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.

Open the post composer

You can start your post from Composer or Planner . Select one of the following options:

• Select Composer and select a specific post type (options differ by plan type).
• Go to your content calendar in Planner , select the week view , select a time or recommended time to schedule your post, and then create your post. Learn about scheduling posts in a content calendar.

Select your social accounts and create your content

You can publish content to multiple networks at once and search accounts by handle name, social network, and team. Your own private accounts are clearly indicated.

In the post composer Content area, enter your post text. You'll see the character count update as you type. Hootsuite doesn't support creating event posts or polls. 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. Learn who and what you can mention on each network.
• 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.
  
• Hashtags - Enter your own hashtags or select AI hashtag suggestions to find hashtags that work with your post text and media.
• Tags - Business and Enterprise plan members can add tags to posts to analyze their performance in Analytics. Learn how to create and use tags.

Customize your content for each social network

Hootsuite copies your content into tabs for each social network you've selected so you can customize your content for the unique audiences on each social network. For example, make it shorter on Twitter, remove the hashtags on Facebook, or remove the link on Instagram. If your post includes mentions, you must customize them in each social network tab (see Mention a user or Page for details). Changes to the initial content will update all tabs until you start customizing them.

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

• Select Overwrite with initial content to undo customizations for a single social network and restore its text to match the initial content.
• Select the Initial content tab, and then select Overwrite custom social network content to undo customizations in all social network tabs.

Add media

Add images and videos to the Initial content tab and customize your media selections (add, remove, reorder, or edit) in each social network tab. You can drag files from your computer into the Content area. You can also design visuals with Canva (see Design visuals with Canva for help), or add media from a Media library.

Point to an image and select Alt to add alt text to images on networks that support that option. Select Edit image to crop, add filters, or make other adjustments to the image. Find out how to customize your images in Hootsuite.

Point to a video and select Video settings to add SRT captions to Twitter and Facebook videos. Read about each social network's video requirements.

Ask for a review

Business and Enterprise plan members can invite a team member to review and approve their 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 asking a team member to approve your post.

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.

Want to know more about scheduling posts? See Schedule a post. You can find and manage your drafts, published posts, and scheduled posts in a calendar view in Planner .

Instructions for creating specific content types

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

• Create a Facebook post
• Create a tweet
• Create an Instagram post, story, or reel
• Create a LinkedIn post
• Create a TikTok video