It also offers a really great avenue for collaboration. Working together, building content together, we needed something that was easy to work with, easy to share tasks and responsibilities. We also LOVED the fact that we could invite guest bloggers to participate in our calendar, without needing to give them full access to the WordPress site.

I’ve managed a multi-person blog before and it can be a lot of work.  Making sure content is scheduled, posts are submitted.  With the Guest Blogger feature, we can use the same task templates and tools we use for ourselves to keep our guests on track.  We were looking for something that had scale potential, and this tool fits the bill.

For Theater of Marketing, we use the robust Team Marketing Plan. Their list of features is pretty clear on their site, but it’s the execution of how you use the calendars that really showcases the differences. I use the solo bloggers plan for another calendar on a different website, and I highly recommend that option for individual bloggers who want to improve their blogging productivity and spend less time managing their promotional output of their content.

But when you want to collaborate with a team member, you need more than that. You need to be able to brainstorm topics, see your editorial calendar on hand. We write many of our articles together, so CoSchedule allows us to build our posts, work with each other and really be a more effective, connected team.

My favorite feature? Hmm… I love that it has a sidebar where we can place content we haven’t yet scheduled.  This proves really useful as a placeholder for topics you know you want to date, err write about, but that you aren’t quite ready to book Friday night for.  And truly, my favorite aspect of CoSchedule is more the benefit from using it.  CoSchedule makes me actually do the work, on time, in a timely manner. It keeps me focused. It also makes me set deadlines.

The ability to set up social posts far into the future when you create the post is hugely invaluable and a tremendous time saver.  Your content, when its evergreen, can be the gift that constantly gives, but you have to set it up to do so.  I have written posts that at the beginning of a year and then set up social media posts that push that already written content out the following month, in six months, next year if I want. I don’t have to think about that post in another month, much less next year, because it’s already scheduled and CoSchedule will push it out automatically.  And each time those messages push out later in the year, I see interaction from them. This makes your content work harder, while you don’t have to.Also, I think just having the tasks to keep you focused on the content that is due next.

With the schedule populating my tasks based on what post is scheduled next, it makes it simple to know what to write about next, what to do next.  Because you were organized putting things on the CoSchedule calendar, it saves a lot of brain power when it comes to actually creating the content.

In the Team Marketing plan, you also get the Evernote connection.  I’m an avid Evernote user, especially when it comes to clipping and saving articles around the web that I find.  So with the ability to connect Evernote notebooks right into the calendar, I can access those articles with ease. If I’m looking to curate from one of those articles, I can move it onto the schedule and go from there.