stop there.
CoSchedule directly integrates with WordPress, Google Docs, and Dropbox. So you can create your project, gather all materials, edit in Google Docs, and then convert it into a ready-made post with one click. I love this feature and been using it a lot lately.
I’ve covered a lot, but not everything. CoSchedule has a lot of other features and integrations that will help you beat blogging overwhelm, save time, and focus on what’s really important to you.
To try all the features I described in this article, you need to sign up for the Blog Calendar by CoSchedule . You have 14 days to try all the features for free. Start your trial today.
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