Schedule a post

Prepare and schedule your posts in advance to save time, and to keep your social presence active when your audience is online, even if you're not.

There are several ways to schedule your content across social networks. Before you learn more about scheduling, make sure to check out Create and publish posts.

Schedule a post

1. Go to Composer to schedule a post. As a shortcut, you can point to Composer and select a specific post type (options differ by plan type).
   
   
2. Create your content and then select Schedule for later to select a date and time for it to go live.
3. Select the calendar icon and choose the day you want the post to be published.
4. Set a specific time for the post to publish on the selected day, or select a recommended time. All scheduled times are in 5-minute increments. See Schedule posts at recommended times to learn more.
   
   
5. Once you've selected a date and time, select Done, and then Schedule, or select the arrow and then select from one of the following options:
   • Save draft - Save the post as a draft to polish or review it at another time. You can find your scheduled drafts in the calendar in Planner.
   • Schedule and reuse accounts - Schedule your post, retain your social account choices, and begin a new post to those same social accounts.
   • Schedule and duplicate - Schedule your post but retain a copy of the original content and the social account selection to create a similar post or schedule the post again. Hootsuite creates a new post ID so you can track each post separately.
     
     

Instagram users: If you’re scheduling to a Personal profile or Business profile that doesn't have direct publishing enabled, you must publish the post via mobile notification at its scheduled time. For full Instagram functionality in Hootsuite, you need a Business profile with a connected Facebook Page. For more information, see Convert an Instagram Personal profile to a Business profile.

Tip: Team, Business, and Enterprise plan members can use the Best Time to Publish view in Analytics for personalized suggestions based on your goals. See Discover the best times to post

Manage scheduled content in Hootsuite Planner

After you schedule your posts, go to Planner to view your currently scheduled or past scheduled posts. Here you can edit, reschedule, or delete scheduled content. Reschedule or edit your posts at least 6 minutes in advance of publishing (30 minutes in advance for posts with videos). You can also plan new content by week or month, and manage approvals. To learn more, see Manage your content calendar.

Schedule using Bulk Composer

With the Bulk Composer, you can save time and effort by uploading, editing, and scheduling hundreds of social media posts at once. This is done by using a CSV file with all the prepared content.

Use the Bulk Composer to create posts for Twitter, Facebook Pages and groups, LinkedIn Pages and profiles, TikTok, and Instagram Business profiles (direct publishing). To learn more about the Bulk Composer, see Bulk schedule your posts.

Export scheduled posts

You can export your scheduled and published content from Planner to CSV or PDF. Export to share your content calendar with team members or clients who don’t have Hootsuite accounts for easy collaboration. To learn more, see Export your content calendar.

Common questions and issues

The following topics are commonly asked questions about scheduling a post.

Scheduled post failure

If you receive a notification that one of your scheduled posts failed to send, review the failed post in Planner .

The most common reasons for post failure are that the social account disconnected from Hootsuite, the post is a duplicate, or the post contains abusive content. See Troubleshoot a post failure to learn more.

Scheduled posts adjusting to Daylight saving time

Scheduled posts automatically adjust for Daylight saving time (DST) according to the time zone selected in your Hootsuite settings. For more information, see Change your time zone.

If your selected time zone observes DST, Hootsuite complies with that observance and adjusts the time at 2AM.