How to schedule and automate social media with CoSchedule [2024]

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Want to get your time back? Here’s how to use CoSchedule to schedule and automate social media, so you can spend more time on the good stuff and less time tediously scheduling and rescheduling social media posts. 

 

Do you really hate spending hours and hours tediously scheduling and rescheduling social media posts? Do you wish there was a way to automate all that so you could spend more time on your blog or actually being sociable on social media? CoSchedule* is the most amazing tool that makes scheduling much quicker, much less tedious AND will actually automate social media so you can get your time back!

It is no secret that I am a BIG fan of CoSchedule. It has totally revolutionised my life. It helps me in so many ways and, crucially, it has given me back my time. Now instead of having to spend hours and hours a week scheduling social media, CoSchedule will do it for me!

CoSchedule does so many things, from helping me plan my content to keeping me on track with my tasks. (For an explanation of everything CoSchedule does, please check out my CoSchedule Review). With a tool so powerful, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed, but actually using CoSchedule is incredibly easy.

In this post I want to show you how easy it is to schedule and automate social media with CoSchedule AND just how much time you save.

(Prefer to watch the video? SKIP TO VIDEO)

Full disclosure – I am a CoSchedule affiliate. This means if you use my CoSchedule Affiliate Link* to buy CoSchedule, I get a small commission – which helps fund Productive Blogging, so I can keep on giving you all this good stuff for FREE!! If you are not sure if CoSchedule is for you, you can try it out FOR FREE on their Forever Free* plan!

 

1. Link up your social media accounts to CoSchedule

To start with, you need to link up your social media accounts to CoSchedule. Usually this happens during the sign up process, but if it didn’t, then head to the top left and click on the hamburger menu (three horizontal lines). Next click on the dropdown next to your name and select SOCIAL PROFILES from the menu.

 

To connect a social profile, simply click CONNECT SOCIAL PROFILE in the top left and then click the social media profile you want to add. You can choose from Twitter, Facebook (page or group), Instagram and Linked In (company or profile). Then follow the simple on screen instructions to connect the profile. On a standard Social Calendar plan you can have 5 social profiles, but if you need more, you can upgrade to add more.

 

2. Add a new social media post to your calendar

Come back to your calendar (click the hamburger menu, then select CALENDAR) and go to the day you want your social media post to be published. Hover over the top right of that day and click the cross. Choose SOCIAL, then SOCIAL MESSAGE from the menu that appears.

 

You will get a screen which looks like this…

 

Now you can create your social media post. Click on ADD SOCIAL PROFILE and then select a social profile.

Let’s say we choose Facebook…

 

Now you can type in your message and add a link if required, just as you would normally.

You can add a photo or video if you want to, by clicking in the camera/video camera icons. (You can select multiple images, if you wish.)

Next, choose the day and time you want your social media post to go out – choose BEST TIME if you want CoSchedule to select the best time for you.

Finally, select SCHEDULED from the dropdown menu, click SAVE and your social media post is scheduled!

 

If you head back to the main calendar (calendar icon on the left-hand side) you will now see the post in your calendar. (Hover over the message to expand.) If you decide it is in the wrong place, simply click on the scheduled message to go back to the editing screen and change anything you want.

 

3. Add a new social media campaign to your calendar

If you want to create multiple social media posts all at once, follow the steps as above, but instead of selecting SOCIAL MEDIA POST, select SOCIAL MEDIA CAMPAIGN. This will take you to a screen which looks like this…

 

Give your social media campaign a title (this is for internal use only, your social media followers won’t see it), adjust the date and time if necessary and click CREATE PROJECT. You will get a screen which looks like this…

 

If you wish to add the same link to all your posts, you can do that by clicking on the link symbol in the top grey circle. Next choose when you would like your first social media message to go out. If you want it to go out on the same day as the whole social media campaign is published, click the plus sign next to SAME DAY AS PUBLISH.

This will bring up the social media post editor that we’ve seen before… but with one exciting difference. Because this is a social media campaign, you can create multiple social media messages all at once…

So this time, let’s create a post for Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram.

First select those profiles from the dropdown menu…

 

Now complete the message, adjust the date and time and click SAVE. This time 4 separate social media messages will be created.

 

As you can see being able to create 4 messages (or more!) in one go like this is a great time saver, but you can go one better, and create a social template…

 

4. Create multiple social media posts using a template and social helpers

Once you have your social media campaign set up as per step 3, click on the TEMPLATES icon on the left and select CREATE TEMPLATE and CREATE NEW.

Name your template and click NEXT…

 

Select the day you want your social media to start (this is in relation to the date you gave for the whole campaign). Let’s choose SAME DAY.

Next select the social profiles – either one or many. Let’s choose Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn. Now we can use SOCIAL HELPERS to create our template.

For example, let’s suppose that you wanted to use the introduction to a blog post plus the link and the featured image. Simply type ‘{‘ and select {excerpt} {permalink} from the popup. Click the image icon and select THIS TEMPLATE, LINK IMAGE and SAVE.

Finally check the date and time of the message – I’ve selected SAME DAY and BEST TIME, then click SAVE. You should see this screen.

 

Now to use your template simply click the X in the top right (it saves automatically) then select your new template and hit the orange APPLY button.

 

Complete the link with the link of the blog post you want to share and all the social messages will auto populate. How awesome is that? And obviously next time you want to set up your social media it will be even quicker as the template will already be made!

 

But you can go one stage better…

 

5. Create multiple social media posts using a template and bespoke social helpers

To really personalise your social media, you can create bespoke social helpers – these will really help you get your social media just how you want it. It will only take you about 5 minutes to create, but you will reap the rewards over and over again and save hours in the weeks, months and years to come.

Let’s say you want to achieve this:

Twitter message: blurb, link, hashtags, landscape image
Facebook message: blurb, link, landscape image
Instagram message: blurb, ‘To get this recipe, head over to my blog and search {search term}’, hashtags, square image

You can achieve this with CoSchedule by simply creating social helpers for the blurb, link, hashtags, photos and search term and then creating a social media template using these social helpers.

So first let’s create a new template and give it a name. Next create your social helpers. Go to the SOCIAL HELPERS section on the left hand side, and click CREATE HELPER. Select NEW TEXT HELPER (for blurb, hashtags and search term) or NEW IMAGE HELPER (for square and landscape images) and simply name your helpers.

 

Next select the day of the week you wish to create posts for (this is in relation to the day you set for your whole campaign). Let’s choose SAME DAY. Select your social profiles and create social media message templates using your newly created social helpers. Like this…

 

Now you can use this template every time you have a new blog post! After you have set up a new social media campaign, simply select the social media template you just created… but this time add what is needed for each social helper like this…

 

Then click apply and this amazingness happens…

 

Can you imagine how much time you could save if adding a couple of details/photos and hitting APPLY is all you need to do each time you want to share a blog post? Everywhere? Multiple times? On multiple social media profiles? On multiple days?

Once you have your social media templates and social helpers set up, it takes literally seconds to promote any blog post you want to (your own or other people’s) EVERYWHERE!!

But there’s more…

 

6. Automate social media with ReQueue

Every time you create a social media post using CoSchedule, you have the option to put that post in your ReQueue to be reshared over and over again at regular intervals. Simply click on the ReQueue symbol and select which group you want to add this post to, plus an expiry date if needed.

You can then use the ReQueue settings to set how frequently you want each post shared and how many times per day you want your ReQueue posts to be shared on your social channels. So, for example, I have things set up so I share to Twitter 20 times a day, but Instagram only twice a day.

 

ReQueue is very quick and easy to set up and you can even have separate groups which you turn on and off at particular times of the year – for example you could turn your main group off at the end of November and then set your Christmas ReQueue group to share throughout December. Having separate groups ensures you don’t end up sharing about Christmas in August or BBQs in December!!

READ MORE >>> How to automate your social media with CoSchedule ReQueue

 

7. Add social media messages to blog posts in WordPress

I should point out that you can also create social media campaigns and add social messages to ReQueue right within your WordPress Dashboard. Once you have installed the CoSchedule plugin, you’ll find a CoSchedule metabox at the end of every blog post editing screen. Once you have created a blog post, you can quickly and easily add a few social media messages and add these all to ReQueue. I find this takes less than 5 minutes and once it’s done, I know that blog post will be shared and reshared on social media for years and years to come. Saving me A LOT of time and effort.

I really recommend you add social media posts to blog posts in this way as often as you can as this makes it so much easier to find and edit the social media whenever necessary.

 

Want more? 

Want to know more about all the different things CoSchedule can do? Read this post >>> How CoSchedule can help you get more done in less time on your blog

Want to get CoSchedule for yourself? I’d be super grateful if you’d use my CoSchedule Affiliate Link* – it won’t cost you any more, but I’ll get a small commission, which helps fund this blog and my coffee habit 😉

 

What do you want to know?

I would love to know what else you would like to know about CoSchedule. I will very happily write more tutorials and share more about how to actually use CoSchedule to save you heaps of time and make you way more productive on your blog! Just let me know in the comments below…

 

Watch the video…

 

More on this topic…

• Why your blog needs a content calendar and how to create one
• How to juggle blogging and holidays
• How to get more done in less time on your blog
• How to organise your blogging week

 

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*This blog post contains affiliate links, this means if you click on a link and go on to buy the product I recommend, I will get a small commission, but you will not be charged a penny more – thanks in advance!