Create and publish social posts

Use HubSpot's social composer to create and publish social posts across multiple networks simultaneously. By centralizing your social content strategy, you can maintain a consistent brand presence and track engagement within your CRM. For example, you can draft a single post and customize it for X, Facebook, and LinkedIn before scheduling it for peak engagement times.

After publishing, you can review your published posts and analyze your social reports to see which posts drive the most traffic to your website. 

Before you get started

Before you use this feature, review the requirements and key considerations to create and publish social posts.

Understand requirements

• Before you create social posts, connect your social media accounts to HubSpot. 
• To generate content with AI, turn on the Give users access to generative AI tools and features setting. Learn how to manage your AI settings.

Please note: avoid sharing any sensitive information in your enabled data inputs for AI features, including your prompts. Admins can configure generative AI features in account management settings. For information on how HubSpot AI uses your data to provide trustworthy AI, with you in control of your data, you can refer to our HubSpot AI Trust FAQs.

Understand limitations and considerations 

• When your social post is published, the social network will display the name of the user who connected the social account to HubSpot as the post creator. This is because HubSpot publishes the post to the social network using their credentials.
• By default, the HubSpot social tool will shorten links in your social post to a hubs.ly, hubs.li, or hubs.la link. If you own a branded short domain on Bitly, you can connect your Bitly account to HubSpot to use your branded short domain for links in social posts.
• You cannot use custom tracking URLs in social posts published through HubSpot. HubSpot automatically adds tracking parameters to posts published through the social tool to track traffic back to the original post.
• Instagram does not support links in posts.

Create social posts

Draft social posts for multiple social accounts at the same time. Drafted content will be duplicated for each selected social network. You can then customize posts for each social network.

1. In your HubSpot account, navigate to Marketing > Social.
2. In the upper right, click Create social posts.
3. In the social composer, click the Select accounts dropdown menu in the top left. Then, select the checkboxes next to the social accounts you want to post to. 
   • When posting to LinkedIn, you can also create LinkedIn document posts or polls. 
   • When posting to Instagram, you can publish different post types, such as a carousel post, reel, or Instagram story. 

Draft content for all networks

When creating your draft, previews for each social account will be displayed in the social preview on the right. 

1. On the Draft (all networks) tab, under the Write caption section, enter the caption for your social posts. 
2. To generate your social post content with Breeze Assistant, click the artificialIntelligence AI icon and select Social post or Hashtags. Learn more about using AI to generate your social post content and images. 
3. To add hashtags to your posts, use the # symbol. This will also automatically open your saved hashtags. Hashtags will not be hyperlinked in the drafted post or the preview, unless you're previewing an X post. The hashtag will be hyperlinked after you publish the post.
4. To use your saved hashtags, click # Hashtags. 
   • To add hashtags to your content, select the checkboxes next to the hashtags you'd like to add. 
   • To save new hashtags, click Manage hashtags. Then, enter your hashtag and select Add. 
   • To remove a hashtag from your saved hashtags, click Manage hashtags. Then, click the delete delete icon next to the hashtag. 

5. To add emojis to your post, click the emoji icon. Then, select the emoji to add to your caption. 
6. To undo or redo any content changes while drafting your post, in the top right of the text box, click the undoIcon Undo icon to clear a recent change. You can also click the redoIcon Redo icon to restore a change that was undone. Keyboard shortcuts, such as Cmd + Z or Ctrl + Z, are also supported when working in the social composer.
7. To share content not hosted on HubSpot, enter the content link directly into the text box.
   • It is not possible to customize the content link preview image for Facebook or X. However, you can remove the link preview image for Facebook. 
   • When adding links to your LinkedIn posts, you cannot replace the preview image in the Draft tab. Images replaced in the draft tab will not be hyperlinked.
     • To replace your image, click the LinkedIn social icon then replace the image. 
     • It is not possible to remove the preview image for LinkedIn posts. If a content link is included in the post, a preview image for that link will be generated in LinkedIn by default. 
8. To mention other accounts, click a social icon to select a social network. Then, use the @ symbol to mention or tag other accounts in that network. When using @mentions in your social posts, do note the following: 

• • When setting up your post, @mentions will not display or auto-complete in the Draft tab of the editor. You will need to select a social network beforehand. 
  • It's recommended to add @mentions as the last step when setting up your social posts. After a post is edited for a specific social network, any edits made to the post will not apply to posts from other social networks. Similarly, any edits made on the Draft tab will not update the customized post. 

• • For the specific social networks, please note the following: 

• • • Facebook: Facebook's API only allows mentions or tags for Facebook pages. You cannot mention or tag individual Facebook users or Facebook events when creating a social post in HubSpot.
    • Instagram: mentions will not be auto-completed, but Instagram will acknowledge the mention when the post is live.

• • • LinkedIn: you can mention both LinkedIn company pages and personal profiles when creating a social post in HubSpot. When mentioning personal profiles, both of the following requirements must be met:
      • You can @mention both LinkedIn company pages and personal profiles in the content of your post. When doing so, third-party application data use must be authorized for HubSpot.
      • When mentioning LinkedIn personal profiles, the LinkedIn user must meet the following requirements. If not, the user's profile will not appear and cannot be mentioned. 

• • • • • The user must have public profile visibility turned on. 

• • • • • The user must follow your LinkedIn page. 
        • The user must have a First name, Last name, and Headline. 

• • • • • The user's default profile language must be set to English. 

• • • X: only X accounts you follow will appear in the auto-complete dropdown menu. To mention accounts you don't follow, enter the full X handle. The mention will be acknowledged when the post is live.

Add an image to your social post

• png
• jpg
• jpeg
• gif (LinkedIn and X only, gifs will not play on Facebook or Instagram)

To add images to your social posts:

1. In the Upload Media section, click Select image. You can also drag and drop image files to the composer to add them to a post. In the right panel, add an image:
   • To select an existing image, click the image. Then click Insert files.
   • To upload a new image from your device, at the bottom, click Upload.
   • To add an image from a URL, click the down arrow icon and select Add from URL. 
   • To create and add an image with Adobe Express, click the down arrow icon and select Design with Adobe Express. Learn more about adding Adobe Express designs to your content.
   • To create and add an image with Canva, click the down arrow icon and select Design with Canva. Learn more about adding Canva designs to your content.
   • To use Breeze to generate an image, click Generate with AI. Learn more about using Breeze, HubSpot's AI to generate images for your content. 
2. To crop or resize your image, click the editIcon edit icon. Learn more about editing images in HubSpot. 
3. To change the image used, click the insertImage ImageFfefeimage icon. Then, add or select a new image. 
4. To add alt text to the image, click the T icon. In the dialog box, enter your alt text and click Save. 
5. To remove the image, click the delete delete icon. 

Please note: alt text cannot be added to images on Instagram posts.

Add a video to your social post

When adding a video to your social post, it is recommended that each video is less than 1 minute in length. Adding a longer video may result in upload errors. You can use the following video formats:

• mp4
• mov
• mpeg4
• m4v

To add a video to your social post: 

1. In the Upload Media section, click Select video. 
2. To select a video, you can use any of the following methods:
   • To select an existing video from your file manager, in the right panel, click the video.
   • To upload a new video from your device, in the bottom left of the panel, click Upload videos. 
   • To add a video directly from the editor, drag and drop a video file into the editor to add it to a post.
3. To replace the video used, click the replace replace icon.
4. If you have Content Hub Professional or Enterprise, click the editIcon edit icon to edit your video in the clip editor. Learn more about how to edit your video. 
   • In the video editor, you can edit captions, add your company branding, trim or crop the video, and add text or image overlays. 
   • After you’ve made edits to your video, in the top right, click Export to social. This will save your edits to your social post using a cloned version of your video. Your original video will stay unchanged. 
5. To add or edit video captions, click the closedCaptions captions icon. Learn more about managing your video captions. 
   • The caption status will be displayed with the following options:
     • Captions available: captions are available and can be previewed in the social post.
     • No captions available: captions haven't been added or aren’t available for the video. 
     • Caption generation failed: captions can’t be automatically transcribed because of an error. To add custom captions, upload your captions file.
   • In the right panel, you can preview captions in the social post preview during video playback.
6. To remove the video, hover over the video and click the delete delete icon.  

Schedule social posts

You can choose to publish your social posts immediately or schedule the posts for a specific time in the future. 

1. Click to expand the Schedule post section, then select your publishing option: 
   • Publish now: publish the social post immediately. 
   • Schedule for later: select a specific date and time to publish the social post. Or click to expand Your saved times and select a time from your social publishing schedule. 

2. If you've opted into the Optimize your social posts (BETA), you can select from AI-recommended publishing times. Learn more about optimizing your social posts. 

Add to campaign

Add your social posts to a marketing campaign to track, manage, and report on the social posts alongside your marketing assets. 

1. Click to expand the Add to campaign section.
2. Click the Select a campaign dropdown menu and select from the following options:

• • To associate your post with an existing campaign, select a campaign.
  • To associate your post with a new campaign, click Create campaign. Then, continue setting up your campaign. 

Edit social posts for specific accounts

By default, the content drafted under the Draft (all networks) tab is duplicated across all selected accounts in the composer. After a post has been edited for a specific social account, any edits made to the post will not apply to posts from other social accounts. Similarly, any edits applied to the Draft (all networks) tab will not affect the customized post. 

 To edit the content for a specific social account:

1. Under Draft a new social post, click the corresponding social icon. 
2. To delete the post, click the delete trash icon next to the social account name. 
3. To duplicate the post, click Duplicate post next to the social account name. 
4. To edit social network-specific settings for the post, click to expand the More options section. These options vary for each social network:
   • First comment or reply: enter the first comment or reply that will be displayed on the published social post.
   • Add location (Instagram only): enter the location of the social post. 

Learn more about creating social posts specifically for Instagram, LinkedIn, or YouTube. 

Choose who can see your post

When you post to Facebook or LinkedIn, you can specify an audience for your post.

Facebook: under Choose who can see your post, select an audience:

• Public audience: the post will be displayed to everyone who can view your account or page.

• Custom audience: the post will be displayed only to the specified audience. 
  
  • Location: click the location dropdown menu and select a country. The post will display to visitors from these locations. You can select a maximum of 5 locations. 
  • Language: click the language dropdown menu and select a language. The post will display to visitors who use these languages. You can select a maximum of 5 languages. If you don't need a specified language, this option can also be left blank. 

• Anyone: the post will appear for all LinkedIn users following, exploring, or reviewing your account or page. 
• Target audience: the post will only appear for the specified audiences. You can target audiences based on language, job function, location, university, seniority, company size, and industry. 
  • To use this feature, you must have more than 300 followers. If not, the option to use targeted audiences will be locked. 
  • If you have multiple options in a single specifications type, each option will be combined with OR logic. For example, Entry and Senior employees for the Seniority field, both entry-level and senior-level employees will be included in your audience. 

• • If you have multiple specifications types, each specification type will be combined with each option with AND logic. For example, if you select English audiences for Language, and Entry and Senior employees for Seniority, only english entry-level employees and english senior-level employees will be included in your audience. 

Review and publish your social posts

While setting up your social post, you can review the posts and post display across the selected social networks in the right panel. 

1. To publish your social post, in the top right, click Review & Schedule. 
2. In the right panel, review your social posts' details. 
3. At the bottom, click Schedule or Publish.