Readers who have been following my Bloggie Wednesday series for the past 2 years will know that I’m pretty much a stickler for planning especially when it comes to planning my editorial content for the blog. It’s how I keep on top of things for the blog and to make sure I don’t run into the dreaded blogger’s block.

I’ve been using the Editorial Calendar WordPress plugin for a long time now and it has served me well in giving me a bird’s eye view of my editorial content for the month. Well, that was until I discovered CoSchedule. That was when my editorial planning became even better.

I first heard of CoSchedule from one of Pat Flynn’s podcasts. I checked out the website and thought it looked pretty cool. That was until I realised that it’s a premium service which meant that I had to pay for it. Bugger.

Since CoSchedule offered a 14-day free trial without me needing to provide my credit card details, I figured why not. If I don’t like it, I’ll just say no thank you at the end of the trial and life goes on as usual.

By the way, before I go on further, I must let you know that CoSchedule is a WordPress plugin so only self-hosted blogs can use it. It’s a huge bummer that this service isn’t available for other blogging platforms because it’s such a fantastic one that every blogger could benefit out of.

CoSchedule is an editorial calendar plugin much like the free WordPress Editorial Calendar plugin with a lot more features. It gives you a weekly and monthly view of your editorial calendar. It allows you to drag and drog your posts to different days if you want.

The best thing about CoSchedule is the integration of social media platforms and that’s what I use it for the most. I can use CoSchedule to post updates of my blog posts on Twitter, Facebook, Google Plus and LinkedIn (at the moment I only use Twitter and Facebook). When I’ve scheduled a blog post to publish on a certain date, I can use CoSchedule to promote that blog post on my social media platforms as well. I use it to schedule updates on Twitter and Facebook. I can schedule to promote that post a week, a month or even a year after it’s published.

Of course, there are free services that you can use to schedule social media updates like Hootsuite, IFTTT and Buffer but I find that the integration of my social media platforms with my blog posts in one spot so much easier than having to deal with different websites and services. For example, if I’ve scheduled a blog post and its social media promotions, when I drag and drop that blog post to publish on another day, the social media promotions will be automatically updated to publish on that specific date as well. I don’t have to move them around manually.

The people at CoSchedule are also very accommodating to my needs. When my 14-day trial was up, I felt that I was ready to plonk my money down and purchase the monthly service. But I had to be doubly sure so I asked them if I could extend my trial to another 14 more days just so I could try it out more. No questions asked, they immediately extended my trial. Essentially, I had one month’s use of CoSchedule for free! I’m not telling you this just so you should exploit their system and services (please don’t!) but to show you how flexible and accommodating they can be.

CoSchedule used to also be able to schedule pins on Pinterest but due to a problem they had with Pinterest, they had to withdraw that service for now. Hopefully the issue will be resolved soon because being able to schedule pins on Pinterest is a great feature that a lot of bloggers would go for.

Okay, now that I’ve waxed lyrical about this amazing service, how much does it cost and what’s in it for me with this review?

• CoSchedule costs US$10 a month per WordPress blog. For an annual subscription, it’s US$20 off the annual billing plan. As I blog (almost) daily, I use this service heavily. Low cost per use and all that, y’know. 😉
• If you sign up to CoSchedule with my affiliate link and remain as a paid customer, I’ll get 10% off my monthly or annual subscription rate.

I’ve paid for a lot of premium themes and plugins and to tell you the truth, a lot of them didn’t pan out and were a waste of money. CoSchedule is one of the very few plugins I paid for that’s very useful to me. I didn’t write this post to get some free use out of it, although I do get 50% off my subscription for a year of subscription if they approve of the review. No big deal if they don’t, really.

At the end of the day, it’s bloody good plugin that works very well for me and something I had to share with you as well. If you blog frequently, this will help you tremendously like it does for me.

Heck, even if you don’t sign up using my affiliate link, I still highly recommend that you at least try it out for 14 days for free to see how it’ll work for you. If you’re not able to try CoSchedule out because you’re not on self-hosted WordPress, I recommend reading their blog because they have great content on blogging and content marketing that will be helpful for your blog.

Have fun planning!