One of the ways that many bloggers, myself included, make money is by diversifying our income streams.

This means a lot of different tasks for different projects, ongoing simultaneously.

Trust me, it’s enough to drive anyone crazy!

Earlier in 2021, I was starting to lose my mind when I decided it was time to retire my hand-written notes on index cards and journals, and opt for a digital organizer that I’d be able to access and use across multiple devices (no paper journals, hence, saving trees! Heh!)

There are plenty of options to choose from, of course. I tried Asana and Trello, and while those were fine, they just weren’t as user-friendly as I would’ve liked them to be.

But there was one other option I was yet to try. And once I did, I was an instant convert!

Enter: CoSchedule Marketing Calendar.

What is CoSchedule Marketing Calendar

It’s an app (desktop and mobile) that helps you streamline your marketing tasks. You can create projects within this app, assign tasks within projects, schedule your content, blog posts, social media posts, and see them all in a beautiful calendar.

But don’t get fooled by the word “marketing.” CoSchedule is, by all means, an all-in-one organizer for pretty much anyone. I use it to plan out all of my blogging, writing, and associated business-related tasks and life has never been this streamlined, and my day-to-day schedule this easy to keep track of, since I started working for myself.

Should You Use CoSchedule

I’ve already alluded to it above, but really, my life was starting to get a little too chaotic with all the different things that are going on. With grad school, the blog, the Canva template business, and potentially new courses and products and monetization tactics I have planned for the future, I knew that if I was going to keep my side-blogging side-hustle just that — a side gig, I needed to organize my life better.

Now, do I recommend all bloggers sign up for CoSchedule?

Not exactly. But I do suggest you at least give it a try. As with most things, what’s important is user satisfaction. Different people like different things. It may be that you’re partial to Trello, or that you like Asana better. But, with CoSchedule now offering a forever-free version of its marketing calendar, I think it’s totally worth checking out.

What I like about the CoSchedule Marketing Calendar

There are plenty of calendar apps out there, so you may wonder, why CoSchedule?

Glad you asked.

As far as planning and organization go, the two top contenders out there seem to be Asana and Trello. I could never like Trello for some reason, but Asana is a fine task management software. In fact, I still use Asana to manage my assignments and projects for my grad school.

That said, I wanted to keep my business-related tasks separate from personal tasks, and Asana lacked certain features that I found in CoSchedule which are perfect for a blogger and content creator.

Now, I have no clue if the paid versions of Buffer or Later calendars would have worked since I only tried their free versions. Yet, even just the free trial of CoSchedule Marketing Calendar is such a HUGE improvement from all the other calendar/organizer apps I tried, including Asana, that I had to upgrade and commit to it.

Of course, there’s the social scheduler, which is handy, but if I’m honest, it’s not the social scheduling feature that had me sold… at least not only. It’s the calendar and the organization features that I fell in love with.

A beautiful calendar

I love the CoSchedule calendar. It’s so easy to use. You can create projects, add tasks inside projects, and schedule them, which then show up on the calendar. You can create tasks without creating projects too. I’ll be talking about projects more in the next section, but know that it’s easy and intuitive. You can color-code each project that shows up on the calendar with that color; it makes it easy to spot which task belongs to which project.

I also love how easy it is to reschedule tasks within the calendar. All you have to do is drag a task from one day to a different one, and the schedule updates automatically.

The social media posts ( that you can schedule directly from within the CoSchedule app) show up in the calendar as well, and you can easily move them around, reschedule, edit, all from within the calendar.

Ability to organize simultaneous projects and ideas

I mentioned the projects before. This is most useful when you have a lot of different things going on. You can create set projects (when you know exactly which tasks have to be done and when) that reside within the calendar itself, or, if you have projects that are in development and open-ended, then you can create “ideas.”

“Ideas” are basically “projects” with more flexibility.

One thing that I absolutely love is the ability to add project types. You see, CoSchedule has some built-in projects and templates. I have yet to use the templates, but I do love the different types of projects — helps me see which is what with just a glance around my calendar. And the ability to color-code different projects and ideas and even project-independent ideas means that I know exactly what type of task I’m expected to do with just a glance around the calendar.

The other great thing about projects or ideas is the ability to add related assets — images, files, etc.

But of course, there’s social media scheduling

I’ve used the social media scheduling feature with CoSchedule, and it’s really simple to set up. The integrations are intuitive and self-explanatory, and it takes a few clicks to get things going. I’ve included a short tutorial on how to connect the social platforms to CoSChedule Marketing Calendar, but aside from that, I don’t have a whole lot to say about this feature. That’s because I’m not exactly a social media person. The only social platform I use on a regular basis is Pinterest, and for that, I use (and recommend) TailWind.

CoSchedule integrates with a bunch of other apps

CoSchedule integrates with a bunch of different kinds of apps like WordPress, Zapier, YouTube, Google Drive, Dropbox, Slack, Shopify, and more.

I have only tried the WordPress integration so far with the CoSchedule plugin but decided against using it because the calendar inside the WordPress dashboard is exactly the same as the calendar on a browser. Now, some may like having it inside their WordPress dashboard, but I like a cleaner interface inside my blog post editor. Also, if I do not absolutely require a plugin, then I’d rather not use it.

And now, let’s see how to use CoSchedule to get the most out of it.

How to Use CoSchedule

CoSchedule is a powerful software, and all the things you can do with it are impossible to cover within one blog post. In fact, I don’t think I even know everything that you can do with CoSchedule. But I do know the features I need, and that’s what I’ll show you. If you’re a blogger or side-hustler like myself, the next set of instructions and tutorials should help you get started.

Connecting your social media accounts and scheduling social messages/posts

Connecting your social accounts is easy peasy.

All this will, of course, require that you create an account with CoSchedule first. You can sign up for the free version first. It’s easy to set up and does not require your credit card information.

Once you’ve signed up for CoSchedule and you’re logged into your account, click on the hamburger menu at the top-left corner, and then click on your name. This will open up more options. Choose “Social Profiles” from this dropdown. On the next page, click on Connect Social Profile, and then follow the prompts to connect your social media accounts, once by one. Once you connect one account, you will need to repeat the process to connect another profile. With CoSchedule Marketing Calendar, you can connect up to 10 social profiles.

Once your social profiles are connected, you can start scheduling. You can do so right from the calendar. Go to your calendar (click the hamburger icon, then click “Calendar”). Hover over any day, and a “+” sign will appear. Click this sign, and then you can add social media posts (or a task or a project; feel free to check out all the available options).

In the scheduling window, you can choose which social profile you want to schedule for, you can add your texts, images, and videos, and then choose the date and time of posting. Or, you can leave the time at its default “Best time”. Unless you know exactly when you get the most engagement in your social profiles, I suggest using CoSchedule’s “Best time” option for posting.

Creating a project or idea

I’m probably starting to sound like a broken record, but, my absolute favorite part of using CoSchedule is its organizational capabilities. Let’s look at how I manage my tasks on CoSchedule.

You can create individual tasks and events on CoSchedule, and then you can also create projects and ideas. Feel free to play around with the different options available.

In this section, however, I want to talk about Projects and Ideas—these are the two types of things I create the most. As I mentioned before, essentially, they both have the exact same features. Only, “ideas” reside on a separate panel to the right of the screen, while projects reside within the calendar itself.

I like to create “projects” when I know exactly what I need to do by which day. I like “ideas” when things are more open-ended.

To create an idea, make sure that the ‘Ideas” panel is visible by clicking the “Ideas” toggle button. Then click on the “+” sign on the top-right. And to add a “project,” simply click on the orange “Create” button.

If you create a project but later want to change it to an idea, or vice versa, it is simple to do with just a click.

Adding more project types

CoSchedule has several built-in project types. A few of them are already set, but not all. If you need to add more, all you have to do is click the hamburger icon, then click on your name, then click “Settings”. Under “Settings” click on “Project Types”, and then click on “+ Add New Project Type”. This will show you all the available project types, and you can choose the one that matches your needs.

These are some of the features I’m currently using with CoSchedule, and a good place to start if you’re brand new to this platform.

Feel free to explore other features. You may like something, find something useful for your business that I haven’t mentioned here.

Do You Need the CoSchedule Marketing Calendar Paid Membership?

That depends on what you’re using CoSchedule for. The free version is actually pretty powerful and if all you’re doing is creating and organizing tasks and projects, you may be fine with the free version. If you have a lot of similar tasks that repeat weekly and monthly as I do, then you’ll benefit from upgrading. A paid subscription allows you to duplicate tasks and automate recurring events, which I personally find super useful.

If you use CoSchedule Marketing Calendar to automate social media publishing, then you’ll definitely need a paid subscription. The free version allows you to connect only two social profiles and schedule five posts in advance. The paid version allows you to connect up to 10 profiles and schedule an unlimited number of posts in advance.

Save at least 50% on an annual subscription

I know the pricing of this app is a bit steep. But there are ways to save!

If you want to save 50% on a CoSchedule Marketing Calendar annual subscription, do what I’ve done here; write a review of the product or make a video review — whichever’s your jam. The best part? You can submit a review every year to take 50% off the annual subscription amount.

That’s right, every year!

You can also join CoSchedule’s affiliate program and earn a commission when someone becomes a paid subscriber of any CoSchedule product (Headline Studio or Marketing Calendar.)

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So, are you using a planner, scheduler, digital organizer for your blog or business? If it isn’t CoSchedule, what is it, and why do you like it? And if you are using CoSchedule, what’s your favorite CoSchedule feature? Let me know in the comments below. 🙂