Bulk Composer

Schedule messages in bulk with Hootsuite’s Bulk Composer. Upload a CSV file of prepared content, and then schedule multiple messages with one click, or preview, edit and schedule them individually. The bulk-scheduling tool will alert you to any errors found in specific messages, so you can quickly fix the issues or discard individual messages. Scheduling in bulk is available for Hootsuite Professional plans and up.

The Bulk Composer also lets you add images to your messages and customize link previews before scheduling!

Preparing a bulk message file

A maximum of 350 messages can be scheduled at a time. This could be 350 messages to 1 social network, or 50 messages to 7 social networks. However, any messages already scheduled for those social networks in your dashboard need to be subtracted from the 350.

For example, if there are 100 messages already scheduled to your Twitter profile, you could bulk upload 250 more messages to it. There is no limit to the number of messages that can be manually scheduled in addition to the 350 after bulk uploading.

To prepare a bulk message file

1. Seleziona Publisher  dal menu di avvio.
2. Under Content Sources, click Bulk Composer.
3. Click Download example on the right of the Composer to start with a sample CSV file.
4. Open the sample file in Google Sheets or other program that exports files in .csv format.
5. Populate the file with your own content according to the following rules, and then save/export as a CSV file.

Formatting rules:

• Column A: Date and time (24-hour time) - The accepted date formats are below. Use one format exclusively throughout:
  • dd/mm/yyyy hh:mm
  • mm/dd/yyyy hh:mm
  • yyyy/mm/dd hh:mm
  • yyyy/dd/mm hh:mm
• Column B: Your message - For Twitter there is a limit of 280 characters, including the URL (which reserves at most 23 characters).
• Column C: URL (optional) – enter the full URL. You can choose to have these automatically shortened to Ow.ly links.
• Times must be set in the future (at least 10 minutes from upload time).
• Posting times must end in either a 5 or a 0, i.e. 10:45 or 10:50. Define only one message per time slot.
• Duplicate messages are not allowed.

We recommend using Google Sheets for creating CSV files. You can also use TextEdit (1.7+) or TextWrangler.

  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 date column’s formatting is set to General and not Date.

Scheduling with the Bulk Composer

Using the bulk composer involves four steps; upload your messages, review and fix any errors, edit and customize your messages individually, and then schedule.

Upload messages in bulk

1. Seleziona Publisher  dal menu di avvio.
2. Under Content Sources, click Bulk Composer.
3. Click Select File to Upload, select your CSV file, and then click Open.
4. Select the social networks to publish the messages to.
5. Optional: Check Do not shorten links, to preserve your URL, and not have it shorten to an ow.ly link.
6. Click Next: Review Messages.

Review and fix errors

If the Bulk Composer detects any errors in your uploaded messages, those messages will be listed with a red banner explaining the issue. Select a message on the left to edit it on the right. A message cannot be scheduled until the issue is fixed. Alternatively, click more  on the message and then Discard to delete it.

When errors are fixed, the red banners will disappear. Note that messages may contain more than one error.

Edit and customize

If your messages are ready to go, click Schedule All Messages, or select messages individually to review and edit them before scheduling:

Select a message from the list to:

• edit the message text.
• click Preview in the top-right corner to see how the post will look on each social network.
• click Select an image to upload/Replace link preview with media and add an image.
• click Customize on the link preview to remove or customize  the link preview image, or edit the link title or description, and then click Save.
• click the scheduled time at the bottom of the post to edit the scheduled time.

To edit the social networks the message is being published to, or the links included in the message, edit the message in the Publisher  section after the message is scheduled.

Schedule

In the editing pane, click Schedule in the bottom-right corner to schedule a message individually, or click to deselect the message in the list and then click Schedule All Messages.

Alternatively, bulk select messages in the list by hovering over the social profile icon on the left of each message and checking the box, then click Schedule Selected or Discard Selected in the top-right corner. 

After all your messages are scheduled, click View Scheduled Messages to customize them further in the Publisher  section under Scheduled. Filter your scheduled messages by profile to edit scheduled messages by social network.

To exit the Bulk Composer, click the X in the top-right corner. Any messages that have not been scheduled when you leave the Bulk Composer will be discarded.