Plan and publish posts

Goal

Write a post once, adjust it where a network needs something different, and have it published to each of a brand's accounts at the time you choose, or now.

Prerequisites

• You are signed in to the Admin Control Center as a platform administrator, with an environment selected.
• The brand has at least one connected account: see Connect your social accounts.

Steps

1. Choose Social posts in the left-hand list, under Social, and pick the brand.
2. Choose New post. Every working account of the brand is ticked under Post to; untick the ones this post is not for.
3. Write the Text. Every ticked account gets it, unless you give its network its own version.
4. Under each network you post to, you can:
   • tick Own text for … to write a different version for that network;
   • for X, tick Post as a thread and write each post of the thread;
   • for LinkedIn, add a First comment. Put the link there: LinkedIn shows a post with no link in it to more people.
5. Choose Add images to attach JPEG, PNG or GIF images, up to 5 MB each. They go out in the order shown. Instagram needs at least one image; X takes up to four.
6. Below the text, the composer shows each piece of text against its network's limit as you type, and says what would stop the post going out (a text too long for X, an Instagram post with no image).
7. Under When, choose At a time and pick the time, or Now.
8. Choose Schedule (or Publish now). To keep working on it later instead, choose Save draft.

The post now appears in the list with its status. Upcoming, Drafts, Published and Failed under Show narrow the list.

Seeing how it went

Each post's Accounts column shows every account it goes to, coloured by how it went there. Select a post and choose Open to see each account's outcome: when it was posted, a link to it on the network, or what went wrong, in the network's own words.

• Retry sends a failed or skipped post to that account again. It is offered only when nothing of it went out, so retrying can never post something twice.
• A post that went out in part is shown as such, with a link to what is live. An X thread that broke after its first post, or a LinkedIn post whose first comment failed, is never retried: finish it by hand on the network.

Changing your mind

• Unschedule takes a scheduled post back to a draft, as long as none of it has gone out.
• Open lets you change a draft or a scheduled post. Once any of it has gone out it opens read-only, so the Planner always shows what was really published.
• Delete removes a post from the Planner. Whatever already went out stays on the networks.
• Pause brand holds every post of the brand. Posts wait and go out when you choose Resume brand.

The calendar

Choose Calendar under View to see the brand's posts on a day, week or month sheet, coloured by status. Show narrows it the same way it narrows the list.

• Click a post to open it.
• Click an empty slot to start a new post at that time.
• Drag a post to another slot, or on the month sheet to another day (it keeps its time of day), to move it. Only a post nothing of which has gone out can be moved. Without a mouse, open the post and change its time instead.

Moving an approved post keeps it approved: its words are what was approved.

Approval

A brand can require that somebody other than the author approves every post before anything goes out. Turn it on in Social accounts: select the brand, choose Edit brand and tick Posts need approval before they are scheduled.

1. On such a brand the composer's main button reads Submit for approval. The post shows as Awaiting approval, and nothing is queued. Publish now on such a brand means as soon as it is approved.
2. Anybody else opens it (Awaiting approval under Show lists them) and chooses Approve, which schedules it, or Send back with a note.
3. A post sent back is a draft again. Its author is e-mailed the note and sees it in the composer; changing the post and choosing Submit for approval asks again.

The author cannot approve their own post. Changing an approved post sends it back for approval, because what was approved is no longer what it says. If a post's time passes while it waits, approving it is refused: move it to a new time first. To withdraw a post that is waiting, select it and choose Unschedule.

Images on a thread, and describing images

• In an X thread, the first post carries the post's images (under Images). Each later post has its own Add images to post N, up to four images each.
• Under every image, write what it shows in its description field. It is kept with the image as soon as you leave the field. LinkedIn shows it to people using a screen reader; the other networks don't receive it yet.

Importing a week's schedule

If your posts are written ahead as a schedule file (social-schedule@1, the format Parsware's own campaign uses), you can bring a whole week in at once.

1. On Social posts, pick the brand and choose Import schedule.
2. Choose Choose file and pick the week's .json file.
3. Under Accounts, each channel the file uses goes to the brand's only account of that kind. If the brand has two accounts of one kind (two LinkedIn profiles, say), choose which one.
4. Choose Import.

The dialog then says how many posts were created, which items were skipped, and what stopped the import:

• With any problem, nothing is created, so you fix the file and import it again. Problems include a file that does not follow the format, a channel the brand has no account for, a post too long for its network, or an image that could not be fetched.
• Importing the same file again creates only what isn't there yet. Items imported before are skipped.
• An item whose time has passed is skipped, never published late.
• On a brand that requires approval, imported posts wait for approval like any other.

Images are fetched from the addresses in the file, but only from the host your administrator allowed. Ask them if an import says images can't be fetched from a host.

What happens behind the scenes

A post goes out once on each account. The platform checks for posts that are due every half minute and sends each one exactly once, even if several copies of the service are running.

Late posts are skipped, not sent. A post that could not go out within six hours of its time (because the brand was paused, for example) is marked Skipped and is not published out of its moment. You can still send it with Retry.

Accounts that stop working stop posting. If a network refuses the account's access, the post fails, the account shows Reconnect needed on Social accounts, and its other posts fail without being tried until it is reconnected.

There is a daily limit. An account sends at most 25 posts in 24 hours. Posts beyond that wait for the next slot rather than fail.

You are told when something goes wrong. When a post fails, is skipped, or its sending never finished, an e-mail goes to whoever scheduled it, once.

Deleting the environment removes its brands, accounts, posts and images.

What comes next

See how each post did on Social reports: see Read your social reports.