A Blogger’s Secret to Keeping Up when Life gets Busy

I rarely blog about … blogging – but today I want to share my secret to keeping up when life gets busy. (I have two holiday craft posts coming up in the next few days, I promise!)

Do you love making lists? Are you an agenda-o-holic? Do you LOVE notebooks, diaries, calendars? I do.

Fair to say, my life has gotten pretty busy in the past while with the birth of my daughter, countless house guests, recovering from a C-section and the holidays upon us. Even with my love of ‘organizing’ and ‘note-taking’, things slip through the cracks – especially when it comes to social media and blogging.

So – how do you deal with the constant requirement to ‘be everywhere’ while you’re busy being somewhere else? In this day? A scheduling program that kicks butt and still appeals to the ‘list maker’ in me!

First let me say –

I don’t like writing about things a) that I don’t actually use, b) that I don’t actually love and c) that I think are disingenuous… but I must say I could not have kept blogging these past few months without CoSchedule. Seriously. I couldn’t have done it.

CoSchedule is a blogger’s dream when it comes to managing the social media and business side of things. I know. I wish my blog was all just paint, decor and projects – but there is some serious back end stuff that goes on behind the scenes to keep it all going. Basically, it’s an integrated calendar that lets you write, schedule and promote ALL THE THINGS all in one place.

Here’s what I love about it

It integrates with WordPress (BUT you can still use it on other platforms)

I barely even open WordPress anymore! I get straight to my blog via CoSchedule most times. I can click on a day of the week, click Add Post and voila! There it is. CoSchedule even analyzes post titles for me to let me know if I’m going to win at SEO with my word choices. (Sometimes titles are hard!) As you can see on my upcoming coaster post, I’m scoring a 61. Maybe I can do better? 🙂 

It’ll pick the best time to share something

Most people who use social media recognize that it’s constantly changing. I live an hour ahead of Eastern Standard time, but a lot of my readers are local, but I have lots of readers from out west too! So what’s the best time to share a post so that most of my readers see it? I dunno. But CoSchedule does 🙂 I just let it decide the ‘best time’ for me and away I go.

I can link all my accounts in one handy spot

I like to check things off my list. In this case, I love that I can write a post, and schedule ALL it’s initial promotion in one session – Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, Google Plus, LinkedIn. It’s literally all on one screen. For example, this is the modal that comes up right beneath every post I write. I don’t even have to navigate away from my post. 

The customer service is among the best I’ve ever had EVER

I can’t say a single bad thing about the service I’ve had with CoSchedule. I’ve been a customer for three years – which in the digital age is like an eon. Courteous, fast to reply, quick to act, personable… just good service.

They test features, listen to feedback and actually make positive changes

Since I’ve been a customer for so long, the staff at CoSchedule have asked me to test a few features before they release them. I must say, I can actually SEE how they are taking blogger’s and business owner’s critiques and making positive changes to the product. They recently revamped a feature purely based on customer feedback. I REALLY love when companies do that.

Drag and Drop (small thing = big convenience)

My blog is organic and always changing. Sometimes a project won’t work out, or I’ll want to delay a post for some reason. If I just had WordPress, I’d have to reschedule each post individually and then somehow keep track of it all in a separate document or calendar. But CoSchedule lets you just drag and drop posts within one calendar, so you can always see what’s going where and when it will go live! So simple. But one of the best features, hands down. This is how my December calendar looks today – tomorrow, it’ll probably be different haha

Anyway, truth of the matter is, if there’s one ‘extra’ that I like to spend money on when it comes to blogging – it’s CoSchedule. If you’re a blogger, have a business blog, or have a need to have a consistent social presence, it could really be the right thing for you. I’m sharing this simply because I rely on it and truly do love using it.

If you’re interested in CoSchedule for your blog or website, you can learn more about it and sign up here.

And you can also watch this video that explains a little more.

As you can see by my calendar – I’ll be back next week with my gemstone coaster tutorial… any ideas for a better headline? 😉

xoxo – E

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