How to Bulk Schedule Social Media Posts and Save Time

As a busy social media manager, you can’t spend all of your time posting updates in a snap. With Engagement rates measure, a Social strategy to tinker, and yours Content calendar To keep it going, it makes perfect sense to invest in mass planning for social media – and save yourself time on other tasks.

What is bulk scheduling?

Bulky scheduling on social media is the practice of organizing and scheduling lots of posts in advance. (You can schedule up to 350 posts at a time with Hootsuite!)

With bulk planning you can:

• Save time and resources to focus on other areas of your role or your company
• Optimize and strengthen the coordination of your social media campaigns
• Plan time-sensitive content in advance
• Post when your audience is active and online (no more last minute scramble to collect assets and post in the moment)

Bulk scheduling makes daily posting hassle-free and makes it easier for you to keep up with your social media calendar. On any given day, you know exactly how many posts will be published and when.

Let’s dive in and see how you can use Hootsuite to schedule social media posts on a massive scale.

How to Schedule Social Media Posts in 5 Easy Steps

First you have to Sign up for a Hootsuite account or log in if you are already using the platform.

Visual learners, watch the following video and learn how to schedule social media posts on a massive scale with Hootsuite. Everyone else – read on.

Step 1: Download the bulk composer file from Hootsuite

To create and schedule bulk social media posts in Hootsuite, you need to follow a few simple preparation steps, starting with preparing a bulk post CSV file for upload to Hootsuite:

1. Launch your Hootsuite dashboard. Click on the left editor.
2. On the top Publisher menu, click contents.
3. On the Contents menu, click Mass composer on the left.
4. Press the Download sample Button on the right side of the screen.
5. Open the downloaded CSV file in a program that supports .csv files, such as Google Sheets or Microsoft Excel.

Professional type: We recommend importing the CSV file into Google Sheets. Other software can mess up the date and time format required to properly upload a bulk post.

Step 2: Fill out the CSV file

We understand; Opening a new CSV file seems daunting. But if you follow these step-by-step instructions, you’ll be planning your social media posts in no time.

1. In Column A., enter the date and time you want your post to be published using one of the following supported formats:
   1. Day / month / year hour: minute
   2. Month / Day / Year Hour: Minute
   3. Year / Month / Day Hour: Minute
   4. Year / Day / Month Hour: Minute
2. Remember that the clock must be in 24 hour format, the time must end with a 5 or a 0, Publication times can only be set for at least 10 minutes from the time you upload the file to Hootsuite, and your date format must be consistent throughout the bulk schedule file.
3. In Column B, add the caption for your post and remember to stick with everyone Social media character restrictions.
4. Do you want to add pictures, emojis, or videos to your bulk schedule? You can add these after you’ve uploaded the CSV file to Hootsuite.
5. If you want to direct your audience from your social media post to a specific url, add a link in Column C.. You can shorten them to Ow.ly links later.
6. Save your file and go to the next step.

Reminder: You can schedule 350 posts at a time using Hootsuite’s Bulk Composer tool. You can post all 350 on one social media platform or even post 50 posts on seven different platforms!

Step 3: Upload the CSV file to Hootsuite

You are now ready to upload your CSV file with all of the posts that you would like to schedule en masse in Hootsuite.

1. Navigate to the Hootsuite dashboard and click editor, contents, and then click Mass composer on the left.
2. click Select file to upload, select your recently created .csv file and click Open minded.
3. Choose the social media platforms you want to plan your posts for en masse.
4. Check the box next to Don’t shorten links if you want the full URL to appear on your social media post, or leave it unchecked if your link allows it show as ow.ly.

Step 4: review and edit your posts

Hooray! Now you can review your scheduled mass mails and visualize how they will be presented to your audience.

1. Click on each post to check the copy and Add emojis, photos or videos.

Are you worried that you might have made a planning mistake? The Hootsuite bulk scheduling tool automatically flags errors and allows you to correct the problems. Remember, however, that you cannot schedule the collection of posts until you have fixed them.

Step 5: schedule your posts in bulk

1. When you are done reviewing and editing, click Schedule bottom right.
2. Planning can take a few seconds. Once Hootsuite finishes scheduling your bulk posts, review them by clicking View scheduled messages.
3. Do you still need to make a few tweaks? Click on planner to edit your planned contributions individually.

And that’s it! You can quickly and easily schedule scheduled posts for Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and other social media platforms in no time at all.

5 best practices for mass planning on social media

One size doesn’t fit all

The number of words is different on each social platform, so make sure your scheduled mass mails contain the correct number of characters. As of 2021, Twitter has a limit of 280 characters, Instagram has 2,200 and Facebook has a massive limit of 63,206 characters.

Don’t spam

Keep your social media copy unique for each post, even if you share the same link. Repeatedly sharing the same post with the same message could mark your account as spam and reduce your chances of success on social media.

Scheduling isn’t everything

Planning shouldn’t be your entire social strategy. Also save space in your feed for real-time updates and responses. Ideally, your social media feed should adhere to it the rule of thirds:

• ⅓ Business Promotion to Convert Readers and Make Profits
• ⅓ Share ideas from influencers in your industry or similar companies
• ⅓ personal stories to build your brand

There are a million new things to do on social media – customer care is hot, social commerce is booming, and TikTok can’t be ignored. Getting lost is easy

Read our # SocialTrends2022 report and accompany us at the cutting edge: https://t.co/G5SwOdw5Gz pic.twitter.com/VtVunHiKbG

– Hootsuite (Owlys Version) (@hootsuite) November 12, 2021

Remember to listen

Bulk scheduling is great for broadcasting to your audience continuously, but it’s also important to take the time to listen. You need to give and receive, so interact with your followers, reply to comments, reply to direct messages, and build relationships.

Do you want to take social listening a step further? Hootsuite insights helps you analyze millions of audience conversations so that your finger is always on the cutting edge.

Be consistent

Consistent posting on social media is an important part of a successful social media strategy – Facebook and Instagram Best Practice Guide even says it.

If you create and stick to a consistent posting plan, your followers can know when your content is arriving on their feeds and help increase engagement. With the bulk scheduling of social media posts, you can stick to a set schedule and makes sure you post content to your feed whenever your audience expects it.

Save time managing your social presence and use Hootsuite to create, schedule, and publish content in bulk. Try it for free today.

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