In this walkthrough, Magnetic Growth Marketing Manager, Michael Gannon-Pitts, walks the team through the process of scheduling out organic social posts for clients.
Watch the video below to learn the process for scheduling out a monthly organic social calendar.
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:
So basically right now, there's essentially two platforms that I use to schedule out all the social posts for our clients. One is HubSpot and the other is Creator Studio. Creator Studio is Facebook's own platform that's used for content scheduling. So these are basically the two that we're using to kind of get everything done in terms of scheduling. And HubSpot HubSpot pretty straightforward. It's just this is the view here. It's just kind of your basic calendar. So when you're added to a HubSpot portal, all of the accounts you have access to, you'll see here to get to the social scheduling feed from the homepage of a portal, you would basically just go to marketing in the header. You'll see the social dropdown. You just click on that. And then the calendar will pop up to schedule a post. In this, you would just click on the day and it automatically select that day. If you're scheduling a post for the day, you're already on. So if it was for the second, it won't. You'll just go to create social post in terms of kind of the process here. So I would use you open the calendar up and then I will go to the copy dock for that month.
The main thing here is how I pull assets from these docs to post them to when if we use today's or tomorrow's post as example for images, I'll click on the image. And this is going to see where. But it's really specific how you have to do this. I right click the image and I click Save, the keep. And then if you go over onto the bar that pops up here, you can right. Click and save image as and then I just download it to my computer. This process, for whatever reason, can get screwed up really easily with Google Docs. So if I were to right. Click save to keep and then I click on to another tab or do something else and come back, you'll see when I go to save this it says unnamed and it no longer has the actual name of the post anymore. So a lot of times that that happens, formatting can get screwed up and for some reason it's just some weird bug that happens. So when you save an image, you need to make sure that you immediately go and save it to your computer without changing tabs. So that's one key thing to note. So once I have it downloaded, then we can go back to the day. If we were going to schedule it for the fourth, you can select your social network. So we'll do Facebook first. We're going to do an image post. You're going to click Insert image and you'll see ad image down at the bottom upload from file. And it should be the first one in your downloads folder.
Obviously, I'm doing it from a Windows PC right now. Mac would be pretty similar, so it'll upload. It'll be the first one here. You'll click that image and then it'll inserted into the post. Then I'll go back and grab the copy. So just obviously this copy paste there and paste that in.
So with Hubspot, the nice thing is if for this one sense, we would be doing it on Facebook and Instagram, if you want to duplicate it to Instagram or LinkedIn, you just select that icon and it'll just symbiotically duplicated over. One thing to note with this post as an example where we're doing at where we're adding a page, HubSpot won't automatically figure it out in trade or studio. She doesn't either. So you have to delete that text out all the way to the app and then just do it yourself and you have to actually type out. So it'll pick it up here. It just takes a second. So they've got PBR there, so now it'll actually be tagged and then same thing for Instagram, you just need to delete it out and type it back in Instagram for whatever reason on Hubspot, it won't show it to you. So if you click Preview post, you can check to see if the tag worked. And so then I'll just click that link, make sure it goes to the right page. So it did actually link PBR. One limitation we do have with HubSpot and Creator Studio is we can't put in a first comment before we schedule out the post. So if you want to do that, you would have to go in and set a reminder to yourself to go and put that after the post goes live.
Otherwise, what I've been doing is a time saver for some situations is just having it in the post caption itself, just push down a little bit farther. So this would basically be a duplicated poster, Facebook and Instagram. You can set your scheduling time and date here. So if you wanted it to go at us at a specific time, if you want to publish it now, you can choose from kind of the pre-built ones or you can go in and set a custom time here.
One thing to make note of, if you do set a custom publish time is make sure you change this to AM because if you just type in a number, it it's 50-50 shot, which one it's going to pick up type in an RPM. And that's basically what you would do in HubSpot. Same thing for LinkedIn. You can just duplicate them all there.
So limitations with HubSpot we can only do single image or single video posts. You can't do carousels and HubSpot. You can do a multi image post for Facebook. So you could drop up the four images if you want. But Instagram, you can just do one video, one post. So at that point, there's really no reason to schedule the four image post out on Facebook and HubSpot and then go into crater studio and do it on Instagram or do it in for Instagram, because if you go into creative studio and you do it first and I'll show you how to do this basically. But if you schedule it first on Instagram, you can schedule it for Facebook as well at the same time. So you have to do it twice. So that would be kind of what we can do in HubSpot.
One thing to note, in general, Facebook is pretty limitless in terms of what it allows you to post as far as like the length of video size of file or whatnot, it doesn't really restrict you with Instagram for actual fee posts. You can't post a video that's longer than 60 seconds to an Instagram feed. If it's longer than 60 seconds, it's going to want it to be in TV feed that you cannot schedule on HubSpot. You would have to do that in Creator Studio as well. Also, the bit limit, which is basically the size of the file for Instagram videos, usually limited to five megabytes. So that's relevant because a lot of times we'll post like recipe videos or like cuts of fab videos. And typically what will happen. Let's see if we have one this month. So I can show you guys. Yeah so right here.
So let's say we were going to schedule out this pork Tenderloin video. We go to the Vimeo link. And then we're going to download it. So you'll see the download options here. So the original file is 8.6 megabytes. And the 10 version is 3.36. Instagram can't show videos higher than I think 720 anyways. So for social, typically I will just download the 1080p version because what happens is if I what's done with the original just to show you. So we download the original one and let's say that we go to post this. So we want to go to Instagram and we want to share this video for Instagram. You can drag and drop, which is nice. It's probably going to tell us that this is too big of a file. Yeah so see the maximum rate of 5 megabits per second. So the files are too big. So in that case, you would want to just download the 1080p version and that's going to avoid that happening. But for Facebook, doesn't matter, but same thing, Facebook's not going to show higher than 10 apps that really no reason to download the original video ever for social. So that covers HubSpot. So then moving into Creator Studio. So to be able to post in Creator Studio you will have to be added as an admin for the page that you're posting for.
So if it's Nexgrill, any client, basically, if it's assigned to you, we just need to add you to the page itself. This is the dashboard here. Obviously, since it's Facebook, it's only going to be Facebook and Instagram on this for me, since I have been on pretty much every client, you'll see the list of all the clients here. And you'll want to make sure when you go to do a post that you're posting for the right client. So I'll usually just select all then a proposing for next group. Select that view on the dashboard here. You'll be able to see really any content that's been published. You can separate it by photo video, carousel stories, and then you can also see the calendar. I don't usually post this land here. I usually will just create a post so you can see either an IG feed post or an IG post here. So if you go in to do an Instagram post and the reason I'm doing Instagram first here is if you start an Instagram post, you'll see that there's an option to post to Facebook as well, but it doesn't work in the reverse. You need to make a Facebook post. It doesn't give you an option to post it to Instagram as well. I don't know why, but that's how they did it.
So if you were going to do a Instagram feed post here, let's do one of the carousel posts as an example to show the difference. So if we do the eight 10 post, so the process here is going to be to download each of these images that will right. Click save the key to go over to that column, save image as save and then basically just rinse and repeat that four times. All right, so we have our four images and then we can go ahead and just grab the copy while we're here and then we go back to create RStudio. First thing I usually do is upload the images and get those in the right order. So we've got our four here and you'll see these numbers in the boxes here that determines which numbers slide. That is so the order of the images. So you should go back and consult the copy doc to make sure we're in the right order. So you want the text overlay 1 first, so we'll find that guy. So, mark, that is one. And then the sideshow, if one is going to be number two. The great shot is number three, and the people shot is going to be number four, so now we've got the images lined up in the right order. We can go to the post caption section and paste in our text there. In the past, we haven't done hashtags on Facebook posts. I am starting to see them become a little bit more relevant at Facebook has changed how people can find the hashtag thinks and now I think they're worth using. So I don't really think poppy needs to change much between Facebook and Instagram. Obviously, aside from when we tagged pages, if their handle is different between Facebook and Instagram, we have to make sure that we're using the right one. That happens quite a bit if we tag Home Depot on post because Home Depot's handle is different on Instagram compared and Facebook. So that would be our caption here. We never had a location. There's really no reason for that here. You can do Alt text repost. I never do. This is really unnecessary. Really the only thing you would care about here is if we wanted to turn off commenting for a post. There is an option for that there. And then this is your scheduler. So you can see here post to Facebook. So if you select this, it's going to post to Facebook as well. You can choose to schedule them independently. So if you wanted to publish to Instagram immediately. But if for some reason the Facebook post is going out an hour later, a day later, a week later, you can do it independently.
One thing to note, though, is the scheduling will be individual. So if I go and set this to post on the 10th at 10 a.m., it's not going to do that for Instagram. So you have to do them for both. So you have to go here as well. Set it for the 10th, 10, 11 AM and then if we hit schedule, it'll schedule the Instagram post, it'll schedule a Facebook post as well. So that's going to be the process for scheduling a carousel. Obviously, an individual image or video is going to be the same process. You're going to it's just going to drop the file and drop your copy in and then set your scheduled date and time for the most part, in Creator Studio. You're only you're only scheduling carousels, as I understand it, right? Yeah, because with HubSpot. You can do pretty much everything else. So, yeah, for the most part, I'm just doing the carousels in creative studio. It's really up to you though. Like if you would prefer to not have to operate out of two platforms, there's no reason why you could have just do all of it in a studio. It's just kind of my workflow for whatever reason. And then in terms of copy doc structure, so typically once I have scheduled out a post, I will highlight the date in the title and bright green.
So that everyone knows that post is a go. If there's any issues for some reason with sometimes if the formatting is wrong for like an Instagram post, but it works for Facebook, I'll highlight the platform I had an issue with in yellow and then I'll add in a comment saying this needs to be shortened or the formatting is wrong. That's usually all I'll do. And a copy doc, typically, if there's any comments on the right hand side where someone says we need this or something and it's been posted, I'll clear it out just so there's no extraneous comments that people might think we still need something done for. Yeah, that that's pretty much it. Instagram stories have to be so they can be scheduled, but I haven't dealt with those. So I think, Jeff, you've been handling that and maybe Britney can speak to that a little bit more. But as far as actual feed, post and post, this pretty much covers how you would do all of that, whether it be in HubSpot or in trade or studio. So you can schedule out stories within creative studio. !invisible!, I don't know that you can. I know that we can do TV. I think Britney said that she is on the way to be able to schedule stories, but I don't think it's through here. But I may be wrong and maybe speak out of myself on that. But Yeah. So if we wanted to be one of the consolidated, it can all be done in a creative studio. Yeah, there's really no reason to use both, honestly. It's just like I'm more used to using Hubspot, so I just knock the stuff that I can out in there. For me, it's quicker to schedule individual posts. You can just click the Instagram button, then it immediately duplicates. But for somebody that's starting fresh on it, it would probably make more sense to just use Creator Studio and not need to go in and out of two different platforms. So, yeah, I would say, for the most part, just focus on creative studio.
There's nothing that HubSpot can do that Creator Studio can't so. And remind me again, mike, you're going to start with a Facebook or an Instagram post in order to be able to. So would start with an Instagram post to be able to duplicate it to Facebook. Facebook doesn't wait unless they've changed it. If we look here. Yeah, there's it doesn't have an option to schedule it to Instagram as well. That's no problem. And then I'm sure a recurring issue you have with staging is up. Oftentimes in the Facebook captions, they'll be about the same as Instagram only with like a link because you can't link out an Instagram to Instagram captions. So can you see that separate Facebook post somewhere and go in and edit it? So if we were to schedule out both. Right, so let's say we have the Instagram copy set the way it is. We know the Instagram posts are fine, but the Facebook post is going to need to look at it. So if you go over to the fethi, you just click over to the Facebook tab and you go to Content library. You can go to your scheduled post and it'll be the most recent one. You can just go to Edit post and that's where you would be able to drop in any changes. Yeah, one thing to note is, well, with video posts is that Instagram is not going to let you select a custom thumbnail for videos. It's going to use whatever the first frame is. But Facebook will let you choose a thumbnail. So even if you schedule in the same way, if we were going to post a video, I'm not sure if this is a video post. It is. So you can go into thumbnail here. You can either choose an auto generated one from the video itself or you can upload one. So that's Facebook only. That's bizarre. Yeah, so I'm just in general is very limiting in terms of their API, of what you do when you're scheduling stuff. So for an Instagram video, if you did want to change it, basically what we would need to do is that video itself would need to have the first frame set custom because there's really nothing you can do with these. But it's interesting. That could actually be done, I reckon, toss that in there, I think, yeah, in this stuff together, because that's I think that's probably my biggest concern about video is. They that you can get that done nail image, and so it kind of messes up the profile of you. And I wonder then, if it's worth building into our workflow, so like when Noah or Thomas, anyone is designing this stuff out, if it's a video, do we add in a design element sort of a keyframe that? Can use or I don't know, whatever, yeah, somehow we got to we should be curating that a little bit nicer, I think, for our clients. Yeah, so, yeah, I will be, yeah, so that pretty much covers the social scheduling process. I don't think we missed out really on anything here. Obviously, the building will be a new element. Now, this will be the first month doing that. So basically, if someone's doing that, they'll need to actually go into the link. I don't believe there's a way to do that through these platforms. You would actually need to log into the app and make that change. Or Instagram real posters will still need to be posted through the app as well. There's still an option to do that on here, which honestly is surprising because, I mean, Reels been around for a while. You think that'll be built into this? But we're using the free platform, so there's only so many features we get. But so far we've been able to make it work. So that's what we've got. Do you guys have any other questions on this? Sense, I'm guessing, kind of like with along with the Brett thing, since he's making the videos and stuff. And since I have the images already saved to my computer and not in the dock, I'm sure I could probably just copy those into the staging without doing the same to keep probably. Or is that do you think just play it safe and do it off while you're doing it?
Yeah so if you already have the images, it's going to save you a ton of time if you're the one scheduling it to not have to be pulling them out of the dock. So, yeah, it's always better to just have them and then you have to save folder anyways in order to put them in the dock. So I'll probably do it that way if I was to ever stage them. Is there any fear in time that you kind of instead continue to post all your things to Instagram or Facebook to you, as I kind of like a looser schedule? So for the most part, we want to be posting some point in the morning is usually the best time as far as engagement goes. We don't track it big time as far as like. Oh, Yeah. To 14 like golden hour. But yeah, for most weekday posts they should be between like 7:30 AM to about 9:30. And we either want to get people looking at their phones before work or kind of right. Once they're getting started. If you want to mix things up you can throw in like a lunchtime post, you know, do something around like noon or one. And then if we ever end up posting on a weekend, obviously a weekend post should be around noon, early afternoon. You don't want to post supervene like this, but I don't think we really ever post on weekends. OK, cool. But I just try to avoid seeming like a robot, so I'll just kind of pick random times so, you know, eight, 17 AM and then a 924 and a 10, 12, you know, just kind of mix things up. So it's not always 939. 39 30. But yeah, that's, that's about it for emojis. If we do use emojis and this is a gem, if we use emojis in text, some of these will have options where you can just use kind of their built-in emoji finder right here. And they'll have quite a few, not all of them usually.
So a resource for post emojis, if you don't find the one you like, is just emoji PDF dog is pretty much the best site for it. So you can go there and you can just search by whatever. So if you're looking for the fire emoji, you just type it in and you go to the emoji page and you'll see copy right there. So a lot of times if I don't see what I like and the actual platform, I'll just do that. And then you can just copy and paste it over. Let's see, looking at any of these posts is or anything we didn't really go over. Or puffs, carousels, and you do comments within Creager to do so, we can. So that's the main limitation we have as opposed to back when we were using Sprout. So if you wanted to add a first comment, you would just need to post it, then go to the post and comment.
We can't preset the comments as far as these dividers. I think we were using these more back when we were scheduling with Sprout in Sprout wasn't able to set spaces between text blocks. You can do that in krater suit. If you hit enter, it's going to show up broken. So I never I never use these dividers anymore. I just keep it clean and just have the spaces in between sections of copy. Yeah I mean I think that pretty much covers everything. You know, obviously you can really watch the video if you want to touch on a point again. But one of the things, once you schedule out a month, the social, it's kind of just rinse, repeat. Up