Why CoSchedule is The Best Social Media Scheduling Tool

After two years of waffling, I finally tried CoSechedule. Here is how I use it and why CoSchedule is the best social media scheduling tool.

Do you want to jump in and try CoSchedule? Click here to give it a try. 

A really cool thing about CoSchedule is that you can try it free for 14 days, and you don’t have to enter your credit card info. There’s no risk of forgetting to remove it and getting charged! Another great thing is the links on this page are affiliate links. If you enroll via that link, I get a commission!

Time is Precious

The time I spent scheduling social media made me feel ill. I often considered letting it go. Even though I knew I needed to promote my content, I knew that time was flying fast. All the copying and pasting I had to do was neither quality time for my blog nor me.

How could I make my content available to help more people and save time?

Before CoSchedule, I felt like I worked for social media platforms and for the social media scheduling tools. They made planning social media posts more manageable, but I still had to do most of the work. My social media was scheduled, but not automated.

My Process With My Former Social Media Scheduling Tool?

While my old process, my pre-CoSchedule process, did pretty well at cycling my tweets, my old social media scheduling had three ginormous flaws.

1. It required several hours every week to copy tweets from my Word Doc and paste them into my scheduling system.
2. If I didn’t copy and paste new tweets, or at least manually queue them again from the scheduling software, then nothing posted.
3. For many messages, I had to upload images each time I added them to the schedule.

The biggest problem was that I was spending several hours each week copying and pasting. That would never end for me. I either had to pay someone to do that for me, which I couldn’t afford, or I had to spend hours each week copying and pasting instead of generating new content.

At one point, I had 100 tweets scheduled. 5 tweets per day meant I was 20 days ahead. Woo who? I typically only stayed a few days ahead, though. A few times, I went a few days without any social media messages posted.

I stored my social media messages in Word documents. I recorded them by date so that I wouldn’t publish the same message too often.

By the time I tried CoSchedule, the Word document that logged my Tweets was over 17,000 words in 123 pages. I used Style headings so that I could jump between dates. My document contained about six months of tweets with 5 tweets per day.

How I Scheduled New Social Media Messages With the Old App

Here is my process for one new tweet.

1. Click the link in the scheduling platform to create a new post.
2. Compose tweet.
3. Copy the tweet text into the scheduling platform.
4. Find the image on my hard drive.
5. Upload image to scheduling platform.
6. Copy tweet text into the Word document under the date it tweeted.

How I Rescheduled Evergreen Social Media Messages With the Old App

I categorized my tweets into Medium posts, blog posts, and quotes. I alternated them as much as I could to keep my feed fresh. Nobody wants a stale feed.

1. Click the link to add a new post.
2. Go to the beginning of the document (the oldest tweets).
3. Cut the tweet text from the old date.
4. Paste the tweet text a the end of the Word doc (under the newer date)
5. Paste the message into the scheduling tool.
   The tool I was using is great about getting images from URLs, but I often had to…
6. Find the image on my hard drive.
7. Upload the image to the scheduling tool.
8. When I cut all the messages from the old date, delete that date from the Word document.
9. After every five messages, add a new date to the Word Document.
10. Format the date as a header so I could find it in the Word Doc.
11. Repeat the process again and again.

That was obviously not the best social media scheduling tool. My life before CoSchedule was so much copying and pasting.

Every time I pasted a quote into the Word Document, I know that I’d have to cut it and paste it again in a few months or have a stale social media profile.

What Makes CoSchedule the Best Social Media Scheduling Tool?

1. CoSchedule Requeue
2. Social Media Templates

What is CoSchedule ReQueue?

ReQueue is the primary reason I wanted to try out CoSchedule.

Although I think ReQueue could do a better job of posting at the best times, it absolutely helps to make CoSchedule the best social media scheduling tool.

I tell CoScshecule how many times each day and what times of day I want to Tweet. ReQueue automatically fills in all of the days and times that I don’t have tweets scheduled. If I manually schedule any tweets on a day, ReQueue automatically updates to accommodate the extra message on that day.

In a couple of hours, I will schedule this post and its social media messages using the process below. ReQueue will automatically reschedule my evergreen tweets around the new messages.

I don’t have to be a tool any more!

My Social Media Scheduling Process With CoSchedule

This is when I put CoSchedule to work for me!

In CoSchedule, I configured some ReQueue groups. A Requeue Group allows you to customize the automated social media shares. You can accept the defaults as quick setup and get started, or you can customize and control all of the following:

• The stop date and start date (like my Holiday Posts)
• The days of the week to share (Such as my Scary Sunday and Friday Feeling posts)
• The frequency a particular tweet can be shared (so your audience doesn’t feel SPAMMED with repetitive content)
• The number of messages tweeted per week for each ReQueue Group
• How many tweets per day for each social media platform
• The exact time or times the messages post.

I’m New to CoSchedule and Still Learning

Still, after a few weeks, I already see some opportunities where I can mix up my posts more and tailer them to the engagement I’m getting.

With the ReQueue groups configured, here is my new process.

1. Click the link in CoSchedule to create a new Reqeueue message.
2. Go to the beginning of the document (the oldest tweets).
3. Cut the tweet text from the old date.
4. Paste it into the Requeue message compose window.
   CoSchedule gets the image from the URL. For me quote tweets, I need to
5. Find the image on my hard drive.
6. Upload the image to CoSchedule.
7. Select the ReQueue Group in which I want the tweet rotated.
8. Select a social profile or profiles(s). (I can schedule the same message to multiple profiles.)
9. Click Save.

Then I never have to touch that message again! 

If I have empty spaces in my social media calendar, CoSchedule Reqeueu will automatically fill it with messages that haven’t been posted in months!

Automating my evergreen social media posts was the main reason I tried CoSchedule. I learned another valuable way CoSchedule does the work for me, though.

Social Media Templates

Before CoSchedule, I pretty much guessed at what messages to post to promote blog posts. I usually scheduled tweets, but usually missed Facebook and LinkedIn.

CoSchedule has Social Media Templates for new blog posts and to publish old blog posts.

Here is what the default social media template looks like.

I used a blog promotion schedule that I got from my blogging mentor Jonathan Milligan at Blogging Your Passion.

Candidly, it took me a couple of hours to set up my first social media template in CoSchedule. It’s 19 messages over 30 days. Some tweets repeat, but only after a couple of weeks.

What are Social Template Helpers?

I set up helpers to speed up my composing of new social media messages. As I’m preparing a blog post, I now make sure I have the following for each post:

• Title
• Excerpt
• Quote
• Hashtags
• A question
• 3 significant lines from the blog post

Here is a screenshot of a few of my helpers. Notice that some of them are already filled out for me!

You don’t need to add that many. I added a few extra. When I schedule the blog post, I apply my social media template to the blog post. Then I fill in the blanks for the helpers for a quote, hashtags, a question, and each line of copy.

CoSchedule automatically gets the title, URL, and excerpt from the blog post.

From entering those few lines into their fields, CoSchedule automatically composes and schedules my 19 messages over 30 days from when the blog post publishes.

It’s all automatic!

Fill Out the Social Media Helpers

Here are some of my social media helpers filled out. They are on the left.

On the right side, you can see helpers in the social media posts in the template. CoSchedule will fill the content of the social media posts with the text I enter in the Helpers.

CoSchedule is one of a few tools that I legitimately feel like works for me instead of me working for it.

If you’re ready to give it a try, click the image. Remember, the links on this page are affiliate links. If you enroll via one of those links, you help support me because I get affiliate income! I sincerely thank you for that.