Social posts and the calendar

Social lets you write posts for LinkedIn, Google, Facebook and X and publish them to your connected accounts, straight away or at a set time. It's under Grow → Social: Posts lists your posts, Calendar shows each month's plan, and Calendar planner suggests drafts.

Before you start

• Social must be included in your subscription's package. The Calendar planner also needs Social AI. See Package and add-ons.
• You can only schedule or publish to accounts that are already connected. See Social accounts and social campaigns.
• If you see Initialising your Social service..., Social is still being set up for your subscription. Select Try again after a few moments.

Find your posts

Go to Grow → Posts. Use All, Draft, Scheduled, Published and Failed to filter the list. Each row shows the post's title, text, target accounts, status and publish time, plus the error if publishing failed. A post waiting for its publish time shows as Pending. Select a post to open it.

If you have permission, you can Delete a draft. Scheduled and published posts can't be deleted.

Create a post

1. Go to Grow → Posts and select Create Post. You can also select Create Post on the Calendar.
2. Enter a Title and the Body. Both are required. The title is for your own reference; the body is the text that's published.
3. Choose the Provider (Linkedin, Google, Facebook or X) and a Post Type.
4. Under Connected Socials, tick the Company Accounts and Personal Accounts to post to. Only accounts for the chosen provider are listed, and changing the provider clears your ticks.
5. Set Publish At if you already know when the post should go out.
6. Select Save Draft to keep it as a draft, or schedule it as described below.

To write one message with a version for each platform, create a post group from a social campaign. See Social accounts and social campaigns.

Schedule or publish a post

1. Open the post from Grow → Posts or the Calendar.
2. Check the text and the accounts ticked under Connected Socials.
3. Set Publish At to the date and time you want.
4. Select Schedule to publish at that time, or Publish Now to send it straight away.

A post can only be scheduled or published when it targets at least one connected account. Posts to LinkedIn, and any post covered by your subscription's approval rules, need publishing sign-off first. While sign-off is outstanding, Schedule and Publish Now are unavailable and the editor shows Needs publishing sign-off before it can be scheduled or published. See Approving social posts before they publish.

You can edit a scheduled post until it goes out. If the post needed sign-off, changing its content or its accounts means the new version needs sign-off again.

Link a post to website content

If the post promotes website content that goes live later, link it under Linked Content:

1. Choose the Content post.
2. Choose its Scheduled content version. The editor shows Linked content goes live at followed by the date.
3. Set Publish At to that time or later, then select Schedule.

If the social post would go out first, you'll see This social post cannot go live before the linked content version. Choose a later social publish time. A scheduled post is also held back until its linked content goes live. When you reopen a saved post, the Linked Content fields may appear empty; the link you saved is kept.

Use the calendar

Go to Grow → Calendar and choose a month. It lists every post with a publish time, in date order. Filter by status (All, Draft, Scheduled, Published or Failed), select Refresh to reload, and select a post to open it.

Plan with the Calendar planner

Grow → Calendar planner suggests draft posts and posting times based on your campaigns, past posts and performance data.

1. Under Campaign, choose a campaign. You can also type a new name to create a campaign.
2. Set a Start and End date.
3. Describe what you want to achieve under What should we improve?.
4. Select Plan calendar.
5. Review the suggestions. For each one you want, select Approve draft, then Confirm.

The planner never posts anything. Each approved suggestion becomes a draft under Grow → Posts; check it's there before you move on. Open it, tick the accounts and schedule it as usual.

Notes

• Posts are currently published as text: the Body is what appears on the platform. Post Type and Provider Options are saved with the post but don't change what's published, so put any link in the body itself.
• Images and video can't be attached yet, as the note under Media Assets explains. If a post already has media, remove it before scheduling.

Troubleshooting

• Choose a publish date and time before scheduling.: set Publish At, then select Schedule.
• Publishing is blocked until the current content version completes sign-off.: the post has been saved as a draft but needs sign-off first. Don't select Schedule again on the same screen, as that saves a second copy. Go to Grow → Posts, open the draft and follow Approving social posts before they publish.
• Failed posts: read the error on the row. Subscription administrators are also notified when a scheduled post fails. Check the account is still connected, then open the post and select Schedule or Publish Now again. Accounts that already received the post aren't posted to twice.