Bulk schedule your posts

You can save serious time by scheduling hundreds of posts at once with the 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.

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

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

Prepare a bulk post file

A maximum of 350 posts can be scheduled using the 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 Twitter 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 that can be manually scheduled after you upload a bulk file.

Prepare a bulk post file

1. Go to Planner, and then select Content.
   • If it's your first time using the Bulk Composer, select Try Bulk Composer BETA, then Try it now.
   • If you've used the new Bulk Composer before, select Bulk Composer from the Content Sources area.
2. Select Download example to start with a sample CSV file.
3. 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 available, make sure the format for the date column is set to General and not Date.
4. Using the following formatting rules, populate the file with your content 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, Twitter 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 the Bulk Composer.
• Duplicate posts are not allowed.

Schedule with the Bulk Composer

Using the 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

1. Go to Planner, and then select Content.
2. Select Bulk Composer.
   
3. Select Select file to upload, select your CSV file, and then select Open.
4. Select the social accounts to publish the posts to. Only one Twitter account can be selected at a time.
   If you belong to more than one organization, select a new organization at the top to view different social accounts.
5. Optionally, select Do not shorten links to preserve your URL (not shorten it using Ow.ly).
6. Select Review posts.

Review and fix errors

If the 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. A post cannot be scheduled 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, select Schedule all posts, or select posts individually to review and edit them before scheduling.

Select a post from the list to do the following:

• Edit the post text.
• 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.

To edit the post after it is scheduled. Open and edit it in Planner.

Schedule

Select Schedule to schedule a post individually. You can also deselect any posts in the list and then select Schedule all posts.

Alternatively, bulk select posts in the list by selecting the checkbox to the left of each social account icon, and then 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 the Bulk Composer are discarded.