Create and publish posts

  • Aug 19, 2026
  • Knowledge

Procedure Steps

  Article updated: June 20, 2026

Create and publish posts

Create a single post and tailor your text, mentions, hashtags, and media for each social network. As you add to your post, you can see what it will look like on each social network.

Note: Certain content types have unique publishing workflows. See the following articles to:

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.

Create a post

Create a post and customize it for each social network. Hootsuite doesn't support creating event posts or polls.

Social OSClassic
  1. Start your post - Go to Perch, then select Calendar to start and schedule your post in a calendar view, or select Create a post.
  2. Select the social accounts you want to publish to - You can publish content to multiple networks at once and search your accounts by handle name, social network, and team. Your own private accounts are clearly indicated.
  3. Create your post - Enter your post text, you'll see the character count update as you type. You can include the following in the body of your posts:
    • 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.
    • 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.
    • Emoji - Have fun with emoji! You can select skin tone variations for emoji when creating a post, to better reflect your own or your audience's identity.
      Emoji with skin color options highlighted.
    • 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.
  4. (Optional) Let AI help you write or refine your post - Select Wisdom to have Wisdom help you optimize your post for your selected social network, change the tone of your post, or make your post actionable. This option is only available to organizations who support using AI (see Hootsuite AI terms).

Add media

Add media to your post. Drag images, GIFs, or videos from your computer into your post, or select Add media to upload files.

Looking for more ways to add media? You can also add media using:

Edit your images

For accessibility, add alt text (a short description of your image) to your image. Alt text is available on social networks that support it.

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

A cursor pointing to an image thumbnail, revealing the options to add alt text and edit the image.

Edit your videos

Captions are available on social networks that support it. Add an SRT captions file and edit your videos right in Hootsuite. Point to a video, select More, and then select Video settings to add SRT captions to Facebook, LinkedIn, X, and Bluesky 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.

A cursor pointing to a video thumbnail, revealing the options to view settings and edit the video.

Tip: If you've installed any of the following apps from the Hootsuite app directory, you can add videos from them right from the media library: Adobe stock, AEM assets for Hootsuite, Box for Hootsuite, Dropbox for Hootsuite, OneDrive, and TINT.

Customize your content for each social network

Hootsuite copies your content for each social network you're publishing to, so you can customize your content for the unique audiences on each one. For example, make it shorter on X, remove the hashtags on Facebook, or remove the link on Instagram. If your post includes mentions, you'll have to customize them for each social network.

Select Your post, and make changes to your content. Changes here will apply to all of your social networks until you start customizing them.

Example post with multiple social networks selected, and Your post highlighted.

To customize your post for a social network, select that social network from the top of the content area.

Example post with multiple social networks selected, and the Instagram tab highlighted.

If you want to undo your text customizations, use the following:

  • Select Restore original post to undo customizations for a single social network and restore its text to match the initial content.
  • Select Your post, and then select Restore this post across all networks to undo customizations in all social network tabs.
Overwriting your customizations resets any mentions selections, so you'll need to recreate those.

Ask for a review

Plans: Advanced, Business, and Enterprise

Invite a team member to review and approve your posts before they go live. Select one or more team members, or a team, from the Request approval list to help make sure your post is on-brand and polished before you publish it. Learn more about approvals.

Promote your post

Boost your Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn post to extend its reach beyond your followers so that more people see it. Select Boost this post to choose a goal for your boost campaign, who you want to see it (based on demographics, location, and interests), how much you want to spend, and how long you want the social network to promote it. Learn more about promoting posts.

Add tags

Plans: Advanced, Business, and Enterprise

Tags allow you to visually classify posts and messages by category, which is useful for keeping track of things like engagement for specific campaigns and for providing other team members context about specific conversations or posts. Think of a tag as an internal hashtag that can be attached to posts and messages without being visible to the public. You add tags when you're creating your post, but you can also add them to posts in your content calendar, after you have already scheduled or published your post. Learn more about adding and using tags in your posts.

Schedule, publish, or save your post as a draft

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.

Instructions for creating specific content types

See the following articles for the steps to create and publish content to each social network:

  Learn more

 

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Create and publish posts
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