How CoSchedule Uses Marketing Collaboration Software

How Uses Marketing Collaboration Software The content marketers at get asked a lot about how we really manage our projects and work together to create our content. So I was humbled when a guest blogger of ours recently  shared a bit about his experience working with our marketing team: The amount of preparation done for a post and the superb coordination of their team members taught us a lot on improving our own process. Meeting their high expectations are quite tough, but we are truly honored to have the opportunity to learn from among the best in the business! Since itself is a marketing collaboration software that takes the form of an editorial calendar, I guess it makes sense that youd like to know how our  process actually works. I can tell you from experience that the tool is different than normal collaboration software because its designed by marketers to help marketers do what they do better than ever. How Creates Better Content With Marketing Collaboration SoftwareAnd because of that,  we see ourselves- the marketing team here at - as role models for the planning and process behind successful content marketing and social media. So I thought youd find it  interesting to get a behind-the-scenes peek into how we  exactly: Plan less content  that creates bigger results. Use our own tool to collaborate  super efficiently. Developed a process  that  helped us generate 852,506 page views and 7,375 email subscribers just last month. Sound like fun? Judging by the  cheers Im hearing in my head,  I thought so. :) 1. Start By Scheduling A Content  Planning Meeting Even for a tech company, its nice to get together as a team to collaborate on solving a problem in person. For us, this is one of the best ways for the entire team to  come up with creative ideas that will help us reach our 10x growth goals. You see, as  the content marketing lead, it would be easy for me to come up with every content marketing  idea all by myself and tell the team to execute them. But there is a lot more value when  the team develops those  ideas because they take ownership in the entire blogs success- not just their own content. Build a culture focused on growth. #blogging #teamworkAnd a  content planning meeting is a perfect setting for the kind of team collaboration that builds a culture focused on growth. Heres why: I know the kinds of content we publish that produce big results. So a content planning meeting is a way for me to teach the team about those details so they incorporate them into their own ideas and content creation. Every person on the team comes to the table with diverse backgrounds and ideas. This exercise is a great way to sift through everyones thoughts equally while evaluating  every idea according to our audiences preferences. That helps us choose to create really good content while consistently reminding our team of who our audience is and what they expect from content. Its a fun exercise that gets all of us up and away from our computer screens for a bit while connecting with each other. And when you have fun while you work, it feels less like work and more like something you love to do. This is how we do it: The 20-Minute Brainstorm Frenzy Some say theres nothing worse than group brainstorming if youre looking for innovative ideas. Then again, brainstorming by yourself will  only give you ideas limited to your own background. So the first  phase of our content planning meeting focuses first on individual contributions to eliminate groupthink. And its super easy: Give everyone on the team a stack of Post-It notes. Ask everyone to write down as many thoughts as they can without holding anything back. Set a timer for 20 minutes (I often use my phone for this). Go. At this point, its just fun to see the team writing down tons of ideas, working super fast, and wracking their brains for the ultimate best ideas. Theres usually coffee (lots of coffee), laughs, and then dead silence as  they get serious about finding better ideas that will really make a difference. The 40-Minute Grading  Process By this point, we probably have close to- if not more than- 100 or so ideas. The truth? We wouldnt publish 90% of them because theyre just not  quite right for our audience. And thats just fine because its during this grading process that the team  chooses which content  to publish and which ideas to  toss. Allow your team to choose which #contentideas to publish and which to toss. #contentmarketingHeres how we do it: Each person  posts all of their Post-It notes on a wall. Then  on a marker board next to the notes, I write 1 | 2 | 3 , which is our grading scale for the ideas. An idea is a 3 if its the best thing ever, while a 1 is not so good. To grade the ideas, I ask the team a couple simple questions: Is  this a topic our readers would be deeply interested in learning more about?  How similar is this to our other top content? An idea is a 3 if we answer  definitively, yes, this is  something our audience would find uniquely valuable that is better than anything else they could find on the Internet for this topic. An idea is a 2 if  the idea  doesnt fit the qualification of a 3. An idea is a 1 if  its not something we think our audience would look to us to publish. It could still be a good guest post idea. Then we read off each idea one by one while every  team member grades the topic from 1 to 3. From there, we simply post the ideas  below the  corresponding  numbers on the  marker board. Heres the outcome from a planning meeting with a bunch of 3 content ideas. A Mistake I Made That You Can Avoid: Until recently, Id have the team shout off their answers: Thats a 3, definitely! I agree, 3. Uh, yeah, lets go with 3 on that. I noticed that once the first person spat off their answer, the rest of the team was very likely to say the exact same answer. I found out later this happened  because of  social conformity, a psychological principle that  was discovered decades ago: So The Takeaway Is This: When you do this exercise, read off the ideas, then have each individual write down their grade of  1, 2, or 3  on a new Post-It note. Have them show their individual notes all at the same time for each idea, then categorize the idea as a collective 1, 2, or 3.After this process,  we only explore the best ideas- those graded as 3- for content  that well actually publish. 2. Add That Content To Your Editorial Calendar Where the planning meeting sets the collaborative tone, the editorial calendar in is where the software helps us actually plan and create the content as a team. The planning meeting sets the tone and the editorial calendar helps you  plan content #bloggingFirst, we vet the best ideas for keywords, further narrowing our scope of potential content we will  create. Recommended Reading:  How To Make An SEO Content Strategy That Will Improve Your #1–3 Results By 248% Then, we add the ideas  onto the calendar,  naming the blog posts by their keywords and assigning them to their author. We consistently publish two posts every week on Mondays and Wednesdays. Heres why. Once all of the new blog posts are on the calendar, its easy to see which authors might have a bit too much on their plates in a given week. From there, we simply  drag and drop blog posts around until we feel 100% satisfied that the publishing schedule is realistically doable for every person on the team. Asking a content marketer to write two robust posts for a single week isnt very realistic for us. So these posts could flip-flop to make this a doable content schedule. Then we use comments to add in any notes from the planning meeting- including the original idea- so the author has a clear idea of where  to start with a blog outline. We use comments in to communicate the main idea from the planning meeting. This way, we leave lots of creative room to use the keyword in the blog post title while still covering the original idea we thought would be successful. 3. Define Your  Content Process Our content development  process  is ever-changing, and we just gave it a major overhaul recently to: Add a couple more  tasks into our process to make sure nothing falls through the cracks. Clearly define what done means for each task to keep everyone accountable for their responsibilities. Track how soon we should start working through blog posts to hit every deadline, every time. There were lots of benefits for us to get  organized in this way, so we started very simply by asking ourselves: What are all the steps we need to do to publish a blog post? We brainstormed all of the steps, then  simply put them in chronological order  the best that we could to help us know what to do from  beginning to end. One  collaboration software tool  we use all the time as a team is Evernote because no matter where anyone is- or if theyre online or offline- they have access to the information they need to do their work. And, it just so happens, Evernote integrates really nicely into . Anyway, this is what that process looked like as we worked through it in its rough format using Evernote: Heres a rough look at our first pass at the steps we needed to do to write and publish our content. From there, we had enough  information to understand which steps  we could group together into a cleaner, condensed workflow. And when we did that, it was easy to understand who on the team would be the best fit to complete those tasks according to their individual interests and skills. We refined the steps in the workflow and created notes in Evernote to define what done means for each task. The only thing left to do was to define when we should complete each  task to work far enough ahead to nail every deadline and assign it. This simple exercise  gave us exactly what we needed to build the  task template we manage using for all new blog posts we write. It gave us  a solid definition of what to do for each task. Before anyone who is accountable for a task marks it as complete in , they would first ask themselves if they truly completed the task according to the definition of done. Assign tasks and due dates to everyone on your team with task templates in . Now we know to start writing our blog posts a month before they publish to make sure we have several posts 100% ready to publish on the calendar at any time. We know content that is complete and published is white, and we can see which content is complete by not yet published because its yellow and labeled 100% ready to rock. Since weve done this, we pay more attention to the details that make a difference toward our goals, everyone understands their roles to  know  exactly  what to do, and we work more efficiently while producing better content. 4.  Create The Content According To Your Workflow Ill be the first to say that our  workflow- or the task template we built in - looked magical. If we could seriously create content that way with every task checked off on time and in that specific order, wed be crushing it. But that wasnt always the case. Especially as we got started with the  new process because  we had to take a little time to learn. rocks  a task-based workflow that helps the team keep each other accountable. #bloggingAnd that was OK because our editorial calendar had our back. Let me explain. Traditional workflow and project management tools operate in phases. When someone does step 1, then someone else can do step 2. We all know that doesnt  work 100% of the time. So rocks  a task-based workflow that helps the team keep each other accountable for hitting deadlines. Let me explain how this happens: emails you the day before you have a task due on the calendar and you can see a dashboard of the tasks youre responsible for completing today and into the future. So everyone knows what they need to do. When you get into the office  in the morning and you see that the person before you hasnt gotten through their work, you can chat with them about the game plan for the day to get back on track. You can communicate with everyone who has a task assigned to them in a  specific piece of content  right in with a comment.  That way, everyone can see the progress the team is making on the project. When  you can move on to complete your task- even if the task one step before  isnt quite done- you can still do that and check it off your to-do list. Thats a lot of power for team collaboration. And while being behind is a rarity, this sort of communication may be necessary at first when youre implementing a brand new process with your team. We use the dashboard in to track a daily to-do list and collaborate with improved team communication. No more endless emails! Here are a few lessons I learned along the way that you may find useful: Help your team moderate themselves more than you intervening into their process. The more  they define the process, the more theyll stick to it. Dont expect perfection because its unachievable. Demand excellence and make that the expectation. When you set an expectation, make it a standard and stick to it. The second your team sees your standards are flexible is the moment those are just  guidelines. What Do You Want In Your  Marketing Collaboration Software? I like to joke a lot that Im a content marketer who  uses content marketing to market a content marketing tool. While thats funny, its absolutely true. And I wouldnt be able to love what I do if I didnt believe the team behind   tries harder than anyone else to give marketers like us exactly what we need to boost our  efficiency. Naturally, the content marketing team at gravitates toward an editorial calendar as our preferred marketing collaboration software. as a tool helps us collaborate, communicate, create, and promote our content super efficiently. Get your 14-day free trial of to: Get more organized than ever: With a little thought into your blog publishing schedule, workflow, and  social media promotion, will help you  shave hours off your to-do list. Find time to create more effective content: You tell us a lot that youre too busy to even find time to create content. Let manage the mechanics behind  team collaboration and social media promotion so you can use that time to create even better content. Manage a happier marketing team: Forget endless emails, miscommunication, and missed steps in your workflow. is a marketing tool designed by marketers to eliminate the inefficiencies that hold you back from  publishing awesome content. I hope youll join us. And, as always, let me know what you think when you get started with . ;)

Why You Shouldnt Trust Homeschooling Statistics

Why You Shouldn't Trust Homeschooling Statistics When arguing the pros and cons of any issue, its usually helpful to have agreed-upon facts on hand. Unfortunately, when it comes to homeschooling, there are very few reliable studies and statistics available. Even something as basic as how many children are being homeschooled in a given year can only be guessed at. Here are a few of the reasons you should take any facts and figures you see regarding homeschooling - good or bad - with a grain of salt. The Definition of Homeschooling Differs Would you consider all these children homeschoolers? A child enrolled in a virtual public charter school who does all schoolwork at home.A child who spends part of the week in public school classes.A child who homeschooled some years but not others. When it comes to counting heads and drawing conclusions, its important to compare apples with apples. But since different studies use different definitions of homeschooling, its hard to know if studies are actually looking at the same group of kids. For instance, a report from the National Center for Education Studies, part of the U.S. Department of Education, includes students who spend up to 25 hours a week - five hours a day - attending classes in a public or private school. Its hard to equate that experience to that of a child who has never sat in a classroom. States Dont Keep Complete Records of Who Homeschools In the U.S., it is the states that oversee education, including homeschooling. And each states laws on the matter are different. In some states, parents are free to homeschool without even contacting the local school district. In other states, parents must send a Letter of Intent to homeschool and submit regular paperwork, which can include the scores of standardized tests. But even in states where homeschooling is closely regulated, good numbers are hard to come by. In New York, for example, parents must submit paperwork to the school district - but only for children within the age of compulsory education. Below the age of six, or after age 16, the state stops keeping count. So its impossible to know from state records how many families choose to homeschool kindergarten, or how many teens go on from homeschooling to college. Widely-Quoted Studies Are Biased Its hard to find an article about homeschool in the national media that does not include a quote from the Home School Legal Defense Association. HSLDA is a nonprofit homeschool advocacy group that offers legal representation to members in some cases involving homeschooling. HSLDA also lobbies state and national legislatures to present its conservative Christian viewpoint on issues regarding home education and family rights. So its fair to question whether HSLDAs studies represent only its constituents and not homeschoolers from other walks of life. Likewise, it seems reasonable to expect that studies by groups in favor of or opposed to homeschooling will reflect those biases. So its not surprising that the National Home Education Research Institute, an advocacy group, publishes studies that show the benefits of homeschooling. Teachers groups like the National Education Association on the other hand, often release statements criticizing homeschooling simply on the basis that it does not require parents to be licensed teachers. Many Homeschooling Families Choose Not to Take Part in Studies In 1991, Home Education Magazine ran a column by Larry and Susan Kaseman which advised parents to avoid taking part in studies about homeschooling. They argued that researchers could use their school-based biases to misrepresent the way that homeschooling works. For instance, a question about how many hours are spent teaching implies that parents should be sitting down with their kids doing desk work, and ignores the fact that a lot of learning happens in the course of everyday activities. The HEM article went on to say that academics who conduct studies often come to be regarded as experts on homeschooling, by the public and sometimes by homeschooling parents themselves. Their fear was that homeschooling would come to be defined by the measures looked at in the studies. Along with the issues raised by the Kasemans, many homeschooling families dont take part in studies to preserve their privacy. Theyd simply rather stay under the radar, and not risk being judged by people who might disagree with their educational choices. Interestingly, the HEM article came out in favor of case histories. According to the Kasemans, interviewing individual homeschooling families to hear what they have to say about their educational styles is a more effective and accurate way to provide data on what homeschooling is really like. Many Scholarly Studies Are Stacked Against Homeschooling Its easy to say that most homeschooling families are not qualified to educate their own children - if you define qualified to mean certified to teach in a public school. But could a medical doctor teach her children anatomy? Of course. Could a published poet teach a homeschool workshop on creative writing? Who better? How about learning bike repair by helping out in a bike shop? The apprenticeship model worked for centuries. Measures of public school success like test scores are often meaningless in the real world, as well as in homeschooling. Thats why demands that homeschoolers submit to more testing and studies that look at homeschooling through the lens of traditional schooling can miss the true advantages of learning outside a classroom. Homeschool Research to Take With a Grain of Salt Here are some links to research on homeschooling, from a variety of sources. Number of Homeschoolers by State: Updated listings by Ann Zeise from A2Z Homes Cool.The International Center for Home Education Research: Formed in 2012, this group says it provides nonpartisan information about homeschooling.Education Week Homeschooling article: Overview from 2011 with links to related articles and studies.New Nationwide Study Confirms Homeschool Academic Achievement: HSLDA article with links to studies.1.5 Million Homeschooled Students in the United States in 2007: Article from the National Center for Education Studies.What Have We Learned About Homeschooling?: Article by E. Isenberg from the Peabody Journal of Education, 2007, that discusses the lack of reliable data on homeschooling.Home Schooling in the United States: Trends and Characteristics: Study by K. Bauman published in Education Policy Analysis Archives in 2002, using data from the 1990s.