Last year I wrote a really great post (let’s face it, I think all my posts are pretty great). But this one was different…I spent the usual amount of time thinking about it, writing it, adding images to it and then I did the unthinkable in the blogging world. I never shared the post. How could I?? That’s crazy right? The first rule of blogging is to share your posts to get the traffic. I learned my lesson there (after a few dozen others like it, sigh) and I purchased CoSchedule. It is the one blogging monthly purchase that I NEED for my blog.

So, let’s step back a minute – how in the world could I have forgotten to share my posts? Well, I will tell you, but to be honest, you can probably guess. Life got in the way.

I am a busy mom, with a full time job and I was pregnant. All my free time was spent sleeping it seemed. I love to blog, so I would squeeze it in when I could. I also knew how important consistency was, so I was scheduling my posts to publish at 3am on my publish days. Then I would go to my blog and share it later in the day.

But I didn’t always remember to go back and share.

That’s where CoSchedule comes in to save the day from Mom Brain and automate my blogging life (thank goodness!).

Here is an overview video about CoSchedule

CoSchedule from Garrett Moon on Vimeo.

The video makes it look like it works really well for teams, but when you’re a team of one, it can also work wonders to keep yourself organized and on task.

How To Schedule Your Social Shares With CoSchedule

I use the WordPress plugin and it makes it super simple so I don’t forget to share. I just scroll down past my post to the CoSchedule box and this is what I see.

I click on add Campaign from the image above and then this pops up.

If I am just adding one or two posts, I click the + on when I want it shared – Same day as publish, Day after publish, Week after publish, Month after publish or Custom date. See the list below.

I usually share the same day as publish. When I click the + next to “Same day as publish,” this box pops up.

This is where I choose my social platform, what kind of post I want it to be (almost always an Image post), what I want the social post to say, and when I want to publish it.

I love the short cuts that CoSchedule has, which lets me select the {title} and {permalink} without having to type them out. Just another way it saves me time.

My Social Schedule

That’s how you schedule one-off social shares. But I have a “plan” – CoSchedule calls it a social schedule. It’s great because it makes it so that I don’t have to re-create the wheel on every post.

For every post I schedule at least these 8 shares:

1. G+ Page – Same day as post, Best Time
2. Tweet – Same day as post, Best Time
3. Facebook Page – Same day as post, 3 hours after post
4. Pinterest (pinned to my blog board) – Same day as post, 3 hours after post
5. Facebook Group – Day after post, Best Time
6. Tweet – One week after post, Best Time
7. Facebook Page – One month after post, Best Time
8. Tweet – One month after post, Best Time

CoSchedule actually recommends sharing even more than this! Here are their tips –

How To Promote Your Content (Awesomely) With The Social Campaign.

But when you’re scheduling all of these, doing them one at a time would get a BIT tedious. So creating a template is a godsend. All I do is add the template and I’m practically done. I always go through and make sure the correct image is selected.

Hint: Save your completed post as a Draft before you start scheduling your social shares. This “sets” the images. I have found that the image will revert to the featured post if you haven’t saved the WordPress post yet. And that’s no good for Pinterest.

How To Set Up A Social Schedule Template

You start at the same place. In the WordPress dashboard for your post, scroll all the way down.

Click to add a social campaign and this box pops up.

Now right above and to the left of the blue link (and directly under the Social Campaign arrow) is a little box. Click that box and the Social Templates appear. You can add a new Template or use one you already have. The one I created is call “Social Schedule.”

The cool this is you can have multiple templates if you have different types of posts to share.

Once you apply your social template, the posts just pop up all by themselves.

Ready to save yourself some blogging time? Sign up for CoSchedule here.