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June 28, 2017 by LJ Sedgwick 1 Comment

4 Ways CoSchedule Will Supercharge Your Blog

You’ve already read the statistics around content marketing. Blogging, despite protestations to the contrary, is far from dying out. But you still need to build an audience so that your customers can find your blog. You need something to manage your blog and your social media. Let me suggest CoSchedule.

So what IS CoSchedule? It’s a blog management, social media management, and content marketing tool rolled into one. Instead of keeping a list of your forthcoming blog posts on a paper calendar, or trying to manage all of your scheduled tweets in dedicated social media software, you can do everything in the same place.

Let’s take a look at the CoSchedule overview video.

CoSchedule from Garrett Moon on Vimeo.

Interested? Let’s look at the 4 ways I use CoSchedule and how it can supercharge your blog.

1) CoSchedule has a built-in marketing calendar

Are you the type of entrepreneur who posts blog content when you remember to? I’m not going to wag my finger at you because we all do it at first (unless, like me, you’re a blogger for hire). Creating an editorial calendar is a really easy way to build a blogging habit. You know what you’re going to write, and when you’re going to write it. No more staring at a blank screen, stuck for a topic!

With CoSchedule, you have a marketing calendar built right in. You can see what blog posts you have coming up, and if you’re working in a team, you can see which posts they’re assigned to.

I can also write and publish content right inside CoSchedule, without needing to log into WordPress. Here’s one of my draft posts for my fiction blog.

Fed up of trying to manage your blog and social media using a range of solutions? Find out 4 ways CoSchedule can supercharge your blog from one app. — Such clean design!

I’ve got the world-beating Headline Analyzer enabled, telling me the title has a score of 80. I’ve assigned an author (i.e. me) and given it a coloured label according to the type of content. I’ve also set up ‘to do’ tasks for the post.

This saves me a whole heap of time. I can write my posts and set them up right inside the calendar. That’s certainly useful if you don’t want a million sets of login details. It’s also handy if you don’t want too many team members having direct access to the website. You can set up your users through CoSchedule and set posts to ‘pending review’ before they go live.

2) Schedule social media content in advance using the calendar

Other scheduling solutions do exist. But the beauty of CoSchedule is you can manage your blog and social media scheduling from the same calendar.

Found an article that’s perfect for your audience? Drop it into CoSchedule and push it out to your social platforms of choice.

This is the scheduling for my fiction blog over at icysedgwick.com for two weeks last month.

I can see at a glance that I share most content to Twitter. I really need to up my Pinterest and Facebook Page game. But most of what you see there is not my content. 80% of it is from other people.

But 20% of it is mine. So have you got a blog post of your own that you want to promote? Do the same as you would if it was someone else’s content!

You can drag and drop content if you want to rearrange when blog posts or social media posts go live.

Or label your updates using colours for easy filtering. There’s much more you can do for teams and projects but as a solopreneur, the colour labels are still a godsend. I can easily see how much of a particular type of content I’m sharing.

There are also functions for social sharing plans, and templates help you to manage social media campaigns. If you go for the ReQueue plan, you can set up your social media messages to cycle through in the background. That leaves you with more time for working on your amazing product, instead of manually popping links into a schedule.

3) Set up your social media schedule for a blog post within WordPress

The CoSchedule plugin for WordPress is another winner. If you prefer to log into WordPress and write your post there, you can use the plugin to schedule the social media. At the bottom of the post, you’ll see an option to ‘add a social campaign’.

Click on the + icon to select a day you want to publish. Write your social media copy, choose an image pulled through from the post, pick a platform, and schedule! You can manually enter a time slot (which is helpful if you’re sharing during a specific Twitter chat) or choose ‘best time’, which selects the best time for your post based on best practice.

It takes a lot of the guesswork out of scheduling content. And it helps to know it’s going to appear the day you publish, the week after, and even a month after. All because you scheduled it before you hit ‘publish’.

4) Enjoy the built-in analytics

There are three strands to analytics; top content, social engagement, and team performance. On the standard plan, I only have access to the top content. But it’s STILL worth looking at. Knowing what gets the highest shares makes it easy to create more of that type of content. And you can share more of what engages the best.

What’s REALLY cool is when you compare that with Google Analytics, giving you a good overview of the popularity of your content.

The analytics also let you see where things were shared. I had a post on my fiction blog which got 2.1k overall shares, which is 1,980 to Facebook and 96 to Pinterest. Nearly all of my posts do well on Facebook and Pinterest, and pitifully on LinkedIn and Google+.

So guess where I share my content now?

But that’s just scratching the surface.

As I mentioned before, you can enable the headline analyser and get real-time analysis of your headlines. You can also connect to Bitly to help you track links.

Use CoSchedule to set yourself tasks, schedule content, manage your social media and post content to your blog. I actually cannot recommend it enough. I’ll admit, I was sceptical at first, but I couldn’t be without it now.

And since they released a mobile app as well, it’s easy to keep on top of social media scheduling on the go. If I read an interesting article on Feedly, I can share it directly to CoSchedule.

I know I said that CoSchedule will supercharge your blog, but remember – you can’t grow a blog if you don’t promote it. And a brilliant way to build a following is to find your audience on social media. Share amazing content as well as your own. Build a community, not just a list of customers. CoSchedule lets you take care of both – the blog, and the social media platform.

If you want to see what CoSchedule can do for your blog, check it out here. It is my affiliate link but I wouldn’t promote it if I didn’t think it was going to supercharge your blog.

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January 25, 2017 by LJ Sedgwick Leave a Comment

How do you justify the price of a good blogger?

More people than ever before enter the world of business. With nothing more than an idea and a simple product, they’re living their lives according to their own terms.

And that can be you. It should be you. But there’s something missing.

How do you get that product or service in front of fresh eyes?

You’ve been reading blogs for a while now. And you know that blogs themselves are a brilliant way to find leads, nurture relationships, and reward customers.

60% of marketers even state blogging is a high priority in their marketing strategy.

But maybe blogging feels like nails on a chalk board to you. Writing isn’t your thing.

And even if you can write about your topic, can you devote the time to it? Or learn how to write in the language of blogs?

So you decide to hire someone else to do it. Sure, you could go to Upwork. Join in the race to the bottom in the search for some content – any content.

Or you could go looking for a blogger. Maybe you’ll advertise for one.

But they don’t come cheap. The good ones don’t work for free.

So, among all of the other demands on your finances, how do you justify the price of a good blogger?

You already have a lot of demands on your time - and finances. You can't pursue them all. So just how do you justify the price of a good blogger? — How do you justify the price of a good blogger?

It frees up your time to do what you do well

You’re an expert in what you do. That’s why you set up your own business. Or founded a startup.

So your time could be worth £200 an hour, or more, if you offer services. And even if you don’t charge hourly rates, chances are that your time is worth a great deal.

Why would you take on blogging yourself when your time is so valuable? It takes me up to 2 hours to research, write, edit and format a blog post. And I don’t charge £200 an hour.

Ask yourself – what could you be doing in those 2 hours instead?

So if your time is worth more than a blogger will charge, it doesn’t take a genius to work out the maths.

Because you’re not paying a blogger for content. You’re paying them for more time for yourself.

Do you really want to learn how to do yet another thing you’re not interested in?

You probably already know how much time goes into marketing. Maybe you’ve already dipped your toe into using banner ads. Perhaps you’ve spent time learning how to make social media graphics.

But blogging is a different ball game entirely. It’s not just about knowing your topic, or the latest research.

It’s about presenting those to your readers. If you’re not used to blogging, it can seem really daunting.

But you can justify the price of a good blogger by handing the task over to them. Let them do what they do best – blogging.

Ask yourself – do you really have time to learn something else you’re just not interested in? Wouldn’t it be easier to just hand it over to a specialist?

And remember, bloggers can be multi-skilled. Look at the Canva blog. It’s a design school to help improve the abilities of its users.

So you can find a blogger that can create product-specific tutorials for your blog. You’re reading an article by one such blogger right now!

Blogging is an easy way to create relationships

I’ve talked before about what your business would look like with better content. Blogs are a great way to provide value beyond what your services offers.

So you can create relationships with potential customers and nurture those with existing customers.

And it’s all on autopilot. After all, someone can get answers from your blog even when you’re offline.

Look at Evernote as an example. Their blog doesn’t focus on company news. It provides value to users.

Visitors can learn about productivity, goal setting, and staying organised. All topics that support Evernote’s core service.

Remember that companies that blog generate 67% more leads than those who don’t. That’s because customers and clients come to recognise – and value – your brand with regular exposure.

So ask yourself do you want to be in the 67% – or the 33%?

Hopefully by now you’re starting to see that blogging as a marketing strategy is worth it. But your time is also valuable – so you need to ask yourself…

Can you now justify the price of a good blogger?

If so, then drop me an email. I’m here to help you knock your blog out of the park.

September 26, 2016 by LJ Sedgwick 2 Comments

5 easy ways to get the most out of Instagram

Last month, Instagram introduced its Stories function, clearly as a competitor to Snapchat’s Stories features. On Saturday, CBS News announced it would be using Instagram Stories in its coverage of the Presidential debates.

While ABC will stream the debates on Facebook Live, CBS want to keep an editorial feel to their coverage. It will feature original Stories by the anchors and reporters, as well as “curated Stories from political experts and voters across the US” (engadget).

But in order to share Stories, people need to be following you in the first place. If you want to get the most out of Instagram, then you need to remember it’s social. If you just show up and want likes, then you’ll probably be disappointed. No one likes attention seekers who give nothing back.

If you want to use Instagram in your marketing, you might be wondering how to get the most out of the platform. Here are 5 simple things you can do! — So easy!

So here are my 5 easy ways to get the most out of Instagram!

1) Use hashtags

Hashtags function like search terms within the app. Post your artwork? Try adding hashtags like #art, #artaday, #sketch, or use the materials you’ve used, like #fineliner. Consider taking part in challenges, such as Inktober. Just make sure you check out what other people are doing.

Tag the brands you use. Use hashtags for the places where you are. All of them allow other people to find your work by browsing all work tagged with that particular phrase.

2) Follow people

This goes without saying. You might be using Instagram to show off your own stuff, but you should also be interested in what other people are doing!

Consider it research, or consider it ‘being interested’. You’ll probably find that you end up with more followers if you follow more people.

3) Be reciprocal

If someone follows you, check out their feed. Is it cool? Follow them back. Did someone like one of your photos? Check theirs out and like one back. Blogging also used to work like this a few years back, but it’s more prevalent on social platforms now.

If you’re trying to promote your art or design work, starting conversations and posting comments is a great way to get people to remember your name, as well as your style.

4) Post good, consistent content

This goes without saying. If you put crap in, you’ll get crap out, so make sure you share stuff people might actually want to see.

My Instagram supports my fiction writing, so I share photos primarily of places I go, books I’m reading or interesting things I’m doing. After all, they all support my writing. Remember, your brand is how people describe you when you’re not in the room, so post images that people ‘expect’ to see, or associate with you.

5) Be human

Remember that you’re human, not a marketing machine. Social media users are more savvy than a lot of marketers give them credit for, and if all you ever do is post images connected with your brand or product, people will get bored. They want to see cool things you’ve seen, interesting places, funny messages – remind them there’s a person sharing the images, and not Data from Star Trek.

So now you’ve got all of those things in play, you’ll pick up more followers, and you can start using Instagram Stories too!

Over to you! Do you use Instagram? What makes you follow someone?

September 21, 2016 by LJ Sedgwick 2 Comments

How will the new changes affect your use of Twitter?

You’ve probably heard about the new changes to Twitter in the last couple of days. And my, they’re big ones.

After all, Twitter users have been restricted to 140 characters per tweet since 2006.

True, there have been attempts to make changes – last year, direct messages were allowed up to 10,000 characters.

And tools like TwitLonger, Tall Tweets and Longer Tweets all promised to extend your tweets past 140 characters.

But in a tweet posted on Monday, Twitter announced that photos, videos, GIFs, polls and quotes would no longer eat up any of your 140 characters.

If that wasn’t enough, Twitter also want to test changes to the @reply system, meaning @names won’t count either. As they say on their blog, “Characters are for conversations, not usernames”.

So what do the changes actually mean for you?

Now that media added to tweets no longer counts towards character limit, how will the changes to Twitter affect how you use the platform? — Changes are coming.

Twitter actually want you to have conversations with people.

Why else would they discount usernames from character lengths?

It’s not a bad move on their part. When I first started using Twitter in December 2008, it was like a global online watercooler. People dropped in to have chats. I’ve met some amazing people using Twitter, and thanks to hashtag conversations, I expect to keep doing so.

But.

A lot of marketers have jumped onto Twitter to sell their wares. Fine, promote your content all you want (I know I do) but remember to talk to other users too. There are humans on the other side of those @usernames. Get to know them.

You don’t have to stick to clickbait as much.

The golden rule of social media is the awesome headline. You want people to click, to find out what you’re all about. Ideally, you want to help people as easily as possible.

But the downside of clickbait headlines is they can be disappointing. If someone clicks on your title to read your blog post, and it doesn’t bear a lot of relation to the content of the post, they probably won’t come back. (There’s an excellent post about clickbait on State of Digital).

If, on the other hand, your title reflects the content (like this post is all about the changes to Twitter and how they’ll affect you….which is right there in the title) then you’re more likely to win that reader’s trust.

With the new changes to what’s included in the character limit, you can now spend the characters you’d otherwise use on an image or GIF to expand a little on the value of the title. Maybe add another hashtag to help a wider group of people.

You can give those polls and GIFs a bit more context.

At first, the character limit was a brilliant way to hone your ability to communicate a lot in as few letters as possible. You couldn’t ramble. Unless you wanted to split your message across a range of tweets, you had to be concise. Laser focused. On point.

But then someone realised you got better levels of engagement if you included graphics and images. GIFs became an awesome way to quickly make a point.

Those images and graphics took characters away, and the context became lost. Now you can go back to writing excellent, tight short-form content that is enhanced by an image, rather than being cut by the need for an image.

And if you want to add a poll (which is an excellent way to generate engagement), you can now explain a little more what it’s for in the tweet itself. People are more likely to click if they know what it is they’re voting for.

Time will tell if the changes will prove to be positive.

True, some will prefer the old way of working, and I think we might see an increase in marketers targeting several users at once when @usernames no longer count towards character limits. But being able to discuss what you’re posting, and add GIFs without losing characters, is certainly an interesting development.

If you’d like to connect on Twitter, come and follow me @lj_sedgwick.

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