Guide to Plan on Social Media
Planning on social networks is essential in order to carry out a winning marketing strategy.
An active profile on any social network allows users to understand your business well, interact with you and even gain customers.
But, how do you plan content for social networks? We will walk you through it and tell you how to plan your strategy with Metricool.
Plan Social Media Content with Metricool
With Metricool you can plan social media content effectively and in this post I will tell you everything. You have two options:
▶️FREE version: You can plan up to 50 posts per month across all of one brand’s profiles.
▶️PREMIUM version: Within this version, you have more options. You can connect more brands and profiles, and plan up to 2,000, 5,000 or 10,000 monthly posts on your social networks.
▶️ Learn more about Metricool’s plans
What social media content can I plan with Metricool?
With Metricool’s planner, you can plan content on major social networks weekly, monthly and even annually.
Here I will leave you specifics for each network that you can plan on:
⚡️ INSTAGRAM
On Instagram you can publish in two different ways:
- Plan posts with a video, photo, Reel or carousel, automatically.
- Plan long videos or stories with notifications.
✓ In the case of automatic publication it can be an image, video, Reel or a carousel.
⚡️ FACEBOOK
Plan and schedule the publications you want from Metricool. But, pay attention to some details to make it easier for you:
- Program images in JPEG or PNG format and 30 MB maximum size. 1200 x 1200 for square images and 1200 x 900 for horizontal.
- Schedule videos in MP4, MOV, or GIF format up to 4 GB and 240 minutes maximum.
⚡️ TWITTER
On Twitter you can also plan social media content from Metricool while using the best hours feature for your account.
On Twitter you can also plan content including:
- Images in JPG, PNG or GIF format up to 5 MB.
- Videos in MP4, MOV, or GIF up to 512 MB with maximum duration of 2 minutes and 12 seconds.
⚡️ LINKEDIN
With LinkedIn, it is possible to publish the preview of the link or clickable image. For this you must take into account when publish that:
The audiovisual content on LinkedIn has these recommendations:
✓ Images:
- Format: PNG or JPEG
- File size: max. 5MB
- Recommended size: pixels 552 W x 276 H
- Ratio: from 3:1 to 2:3 (width/height). If the ratio is higher, the image is centered and cropped.
✓ Videos:
- Format: MP4 or GIF (MOV not supported).
- File size: minimum 75 KB and maximum 512 MB.
- Video duration: minimum 3 seconds and maximum 15 minutes.
⚡️ GOOGLE BUSINESS PROFILE
From Metricool you can publish both for the ‘Posts’ section and for the ‘Photos’ section. Depending on how you plan it, it will be published in one section or the other:
- Text: post is published.
- Text + link: post with button and image taken from the link.
- Text + image: post with image.
- Text + link + image: post with image and button.
- Image (without any text): published as a photo.
⚡️ PINTEREST
Keep these requirements in mind for images and videos to schedule on Pinterest from Metricool:
✓ Images in format .PNG or .JPG with a maximum of 20 MB. Also, it is recommended to use a 2:3 ratio of 1000 x 1500.
✓ Videos in MP4 format or a different format that the scheduler is responsible for adapting. Duration must be between 4 and 15 minutes and have a maximum file size of 500 MB.
⚡️ TIKTOK
Schedule your TikTok videos with Metricool and let the tool publish it automatically. Watch out! You first have to meet certain requirements for your TikTok video:
✓ Videos: size less than 50 MB, duration must be a minimum of 3 seconds and maximum of 60, MP4 format (if you upload it in .mov, the platform transforms it automatically) and a resolution higher than 540p.
⚡️ YOUTUBE
In Metricool you also have the YouTube programmer where you can program your video and Shorts content.
Both can be published automatically, so you don’t need to keep an eye on it. Just select the date and time you want to post your video or Shorts and you’re ready.
These are the requirements you need to meet for your videos.
✓ Videos: longer than 60 seconds and with a rectangular orientation, 1:1 format.
✓ Shorts: videos less than 60 seconds in vertical orientation, 1:1 or more vertical.
How the Metricool Planner works
By now, I hope you are aware of the networks you can plan social media content with Metricool. So, it’s time to get down to work and show you how the planner works, to save time and improve your organization.
First, to access the Metricool planner, go to the Planning section on the main menu and you will see the calendar, where the magic will happen.
Let’s go part by part, because I’m going to explain everything about the planner.
✅ CREATE NEW POSTS
As soon as you have access to the Metricool planner, the first thing you will see at the top right is the option to create a new post.
Let’s go to it!
Click here and you’ll find everything you need to create a new post on any social network connected with Metricool.
- You can select the social network in which you want to share the post, either a single post or multiple posts at a time.
- Select the time and day you want to schedule the post.
- Want to add a GIF, image or video? Add them at the bottom.
- If you don’t want a lengthy URL, you can use Metricool’s shortener.
On the right, you can see a preview of the post you are going to plan on social media, to see how it would look once it is published. You can see how it will look both on desktop and mobile formats.
And you can filter through the social networks and see what it will look like on LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook or Twitter.
But, wait!
Not sure if you want to publish it or not? Save it as a draft and retrieve it whenever you decide to publish it.
💡 Bonus Track!
You can also use drafts to leave posts pending review, if you want someone else on your team to take a look at them before scheduling it.
In Pinterest, Facebook and Twitter, you can add ALT text to help visually impared users understand the content you’re sharing.
Upload an image, click the three dots in the file and enter your ALT text.
✅BEST HOURS ON YOUR SOCIAL ACCOUNTS
Let’s go back to the planner, to the calendar. In the upper right, you can see a section called: ‘Better Hours.’
Here, you can see what your best times to post are on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter.
Metricool calculates your best hours based on your audience’s activity. The darker the color, the better time it is to post. So, I recommend that when you want to publish in your best times, select the box that is darkest and create your new post from there.
If you prefer, you can see it using a percentage that indicates the number of active followers you have at any given time. This percentage is calculated based on data obtained from the previous week.
✅ CALENDAR WITH ALL YOUR POSTS
In the calendar, you can organize all your social media content.
- It visually organizes the planning of each network and overall planning.
- Change the time zone to display the best times reflecting the time zone and country in which your posts are intended.
- By clicking on the planned posts, you can delete, copy, drag to another day or time, and edit them.
You can view your content day to day, monthly or weekly.
✅PREVIEW FEED
Do you want to keep track of your future posts and know if they fit into your Instagram profile feed?
With the Instagram feed preview feature, you can do it.
- Keep your feed organized with your next posts already scheduled on Metricool, plan them to preserve the harmony of your feed.
- Change the post you are uploading to Instagram, if you aren’t convinced on how it looks in the feed.
- Check how your scheduled posts look on Instagram, if you like the feed, go ahead and plan!
✅HISTORY
Wait, it doesn’t end here. Do you see the menu that appears on the left side? Tap on the history section.
- Filter by social network to know the status of your posts. You can see if they have been posted, still pending publication, in draft or if there any posts have an error.
- In the search engine you can find any post by keywords.
- Delete the posts that you created in Metricool that you ended up not liking or were a mistake.
✅DESIGN WITH CANVA
If you usually use Canva for your social media designs, you’re in luck. With the integration of Metricool in Canva, you can design your content and from the same tool, integrate it with Metricool.
This will save you time searching for the image or video you’ve created. When your design is ready, click ‘Share’ > ‘More’ > Metricool.
Canva will load your design and give you the option to take you to the Metricool planner with your created copy and multimedia content ready to program.
Choose the date and time and you’re good to go!
✅IMAGE EDITING
If you aren’t convinced by an image, you don’t need to leave Metricool. You have an internal editor to tailor the image to your needs.
This option is available for all social networks to post to with Metricool.
What can you modify?
💥Trim to another size.
💥Editing options for brightness, exposure, contrast, etc.
💥Add filters.
💥Include stickers, logos or images can be added over the photo.
💥Draw on the photo.
💥Frames can be applied on or around the image.
💥Censor to pixelate the selected part of the image.
💥Resize by changing the pixels in width and height.
✅IMAGE BANK
Find the photo you need in the Metricool image bank within the planner.
The page where the multimedia content comes from is Pexels, a bank of images with a large library, so that you can get the ideal photo for your post without having to leave Metricool.
- Find the ideal photo with Pexel’s recommendations.
- Search by keyword based on the content of your post.
- Filter by dominant color by typing the color code.
Social media planning tips
Now that you know about the ideal tool to plan your content on social media, before launching we have prepared a series of tips to use when planning content:
- Define the strategy of your content.
Who are you targeting? Who is your target audience? These are the first questions you should ask yourself before starting to plan your social media content.
If you don’t stop to think about these first steps you will be blind, lose time and possibly money that you invested.
How to create a marketing strategy plan
- Create a publication calendar.
Almost as essential as the social media marketing strategy. With a calendar where you have all your posts in draft, you will speed up all your tasks. Simply copy the post you have in your calendar and paste it into the Metricool planner.
In Metricool we have a template for you to use as your own calendar. Download the Metricool content template for FREE here.
- Use external tools for your content.
There are apps that every social media will be happy with – tools like Drive, where you have all your content in the cloud, accessible from anywhere, WeTransfer is great if you need to send a file, and Canva in case you have to modify a design before it is published.
It is recommended that you use all the tools within your reach so your strategy can succeed.
- Analyze and measure your results
What do you expect from your new winning strategy and social media planning? You need to measure the results you’re getting with your strategy.
With Metricool you have the option to analyze across all the social networks you work with, in addition to planning your content. Connect your networks, choose the period of time to analyze and measure the success of your strategy.
Benefits of social media planning
Why work with your planned networking strategy? Precisely for that. To keep everything under control and avoid all possible scares.
Working on organization and leaving no improvisation will be one of the biggest advantages of using a social planner.
It will help you have a better content strategy. But there are many more benefits:
- Save time having all your content planned.
- Have everything more organized and in place.
- It will be easier to publish the same content to different networks, at the same time and thus, ensure that your message is consistent across all social networks.
- You’ll activate your social networks in the most stressful moments with Autolists, so your networks are always active.
Now you know how easy it is to plan social media content and the many advantages it has. With Metricool you can start trying this new strategy for free.
