Do you want to save time scheduling tweets? Of course, you do!

At Lightspan, we focus on having conversations with real people on social media. However, we know you can’t be online all the time – everyone needs a break!

Scheduling Tweets for those times your targets are online but you aren’t is a great way to expand your reach, build brand awareness and drive more traffic to your site. Using a tool such as Hootsuite—a social media monitoring platform and management dashboard—you can schedule posts ahead of time. If you’re a savvy social media user, you’ve already taken advantage of this feature. But, did you know you can schedule as many as 350 at one time?

Why schedule posts in bulk?

Let’s say you want to promote a bunch of old blog posts that are still relevant to your followers. You can create several tweets promoting various highlights from the article at one time, enter the copy into a spreadsheet, add the article link, set the days and times and upload the tweets at once. Not only does this drive traffic to your original content, but it also will promote your content to your targets who may not have been following you weeks or months ago.

Scheduling Tweets with Hootsuite’s Bulk Uploader

Don’t delay! Use this quick and easy tool today. Here’s how:

PREPARING A FILE TO POST (IN BULK)

Step 1: Log in to your Hootsuite account. Go to “Publisher” and then select “Content”. If this is your first time using Hootsuite, click “Try Bulk Composer BETA”. If you have used this before, just click “Bulk Composer” from the “Content Sources” area.

Step 2: Select “Download example” to start a sample in csv file.

Step 3: Open the sample file in Google Sheets or any program that supports csv format. Please note that the date format may change when you open a file in Microsoft Excel. You may set the date format to general instead of date. 

Step 4: Fill in the file with your content using the formatting rules below. Then, save or export the file to csv. Please note that duplicate posts are not allowed.

Rules in Formatting:

COLUMN A	COLUMN B	COLUMN C
Enter a post date and time (24-hour format) at least 20 minutes from upload time and must end in either a 5 or a 0 (e.g. 11:35 or 12:40). Always remember that it’s only one post at one specific time slot. Use only one date format throughout your CSV.  Here are acceptable date formats: day/month/year hour:minute month/day/year hour:minute year/month/day hour:minute year/day/month hour:minute	Start creating your post. Only limit characters to 280 including the URL which usually has a maximum of 23 characters.	The full URL link should be entered. This is optional though you can choose to automatically shorten to Ow.ly links when you upload to the Bulk Composer.

SCHEDULING POSTS USING THE BULK COMPOSER

Step 1: Upload your posts in bulk

1. Click “Publisher” and select “Content”.
2. Click on “Bulk Composer”.
3. Choose the file to upload (csv file), and then click “Open”.
4. Choose the social accounts that you want your posts to be published. One Twitter account can be selected at a time. Also, select the organization at the top to view social accounts for business or enterprise plans.
5. Choose “Do not shorten links” to preserve your URL although this step is optional.
6. Click “Review posts”.

Step 2: Review Posts and Edit errors

Check posts if they are listed with red banners that have issues. Select a post that contains errors and edit it otherwise, it cannot be scheduled unless it is fixed. You also have the option to delete posts. Red banners on longer appear when errors are fixed.

Step 3: Review and customize

Select “schedule all posts” or you may select posts individually to review and edit them before scheduling. You may also do the following: preview the post, add an image or video, remove or customize the link preview and edit the scheduled time. You may edit the post after it is scheduled by opening and editing it in Publisher.

Step 4: Schedule

Select “Schedule” to schedule a post individually. You can also delete selection in the list using the checkbox and select “Schedule all posts”. Once all posts are scheduled you may select “View scheduled posts” to customize them. You can also filter scheduled posts by social account. Posts that were not scheduled will be discarded when you leave the Bulk Composer.

Try these easy steps now! 

If you want to learn more, don’t hesitate to contact us.