Create a Facebook post

Create and publish posts to your Facebook Pages. 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.

Create your post

Hootsuite is not able to support creating event posts or polls.

1. Select Plan to start and schedule your post in a calendar view, or start your post from Create.
2. Select the Facebook accounts you'd like to publish to. (Option for Advanced, Business, and Enterprise plans) - Select your organization, and then select Campaign to associate your post with a current or future campaign. Learn more about content campaigns.
   
   To protect user privacy, Facebook does not allow you to publish to personal profiles from Hootsuite.
3. Create your post. The character limit for Facebook is 63,206. You can use all of the following in your post:
   • Links - Enter or paste a link in your post to drive traffic to your website, blog, or product. You can shorten your links in Hootsuite for a tidier look, and add tracking parameters so you can see how much web traffic comes from those links. Learn how to shorten and track links.
   • Mentions of a user or Page - Enter @username in your post to invite others on social to join a conversation, and help your post reach their audience as well as your own. Facebook allows their Pages to be mentioned by other Facebook Pages. Facebook doesn't support mentions of Facebook profiles in third parties like Hootsuite.
   • Hashtags - Enter your own hashtags or select AI hashtag suggestions to find hashtags that work with your post text and media. Read our guide to using hashtags on every network.
   • Emoji - Select the smiley face to add emoji.
4. (Optional) Let AI help you write or refine your post - Select Enhance with OwlyWriter AI to have OwlyWriter help you fix spelling and grammar in your post, optimize the length of your caption, change the tone of your post, or make your post actionable. This option is only available to organizations who support using AI.
5. Add images and videos to your post. You can drag files from your computer into your post or select Add media to upload your media. You can also design visuals with Canva (see Design visuals with Canva for help).

   Note: If your post contains emoji, we recommend not selecting an album when creating your post in Hootsuite. Due to a limitation on the Meta interface, any emoji in your post will not display correctly on your Facebook Page if you choose an album for your photos.

   Work with images

   For accessibility, add alt text (a short description of your image) to your image. The limit for alt text in Facebook is 500 characters.

   You can also edit your images (crop, add filters, or make other adjustments) right in Hootsuite. Find out how to customize your images in Hootsuite.

   Point to your image to add alt text or edit your image.

   

   Note: When uploading images, it's important to note the following:

   • Adding multiple images results in one post with all of the images. You can drag the images to reorder them in your post.
   • Unless you choose an existing album, your images will be added to Timeline Photos for Facebook Pages.
   • When adding images to albums, your content tags will not appear in Streams or the Post performance report in Analytics. It's recommended you not add images to albums when using content tags to track performance.

   Read about image file requirements.

   
   
   Work with videos

   Select Edit video to edit your video and add filters, stickers, and music to it. Learn more about what you can do with videos in Hootsuite.

   

   Point to a video and select Video settings to do the following:

   • View the video file's properties.
   • Customize the video title for Page posts.
   • Customize the cover image for Page posts. Select one of the options provided, or select Add custom cover to add your own.
   • Add captions to your videos. Drag a SubRip Subtitle file (SRT file) from your computer into the Subtitles area or choose Upload an SRT file. One file can be uploaded per post. SRT file names must have the following format: filename.[language code]_[country code].srt. Language codes are two lowercase letters and country codes are two uppercase letters. Example: hypevideo.es_ES.srt. Refer to the Facebook list of valid language and country codes.

   Tip: Need to publish subtitles in multiple languages? No problem. Duplicate the post and add a different SRT file.

   Read about video file requirements.

Advanced options

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

• Ask for a review (Advanced, Business, and Enterprise plans) - Invite a team member to review and approve your posts before they go live. Select a team member from the Ask for approval list to help make sure your post is on-brand and polished before you publish it. Learn more about approvals.
• Promote a post - Select Promote this post to boost your post on Facebook. Learn how to promote your Facebook Page post.
• Specify targeting for a Facebook post - Select Add next to Facebook target audience to select who you’d like to see your post. Select age, country, region, city, ZIP, and postal codes.
• Apply a tag (Advanced, Business, and Enterprise plans) - Select Add next to Tags to apply tags to your posts and analyze their performance in Hootsuite Analytics. Find out more about tagging posts.

Publish your Facebook post

When you’re finished creating your post, take a look at the preview on the right to see how it will look on Facebook. You'll be alerted if there are any issues. Save a draft of your post if you're not ready to publish or schedule it. Otherwise, select a Post now or Schedule for later option.

Learn how to find and manage your drafts, published posts, and scheduled posts in a calendar view.