Bulk schedule your posts

Aug 19, 2026
Knowledge

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Article updated: June 21, 2026

Bulk schedule your posts

You can save serious time by scheduling hundreds of posts at once with Bulk Composer. Put all of your prepared content into a CSV file and upload it. Then you can preview and edit your posts in Hootsuite, or schedule them right away.

Plans: This feature is restricted to certain plan types. If you don't see this feature, visit the Hootsuite plans page to see if it is included in your plan.

When scheduling in bulk, Hootsuite lets you know about any errors found in specific posts, so you can quickly fix them or discard individual posts. Use Bulk Composer to create posts for X, Facebook Pages, LinkedIn Pages and profiles, TikTok, and Instagram Business profiles (direct publishing).

After you upload your CSV, Bulk Composer lets you add images and videos to your posts and customize link previews before scheduling.

This article describes the new Social OS experience. If you haven't switched yet, select the Classic tab for instructions. Learn more about the Social OS experience.

Prepare a bulk post file

A maximum of 350 posts can be scheduled using Bulk Composer. This could be 350 posts to 1 social account, or 50 posts to 7 social accounts. Any posts already scheduled for those social accounts in Hootsuite need to be included in that 350 post maximum.

For example, if there are 100 posts already scheduled to your X profile, you could bulk upload 250 more posts to it. This only applies to bulk posting. There is no limit to the number of posts you can manually schedule after you upload a bulk file.

Go to Perch, select the arrow next to Create a post and then select Bulk Composer from the list.
Select Download example to start with a sample CSV file.
Open the sample file in Google Sheets or any other program that saves files in CSV format.
Important: Microsoft Excel can cause errors by converting years into YY format instead of the required YYYY when it exports to CSV. If you only have Excel, you can work around this by making sure the format for the date column is set to General and not Date.
Populate the file with your content using the following formatting rules, and then save or export the file to CSV.

Go to Plan, and then select Content.
Select the arrow next to Create a post, and then select Bulk Composer.
Select Download example to start with a sample CSV file.
Open the sample file in Google Sheets or any other program that saves files in CSV format.
Important: Microsoft Excel can cause errors by converting years into YY format instead of the required YYYY when it exports to CSV. If you only have Excel, you can work around this by making sure the format for the date column is set to General and not Date.
Populate the file with your content using the following formatting rules, and then save or export the file to CSV.

Formatting rules:

Column A - Enter a post date and time (24-hour time) - Times must be set in the future (at least 20 minutes from upload time) and must end in either a 5 or a 0. For example, 10:45 or 10:50. Define only one post per time slot. Accepted date formats are as follows. Use one format exclusively throughout your CSV:
- day/month/year hour:minute
- month/day/year hour:minute
- year/month/day hour:minute
- year/day/month hour:minute
Column B - Create your post. Remember, X has a limit of 280 characters, including the URL (which reserves at most 23 characters).
Column C - Optionally, enter a link using the full URL. You can choose to have these automatically shorten to Ow‌.ly links when you upload to Bulk Composer.
Duplicate posts are not allowed.

Spreadsheet example.

Schedule messages with Bulk Composer

Using Bulk Composer involves four steps: upload your posts, review and fix any errors, edit and customize your posts individually, and then schedule your posts.

Upload posts in bulk

Go to Perch, select the arrow next to Create a post and then select Bulk Composer from the list.
Upload your CSV file.
Select the social accounts to publish the posts to. When publishing to X, only one X account can be selected at a time.
Optionally, select Do not shorten links to preserve your URL (not shorten it using Ow‌.ly).
Select Review posts.

Go to Plan, and then select Content.
Select the arrow next to Create a post, and then select Bulk Composer.
Upload your CSV file.
Select the social accounts to publish the posts to. When publishing to X, only one X account can be selected at a time.
Optionally, select Do not shorten links to preserve your URL (not shorten it using Ow‌.ly).
Select Review posts.

Review and fix errors

If Bulk Composer detects any errors in your uploaded posts, those posts are listed with a red banner explaining the issue. Select a post to edit it. You cannot schedule a post until the issue is fixed. Alternatively, select Delete to delete it.

When errors are fixed, the red banners no longer appear. Posts may contain more than one error.

Edit and customize

If your posts are ready to go, you can select Schedule all posts. Otherwise, you can select posts individually to review and edit them before scheduling. Select a post to edit the post text or do any of the following:

Preview the post - Select Preview to see how the post will look on each social network.
Add an image or video - Select Upload media or Media library.
Remove or customize the link preview - Select Customize link preview to remove or customize the link preview image, or update the title or description, and then select Save.
Edit the scheduled time - Select the scheduled time at the bottom of the post.

Notes:

Bulk Composer does not support Facebook and LinkedIn mentions. You can add Page mentions by editing your posts in your content calendar after they're scheduled.
X mentions will work properly from Bulk Composer as long as you've written the @handle correctly in your file.
You cannot customize TikTok privacy settings in Bulk Composer. Comments, Duet, and Stitch are allowed by default. To turn these settings off, edit the post in your content calendar after it has been scheduled.

Go to your content calendar to edit the post after it is scheduled.

Schedule

Select Schedule to schedule a post individually, select Schedule all posts to schedule all the posts in your CSV, or select the posts you want to schedule or delete and select Schedule selection or Delete selection.

After all your posts are scheduled, select View scheduled posts to customize them further. You can filter your scheduled posts by social account to find the ones you are looking for.

Any posts that have not been scheduled when you leave Bulk Composer are discarded.

Important: Hootsuite shows upcoming content for a two-year window. Posts scheduled beyond two years are not visible in Plan. You will only be able to edit or delete them when they fall within the two-year visibility period.

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Bulk schedule your posts

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