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  Article updated: May 09, 2023

Create a Facebook post

Create and publish posts to your Facebook Pages and groups. To save time, you can publish to several Facebook accounts or social networks at once. You can choose to publish posts right away, or schedule them in advance for a specific day and time.

Watch Best practices for sharing content on Facebook for great publishing guidance. Visit Hootsuite Academy to watch more videos, take courses, or earn industry-recognized certifications.

Note: Publishing to personal profiles is not supported, due to changes by Facebook in 2018 to protect user privacy.

Before you begin

Make sure you’ve already added a Facebook Page or group to Hootsuite. How to add a Facebook account.

Create your post

To get started, select Composer . Then follow the steps in this article to create your post. Hootsuite does not support creating event posts or polls.

Sample post in Composer.

  1. Select the Facebook Page or group you'd like to publish to.
  2. Create your post and proofread your text using Grammarly. The character limit for Facebook is 2,000. You can use all of the following in your post:
  3. Add one or more images, a GIF, or a video to your post.
  4. To edit or add alt text to an image, point to the image thumbnail and select an option. The limit for alt text in Facebook is 500 characters. Learn how to use the image editor.
    Sample image thumbnail showing the pointer and the alt text and edit options.
  5. To add captions or a custom cover to a video, point to it and select Video settings.

Advanced options

When you create your post, you can take advantage of additional options, such as promoting your post or selecting the specific audience who can see your post.

Publish your Facebook post 

When you’re finished creating your post, review it in the preview on the right to see how it will look on your Facebook Page or group. You'll be alerted if there are any issues. Once you're ready, select from the following options:

  • Post now - Publish the post right away.
  • Schedule for later - Select a date and time to publish the post, or select a day and choose from any recommended times available (see Schedule posts at recommended times).
  • Save draft - Not quite ready to publish? Select the arrow next to Post now, and then select Save draft.

Tip: Find and manage your drafts, published posts, and scheduled posts in Planner .

If you want to create another post right away, select the arrow next to Post now (or Schedule), and then select one of the following options:

  • Post and reuse accounts (or Schedule and reuse accounts) - Publish your current post and begin a new one to the same social accounts.
  • Post and duplicate (or Schedule and duplicate) - Publish your current post and retain its content to create a new, similar post with a unique post ID. Promoted ad spend is not retained for the new post.

 

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