Easy Scheduling ~ AutoSchedule in the Dashboard
Ask and ye shall receive! After many user requests, Hootlet’s AutoSchedule functionality has been extended to the dashboard. Now you can automatically queue messages for optimal times from within the dashboard. Spend more time finding content and less time thinking about scheduling.
Whether you’re sharing a webpage, an image, or your own witty musings, AutoSchedule determines the optimal posting times for your favorite social networks. Maximize reach without swamping your followers. Here’s what HootSuite CEO, Ryan Holmes had to say about AutoSchedule:
“It’s really quite simple – instead of our users manually selecting what time they want to schedule or post their social media messages using our Scheduling feature, they can opt to use our new AutoSchedule technology to optimize and automate the scheduling process. We want our users spending more time finding and sharing content and less time worrying about the best time of day to share it.”
Simplify Your Social
After composing your social media message, you have the option to manually schedule, AutoSchedule or send now. Here’s how to use AutoSchedule from the dashboard:
Step 1: After composing your message in the Compose Box, select the Schedule Icon. A drop down menu will then appear.
Step 2: Toggle the AutoSchedule switch to On and then click the AutoSchedule button.
Rest assured, like regular scheduled messages AutoSchedule messages can be viewed and rescheduled at any time. These messages will appear with a Clock Icon next to them in Publisher and can be rescheduled the same way as regular messages. After rescheduling, the Clock Icon will disappear confirming your new scheduled time.
Review, edit, and reschedule AutoSchedule messages from Publisher
Social Automation
According to Jeremiah Owyang of the Altimeter Group, automation is one of the next steps in social media’s evolution. As social media becomes more widely adopted, brands and enterprises will need tools that can scale to their social presence – focusing on the speed and volume of responses as well as effort and cost reduction.
While the thought of robots sending Tweets seems to take the social out of social media, AutoSchedule and other social automation features have a growing place in the world – similar to how ATMs make more sense than Bank Tellers for many occasions. But, as HootSuite VP Marketing Ben Watson warns, social media should never lose the human touch.
We’re Listening
Part of HootSuite’s growth and success is owed to the helpful suggestions and ideas we receive from our users. We strongly encourage you to share your thoughts with us. Like many of HootSuite’s features, we’ve added AutoSchedule based on your helpful feedback.
What’s your next idea? Let us know on our Feedback Channel.
Have any questions about AutoScheduling?
How are you determining a user’s optimal schedule? Is it based on click-tracking history for that user’s posts? Do you schedule for each network/profile a user posts to, or is it one shared schedule across all accounts?
Some insight into the scheduling rules/algorithm would be very useful.
I was thinking in the same question, has somebody answered it?
Thanks!
Also wondering the same thing…
Is there any answer given to the “algorithm” used for that autoscheduling ?
Sounds cool! But how does Hootsuite determine what the most optimal time is to schedule my posts?
On what insights is the AutoSchedule based? If this new function only takes best times to tweet in US timezones into account, it is useless for me. My audience is in Europe and surely not on Twitter at night.
Also, it is still not possible to schedule tweets on random times like 1:23, 9:18 etc. I was proposing this in the feedback section quite a while ago.
AutoSchedule is great unless I want to schedule something on a later date at the “optimal times” of that day. Are we going to be able to specify dates that we want the autoscheduled message to be posted?
Thats my Question exactly
Hello Hootsuite!
The new autoschedule feature is awesome, but are you only able to use it for posts that go up on the present day? It is seeming that way to me, and I am not sure if I am maybe just missing something!
Thanks!
Hey this is a great new feature. All I would say to make this better is the option of selecting specific times to auto schedule Once! So in the future when you’re auto scheduling, my stuff will be posted on the selected times that I preset to the aut schedule system so that I won’t have to manually select those times again. Because while your auto schedule is great there are still people who might want there stuff posted at a certain time but don’t want to do it manually every time.
Thank you!
This is such a better version of the feature I requested a few months ago. This just means so much to me as a customer.
Not only did you listen, but you gave me what I ACTUALLY wanted instead of what I THOUGHT I wanted!
This just validates your own expertise in addition to making me feel incredibly fulfilled as an HS customer.
Thanks again!
Amazing!!!
Can I set limits on the times that tweets are sent? For example, I don’t want autoscheduler to tweet before 8am and after 7pm.
I second that. I would like to add the possibility to limit the tweets per day to let’s say 3 (like it was possible with timely.is for example).
Yes, please! I’ve stopped using the Auto Scheduler because it schedules 7+ tweets in one day. Many other social management tools that I’ve used (Sprout Social, Argyle Social) allow you to set how many tweets you want to go out in a day. If you’ve reached your “max” for the day, it just kicks your auto-scheduled tweets over to the next day (or the next day, etc.). Please update this, Hootsuite!
Limit the number of post per day will be very helpfull.
I hope you will add this option soon.
Hello, I manage social communities for my company and was interested in learning more about the science behind auto scheduling. From what I have read it is supposed to schedule based on optimal reach. After scheduling some tweets, I’ve noticed that it seems to be scheduling one per hour (which is how I already usually used the scheduler). Is there true intelligence behind this feature or does it just schedule once an hour? I love the idea of this and was just curious for more information so I could share with others on our social media committee. Also, is there anything in the works to further develop the intelligence of this auto schedule? For example, if I include #breakfast, could it think to send that out early in the morning based on keyword use? That might be asking for a lot but just thought I would mention it as an idea. Thanks in advance for your response!
Another great feature, HootSuite – not taking the social out of social media, but putting smart into the art of communication.
I think this sounds great but this page told me nothing about how it actually works. So after I explain to my boss that our twitter timing has been “optimized” by Hootsuite, she is going to ask, ‘Optimized for what? Impressions? CTR?’ How should I respond?
A little more detail would be greatly appreciated.
- Best regards
Jeremy, your a poet and you don’t even know it:)
Great feature, tested it out and it works very nicely.
One thing I would say for future upgrades is to allow the user the option to spread the auto scheduled posts over a longer duration, meaning;
Currently If I want to autoschedule 10 posts/items, then when using your new autoschedule mode, it will only spread them out over 2 days, but if I was to do that manually I could spread those 10 out over 4 days..
Meaning I have to post double the content to get the articles spread over 4 days.
The great thing I noticed is that you adjust the timing of the post accordingly for each facebook page and twitter profile depending on different variables, very clever
I still dont know what the difference is between scheduling a tweet and auto scheduling?
Hi Sasha,
Manual scheduling is when you choose a time to publish your update. AutoSchedule chooses an optimal time for you to post. Hope that answers your question.
Some information about which parameters do you use to shcedule the messages? based on content? total traffic in twitter?
Thanks. I am trying it, if it works it will be great!!!
Excellent to see it on the dashboard! Keep up the good work guys!
How does the app know when to schedule? Is it looking at my best time to tweet, of just random?
How does Hootsuite determine ‘optimal time’ though? Each user or organisation surely has differing an optimal times depending on their aims and their audience’s usage.
I want to use it, but there’s just no control at all. What if I only want to post between 9am and 9pm? I have to go to the calendar and check, and reschedule to make it work.
The feature needs setting.
This is awesome! Taking the guess work out of peak times for the different social media venues really removes the whole guessing game of when our messages will get the most impact! I ♥ it!
I’d like to know how the optimum time is decided? Is it based on the content of the tweet, or the general focus of the account, or similar? We have scheduled posts, but they need to go out at least close to a certain time, so if we were to use the autoschedule, and it moved a post from morning to afternoon, for example, this would be bad.
Awesome new feature! Can’t wait to put it through its paces, and congratulations to Hootsuite for a brilliant idea
This is an AWESOME feature! Thank you!
If it autoschedules based on optimized times, will we see a bunch of our scheduled posts all lumped in to the same time frame with other time frames being bare?
We have been using HootSuite for a long time now. I think tools like this one definitely help those serious about extending their social media presence. This frees you up from having to do the tasks that the application can easily perform. What HootSuite possibly can’t do is decide which tweet is the right one for your audience – or engage in discussion with them. That’s the part where your expertise comes in. Auto-scheduling will help users focus more on such tasks rather than worry about getting it out there on time.
Hi Ketan,
Thanks for your insight. Indeed, tools can only take you so far. Social media works best with humans behind the wheel.
Sounds great. I have a quick question though… What are the criteria by which the autoschedule function determines the ‘optimal’ time to post a given missive? Can you give us a brief sense how the system determines that?
Спасибо, будем тестировать!
Awesome! Finally hootsuite one step ahead (again) in twitter apps feature. It make me able to give more focus to my content, not my timing stuff. Thanks!
I am definitely going to try it!
Not so clear what’s in this new feature
Fantastic feature – thanks for making it even better for us to use! Love Hootsuite – by far the best tool out there.
Is the AutoSchedule independent of timezones? Does it know the best times to tweet in European or Asian countries?
A very nice additional feature. This will indeed take some of the head-scratching out of the process of deciding when it’s best to schedule messages. As well as more time to find content, this should also provide more time to engage with people who respond to social media messages.
Sounds like a great idea but there’s not a lot of information here about how it actually works. How are the optimal posting times determined. Right now I use reports from Tweriod to schedule when I will send tweets aimed at particular portions of our audience. Will this remove the need to rely on that service?
Really good feature, but how does it work out what the optimal time is? Is it based on when your links get clicks or based on followers online (in the same way Follower Wonk and Timely do)?
2 new features in just 1 month of time. Really great improvements in functionality of hootsuite. I also liked that HootSuite Hootlet.
I don’t know if this is working very well yet. I just tried it out and composed two different versions of the same post. It scheduled one for 7:10 am and the other for 7:15 am EST.
This looks like a great tool. Sorry if the option is already there, and I’ve just missed it, but what would be really useful would be if you could set preferences for the AutoSchedule. So, things like: no. of posts per day for each network; time to start and end on each day, etc. Is that available?
Surely I can’t be the only person reading this who wants to know what the auto-scheduling is based on? I *hope* it’s based on activity patterns displayed by my own followers on each individual network, and within my own timezone, but that’s not made clear here.
And what happens if I line up more tha one update? Do they all go out at once?
Please elucidate!
Hi, this seems like a good feature! Can you tell me how Hootsuite decides when to schedule the Tweet? EG I just auto-scheduled a tweet now and it put it in for 4:10pm today, but I’m not sure why.
Great feature, congratulations! But, with this feature, a question arose for me: how HootSuite calculates the best time to post?
I loved this feature, but without this answer I don’t know if I can trust it.
Hi, this seems like a great feature! What about the businesses that are only opened 8-5, then computers are off? Do messages in queue still get sent after you shut down?
Hi Rob,
Indeed they do. After scheduling your message, they’ll be delivered regardless of whether your computer is on or off.
Excelente, llevo años usando hootsuite y lejos es lo mejor para administrar múltiples cuentas
Hootsuite is blazing! Excellent tool for your #FF scheduling. Questions? http://linkd.in/ArthurBarbato @arthurbarbato
It seems that this is limited when sending out to a maximum of 5 social channels at once. Is it possible for 6, 7 or more channels? There seems to be a limitation to this feature (which is great by the way!).
Wow, awesome. I love this idea. but what I don’t see here is how Autoschedule decides what the optimal time is. Can you give some more info about the process behind this?
Very self-congratulatory and nice job dropping names of your friends in the industry.
How is this any different than regular “schedule” as a function? Also, is there any function to schedule messages in perpetuity? Because I don’t see it.
Hi Andy,
My hope was to address the emerging trend of automation with some context.
The difference between AutoSchedule and regular ol’ schedule is the fact AutoSchedule determines an optimal time. There currently isn’t a function to schedule in perpetuity, however bulk scheduling might have what you need.
But how do you determine the optimal time? Many users are wondering about this, why don’t you answer this question?
Hi Anna!
Thanks for the great question. I’ve asked and asked our developers for more information regarding the auto-scheduling algorithm, and haven’t been able to get much out of them myself. :) It’s proprietary information and I am not able to provide more insight than what’s been said before. We look at the activity of you and your followers in order to determine the best time to post for engagement. Test it out and see how it goes!
- Sarah @HootSuite_Help – http://hootsuite.com/help
Great feature but I’d like to see the ability to manage how many tweets you want in a day like some other dashboards. I started using it on the Hootlet and found that more tweets than I wanted were going out for that account.
Hi Krista,
I’m assuming these were duplicate entries? Contact our Help Desk for assistance with this.
So, how does the Autoscheduler decide what time/day to schedule your tweet? Is it looking at good times for posting in general, or good times for your followers specifically?
How do you suggest times to individual accounts. Is it based on each account (my personal twitter account and my followers) or the social network as whole?
So, how does the Autoscheduler decide what time/day to post my tweet? Is it looking at good times to post in general? Or is it looking at good times for my followers specifically?
REOCCURING SCHEDULING, REOCCURING SCHEDULING!!! Please!!!
It’d be great to get more information on how it works? Does it identify how people use Twitter differently on weekdays and weekends?
There is a way to schedule one same massenges many times? or create a minimum time between messenges(the same and not)? If the PRO does it, it’s a good option for me.
Great Feature but It currently doesn’t have the ability to auto-schedule in advance of the present day. For example today is Friday. I would like to schedule this weekends posts. Currently, I would have to turn this new feature off in order to do this.
The main upgrade needed on this already brilliant new feature is one that allows you to regulate more or less how often content is published, perhaps by suggesting times or even time-frames for posts.
This is a great feature! It would be even more useful if I could define a max # of posts per day. It would give me greater control over and keep me from contacting them too often.
Is there a way to set options for AutoSchedule? I put a great number of posts in my queue, but only want a certain number to go out each day.
Is there a way for me to pick the day the post goes out, and the range of times I would permit the post to go out? It looks like AutoSchedule is rather autonomous, and might send too many / not enough posts per day, and might send some out at a time that is irrelevant to the message (i.e., what if the post says, “Call my business right now for a special deal,” and it goes out when I am closed…)?
Ideally, it should be AutoSchedule for [January 1st] between [9 AM] and [5 PM] [Eastern Time].
Is there a way to customize the timing of the posts?
Can you still pick the day for the post and use the auto scheduler??
Simplemente Excelente, Realmente orgullosos de usar una herramienta que brinda funcionalidades gratuitas y de gran calidad, entendiendo que la inteligencia colectiva es el gran valor agregado para los negocios de hoy.
I love the feature – one quick question:
Right now I am scheduling posts for this weekend [today is Friday]; can I AutoSchedule for Saturday/Sunday as well? I tried once but the posts for Saturday we’re then scheduled for today instead…
Thanks,
Josh
Hi Josh,
Currently, AutoSchedule will set times for that day and not further into the future.
Thank you!! Finally, automation to help reduce spamming my base of followers.
That’s why we enjoy using Hootsuite for our Twitter accounts.
Wow, a great tool indeed! We really like what you have done here. If you dont mind we’d like to give a little feedback from our point of view.
While the tool is AWESOME it can definately be improved upon. One thing that would make it a million times better is to allow users to set the day and then you pick the time.
In addition we feel its been limited by only allowing to post to 5 networks automatically rather than the numerous netowrks available.
But we love the concept and believe that with a few tweaks and reviews from users like us we know you will make it the best it can be in the future.
Thanks Hootsuite!
I love the autoschedule feature! But one thing I’d like to see is the ability to pick the day, and have hootsuite autoschedule the time. I often write blog posts the day before, and then schedule for them to be posted the next day, but I can’t use the autoschedule right now because it wants to autoschedule the same day. If I could pick my day, and have autoschedule pick the most optimal time, that would be best!
I agree. As long as people use it to share great content and useful information, it’s BRILLIANT! And it comes at the perfect time because I was about to sign up for an app that schedules tweets for you from a bucket of tweets and now I can just do it right in Hootsuite. Thank you for this wonderful feature. Super excited to see how effective it is :) Thanks again!
Sorry, but I don’t get it. How will hootsuite auto-schedule know the optimal times for my posts? They will be unique to me and my business and my timezone and my context…..what am I missing?
I would use this for every single Facebook I run if I could specify which day I’d like to schedule the posts for. It’s a fantastic feature, but it’s not useful for my social media profiles at the moment. I’m glad to see HootSuite improving their product though.
I agree – automation is in great demand to manage the onslaught of information received and distributed. Thanks for this one, @HootSuite!
That is an awesome feature. I know it was worth to reactivate my Pro account :-)
What kind of analyze do you use to calculate the right send date?
Curious what algorithm is used to determine ‘optimal’ time for sending? if it optimal for them in terms of leveling out tweet volume spikes, or does it have some AI that determines when its optimal for my own tweeps to be online, or historically times when they retweet, etc.
Just a quick question….is the auto scheduling feature determining when it’s the best time for my particular audience to be reached or is it determining it based on the typical times that people are online? Either way, it’s GREAT and I LOVE the feature! I just was curious! :)
Thank you Hootsuite! You guys are SERIOUSLY the best!
How are the optimal times worked out? Is it based on previous results for each network or best practice for your time zone?
Would LOVE to see the “Send Now” button right next to the “AutoSchedule” button. But otherwise great feature.
Hi Andy,
Just a technical question re autoscheduling. How does the program take into account time zones when it calculates scheduling times?
The page says “AutoSchedule determines the optimal posting times for your favorite social networks.” But is that optimal times for me, or my readers? I live in Australia and I am GMT +10, whereas some of my readers are in the States, so there is anything up to 20 hours difference.
Just curious because I tried it and autoscheduled four messages and they were all sent out within an hour of setting them up, and in a period of an hour. Maybe that was the optimal time?
Terry
How does it go about selecting the times. Does it base it on recorded stats from previous tweets or does it just randomly place them over spaced out time periods?
Great new innovation, HootSuite, but I do notice you can only auto-schedule to one network at a time. Would be great if:
1) You could make it so it will randomise times to different networks.
2) You could create a similar option for the bulk uploader. THAT would be cool.
3) You could set the parameters for frequency of posting. Not all people have the same communication style.
Love my HootSuite!
Many thanks,
Lynn Serafinn
P.S.: Just to let you know, I’m publishing a pretty chunky Twitter tips book in Sept 2012 (title to be revealed soon!) and you are one of the ‘key players’ in my app recommendations. You also got my ‘top’ rating in my (much smaller) eBook ‘Social Media on Autopilot’ that I published in Jan 2012.
If you would like to get an advance copy of the new book and possibly do a short endorsement, that would be fantastic. Please email me if that is of interest to you. Thank you!
Interesting, and I find this feature potentially quite useful, but I would be much more comfortable using auto-schedule if I knew what the auto-scheduling algorithm takes into account when determining how to schedule posts. For example, is the frequency of posting taken into account? The nature of the message (eg. B2B message vs. B2C message)?
I like the concept, but I don’t think a one-size-fits-all scheduling algorithm would be suitable for everyone’s needs. We, as users, should be made aware of how auto-scheduling is conducted in order to determine if it would be a valuable feature for us.
Cheers,
-Carlton
Is there any way to control how many posts are auto scheduled per day? If I only want, for example, four posts a day, rather than however many it takes to fill all the prime slots, is that possible?
Oh my, I think I am in love! This is just what we needed! What a wonderful addition, now I can take more time for friends and my blog with this new feature! xxxxxx & OOOOO’s Did I bother to say thank you? No? THANK YOU!
OK, I’m interested but could we get a bit more on how it all works?
I write about democracy and journalism for a global audience – how do I know auto scheduling will hit at the right time in the right time zone?
Does scheduling make allowance for an author’s time zone?
I guess I should stick to manual for now, no?
I love it!
I love it, too! Discovered it by accident because I was too busy and not keeping up to date. I love Hootsuite!
It would really be great if you could dictate patterns & standard times for messages to be sent. I assume this new feature is partly inspired by “Buffer” which lets you run a queue of posts to be uploaded on a set schedule daily. It is incredibly useful for me since I work late at night but need to post early in the day when my audience is online but I am asleep. I’m not quite sure I trust a “do it” button to know when *my* audience will be paying attention.
Can you use it for more then 1 day out?
Can you batch load via CSV file with auto-schedule?
I like the concept of how we can make use of the scheduling advantage to make it look more timely.
Rez
And how do I remove it once it’s installed itself?
Hi Eddie,
Good question. You can toggle it on and off from the Compose Box.
Fantastic feature and one that will save a great deal of time, thanks!
Great feature!
The next step would be to set up a repeat function, i.e. how many times a message should be resend (e.g. 3 times) and within what timescale (e.g. within 24 hrs, 3 days, a week etc.)
This way I can go on holiday whilst messages are automatically sent a number of times while I’m away – great, if you have products to sell ;)
Hi,
this is great! i just started using it, but let me give you a few suggestions:
- it bugged once and posted 2 the same thing on my facebook page. Maybe you should check if this kind of bug is current.
- i’d love to be able to edit a few things, like how many times a day to post (specially on twitter).
Thank you!
Very useful! Thank you
Very useful. Thanks :)
Cool! I’m looking forward to trying this out.
Great idea! Does it work for UK & Asian time zones? Thanks.
Great idea, thanks! Does it work for UK & Asian time zones? Thanks so much.
Great. I am definitely going to try this! :-)
The only perk I’d prefer is to designate the day for auto scheduling. If you want repeated posts pushed out, auto-schedule isn’t so hot.
This is a very important feature for me. But I have been using timely.is and the one feature missing for me to switch is the ability to choose the frequency/volume of posting from my account. i.e.The ability to say that I want 3, 5, 7, or 9 posts to be scheduled from my account each day. Is that there and hidden or on the way? What is the volume that Hootsuite will share my posts each day?
I’m not sure I understand how the Autoscheduler works – does it find the best tweeting time in general, or the best time to tweet for your followers?
When I am posting across several countries in the EMEA region – does this take the local time and local stats into consideration?
Great feature. Social media is getting increasingly hard to manage when you think of the logistics associated with going to each site, putting together your post/discussion/tweet and scheduling it; not to mention reacting to every reaction. Automation is also becoming a key tool in my industry (telehealth).
This is feature is very helpful. Love it!
Sounds like a great idea, but is there a way to still have a bit of control over it? For example if I wanted to send a tweet sometime in the afternoon, could it do that?
Thanks
This will be a wonderful new tool to use as I have to monitor and post to several social media outlets. Thanks for taking the time to add this feature!
Nice feature but I’m curious to know what the algorithm is based on? How does the tool determine what time is best and differentiate between each tweet?
Thanks!
@philistweeting
I agree! This summary left a big question mark over “How does it work?”
That’s exactly what I was wondering when I went looking for more information.
Does it schedule specifically for my audience or based on the most responsive times in general? If it’s the latter, surely there could be a surge of tweets at the same time, which isn’t optimal.
Has this been answered? I am really interested to know how “optimal” is determined…
The AutoScheduler looks at the activities of you and your followers on each social network, and chooses the time that will result in the most engagement. As you use the AutoScheduler more, it will learn your habits and get smarter.
You can review scheduled posts through the Publisher view, accessible on the left side menu.
Wondering if Autoscheduler will be integrated into the iOS version of HootSuite?
I was experimenting with the autoschedule feature and I really like it. The only thing I don’t like is not being able to set a limit to how many updates it will make in a day. I noticed that with some accounts it would post as many as 7 or 8 in a day which I find to be a little bit too much depending on the account I’m using. If you could have a setting where you selected the number of autoschedule posts you wanted to go out each day and it would optimize those posts to go out at the best times where you’re most likely to receive the most engagement, that would be terrific.
Agreed. I’d like to be able to customize how many auto-scheduled messages go out in a day
Definitely! And I would like to be able to specify that I only want to send tweets on weekdays, for example.
I also agree with you! Maybe having at the least an option to average out the times between scheduling….
Agreed! A must with this.
I agree.
Here here! I would like to limit the number of auto-scheduled posts that can come from my account. I don’t want to spam followers!
How did you manage to get that many in a day. Or if not you how did that happen. I only get one post per SM acct. I’d like to have my post to twitter happen more than once. Any suggestions on how to do this?
Agree – really need to be able to limit the number of posts it dedicates to each day from the autoschedule till.
Agreed. I would like to be able to customize the number of tweets per day for the auto-schedule feature.
Agreed- would love to see the same feature, especially when Im on the road and only have my phone on me.
Does it only autoschedule for the current day, or can you ‘autoschedule’ for future days? Thanks for the awesome new feature.
Interesting your question. I would like to know the answer. and time will be published.
You are able to autoschedule for whatever day you wish.
Can you explain how we Auto Schedule for a day in the future? I can’t seem to figure that part out.
Currently AutoSchedule will only set times for today; not any for any days into the future.
How do you autoschedule for another day? The only option I see is to autoschedule or not.
Thanks!
Used Auto Schedule for first time the other day and it – on it’s own as I had only put down one date – kept repeating itself day after day after day. I finally figured out how to stop it and then delete all the messages I didn’t want to go out – but in the meantime it sent out a lot that I wasn’t expecting & didn’t want as the offer for my free book had ended. I still haven’t seen where you could specify which days you wanted – other then just showing the one day, which in my case didn’t work.
This is something that I would definitely be interested in! It could handle my weekend posts!
Could you give us a little more detail about HOW the scheduled time is automatically set? Is it according to when our particular followers are on — or what?
Agreed, I’d like to know this too. Hootsuite? Any answers?
need now a gadget like timely, we click it on the page we want and it automatically put the link and the text, without the need to copy and paste every link we want to schedule.
Can you explain a little bit more about the algorithm behind the automation? How are optimal times selected for each platform?
I like the new feature, but I would love the ability to auto schedule on specific days. For example, if I have 6 tweets to schedule I don’t want them all to go out on the same day so I’d like a feature where I could auto schedule 3 for Monday and the next 3 for Tuesday and so on.
That’s right. Wish we could set a limit on how many goes out per day and HootSuite could just determine the best time.
I am a once-a-day tweeting rooster so I like to have a topic pop up once a day for my followers – it would be nice to have the automatic settings set at once a day – also would be nice to have them send to segments picking a couple of peak times where social market segments might be active.
Automation is definitely helpful when it comes to efficient task completion. Good job Hootsuite!
This is a brilliant idea, but maybe there can be an option to autoschedule for much later in the day. What if I want to schedule posts in the morning and in the late afternoon?
Ask and ye shall receive! We asked, but did not receive, yet. How does it work?
It would be nice to set up intervals of when it would auto post or know what the logic is behind the schedule.
This will definitely be something I utilize once I understand the scheduling method. Is it only for that day or future days? Does it schedule the post based on the maximum number of social followers at any given time?
Great feature but still not there yet. What I’m looking for:
1. Auto spreading posts over one day (or multiple days).
2. Shuffling. Yes, I want a shuffle button that randomizes the order, I’ll hit it until I like the order. Dragging and dropping to change the order (just like Bufferapp does) would be handy as well.
3. Auto-repeat tweets, important tweets can be scheduled multiple times throughout the day.
Is this auto-schedule feature supported through yr API?
I don’t see the benefit of this new feature. I can’t set a date or time or frequency. It would be better if the message would be auto-scheduled every day/week on specific times. I don’t see this in the options, for me it’s no use now.
I’m wondering the same thing – does it only do it for that day? If I want to use it for tomorrow do I need to post tomorrow and Auto Schedule then as well? Can you give the option of picking the day and then AutoSchedule?
Thanks!
You can’t choose to do it unfortunately but if you have enough posts autoscheduled it should roll over to the next day. It seems to all depend on how much of the day is optimal for your viewers, there doesn’t seem to be too many details on this though.
Hello, I have the same question that CDG Interactive and Ron Charles asked without answer to date : what parameters are taken into account to determine the “optimal posting time” ??? Having starting to use this service I sometimes had to edit back a tweet and modify the time selected automatically because I thought it was less optimal than the schedule I had in mind…Anyway thank you for the program which is very helpful. Thanking you in advance for the answer,
Best Regards,
JB
This is a great idea.
I can see the benefit of spending less time worrying about the best time to send out messages and more time searching for content but can it auto schedule for different days?
Great feature, but would be even better if we could autoschedule for a certain date. I often push tweets and status updates out for a month at a time. Thanks!
How does Hootsuite determine what time to auto post? Is it an algorithm based on followers? What’s the science behind it?
What am I missing – why is this better than scheduling the tweets?
Hi guys! I’m using Hootsuite’s schedule function, and I think it’s great! How the “Autoschedule” could be better than that? How this new function decides when is the best time to post?
Also, it will be great if you add an Automatic RT Scheduling feature. This way, same tweet can be programed to be posted at various times -not only once. This feature should allow to predetermine the number or RT’s, as well as the time/s for these RT’s to be posted.
Great addition to the Hootsuite family:
But I’ve got a problem………I’ve tried auto scheduling for more than 5 social channels (Facebook profile, Facebook page, Google + Page, LinkedIn profile, LinkedIn group and another Facebook page but there seems to be a limit of 5 channels for each auto schedule.
1. Can this be increase to at least 6, 7, 8, 9 or 10 channels?
2. Can there be an option to ensure each auto scheduled message is emailed to me upon completion like it is when you do schedule a message?
3. Can I auto schedule a message for a particular day in the future? Maybe even up to a month or 2 in advance?
4. When I edit each auto scheduled message to verify that it emails me upon completion, it there again changes from the original auto scheduled date and time to be different depending on each different social network. Therefore the same message that I send through Hootsuite via 5 social channels, go out at 5 different times and sometimes a day later. Is this due to further optimization of the auto scheduled algorithm?
Keep up the great work Hootsuite!
Brett
Good work Hootsuite Team!
But I’ve got a problem………I’ve tried auto scheduling for more than 5 social channels (Facebook profile, Facebook page, Google + Page, LinkedIn profile, LinkedIn group and another Facebook page but there seems to be a limit of 5 channels for each auto schedule.
1. Can this be increase to at least 6, 7, 8, 9 or 10 channels?
2. Can there be an option to ensure each auto scheduled message is emailed to me upon completion like it is when you do schedule a message?
3. Can I auto schedule a message for a particular day in the future? Maybe even up to a month or 2 in advance?
4. When I edit each auto scheduled message to verify that it emails me upon completion, it there again changes from the original auto scheduled date and time to be different depending on each different social network. Therefore the same message that I send through Hootsuite via 5 social channels, go out at 5 different times and sometimes a day later. Is this due to further optimization of the auto scheduled algorithm?
Keep up the great work Hootsuite!
Brett
I have the same question as many others. Can I set the day and let autoschedule set the time. I try to go in and schedule a week worth of posts at one time but do want to set the date since some of them are meeting reminders or other time-sensitive information (i.e. tomorrow is…)
I am excited for the new Hootsuite autoscheduler but have the same concern that others have listed: I would like to autoschedule for a specified date.
I set the date, HS sets the time of day on said date.
This is a great idea as I often don’t know what times are best to post. Unfortunately I cannot use this function until you:
1. Give an option for how many posts we would like to go out in one day
2. Give an option to repeat popular posts and how many times we’d like to repeat them.
Thanks for looking into this.
Annie
I have been using this feature and like it but have a question: Yesterday morning I scheduled 6 or 7 tweets for a client. Auto-scheduler spread them during the day, including some in the morning. Today I scheduled tweets for the same client, this time auto-scheduler didn’t schedule any until 1:30 this afternoon and kept scheduling them until 9:30pm. After that, the next one I auto-scheduled went into tomorrow’s date. If it is analysing when my followers are active, why would the scheduled times be so different?
So what happens when everyone autoschedules for optimum times and then there’s just a whole mess of communication sent out around the same time – surely the “optimum times” will be quite similar for everyone, no?
This runs the risk of followers being inundated with a rake load of messaging and communication being lost in the noise.
That was my original thought too, Ian. I hope we’ll get a response soon as I think this tool has potential.
I agree with some of the commenters that would like the tool to be targeted by dates. I would like to schedule, plan posts out of time, not jam everything into one day. I also would like to get more information about how Hootsuite optimizes the posts based on audience traffic similar to Timely. Right now, it looks like it only schedules in 15/30 min increments. Thanks, in general I love Hootsuite and can’t wait to see it grow!
Looks like everyone has [close] to the same opinion. I’ve turned off my Auto Schedule until they can tweek it some. That said, to Schedule manually has always worked for me and I will continue to use Hootsuite because it kinda rocks. Nice product.
It’s a fabulous start and I certainly don’t want to downplay the work here, but I am not sure I see the benefit. Sending the same thing several times within a few hours is often overkill, especially in facebook. It causes fans to ‘unsubscribe’.
What would be very helpful is a tool similar to what google calendar does, where you can ‘repeat’ items. (AKA, I want this tweet to go out every monday morning). I am also curious about the algorithm here.
I agree with all the questions posed above. If Hootsuite auto-schedules, what’s the underlying algorithm? And how many will be scheduled on a daily basis. Is there some selection criteria for the tweets that have been Auto-scheduled? I don’t understand how the priority is set.
would like to be able to set the times for scheduled tweets
Have I understood this? I’m not sure I like the loss of control. There is nothing worse than bombarding your clients and others with tweets that have limited contact value. I schedule an event tweet (say) for one or two a day at different times of the day over a month perhaps when I think they will sit down for a coffee.
Hey Hootsuite! If you’re in the social media space, how about tasking someone to monitor your own site’s comments? Tons of questions, most from what would be an army of fans ready to spread the word, but still no answers. Hmrmph……
Hi Kenny,
We’ve been working tirelessly on improving the product, and staffing up so that we could not only monitor (which we have, I assure you) but also reply and follow up on comments. As I’m sure you know, this is very important to us.
The volume of interest and questions about Autoschedule and its features have been many, but we intend to resolve all of them, and continue to build out a product that reflects all of this valuable feedback.
For the meantime, our support team wanted to have me post the answer most people are seeking:
“The AutoScheduler looks at the activities of you and your followers on each social network, and chooses the time that will result in the most engagement. As you use the AutoScheduler more, it will learn your habits and get smarter.”
And to be sure that all feature requests and questions get handled in a timely fashion going forward, please head on over to our Help Desk at http://hootsuite.com/help for further assistance.
Seen it asked a bunch, love the feature, but need to be able to pick the day. I want to do things in clusters but honestly can’t have more than one or two posts going out auto per day.
Or it could be a quick setting “Only allow X number of auto posts per day”.
Anthony
I agree with many of the previous comments. Question: If I schedule multiple messages for a specific social network, will it send them out at different optimal times? Will it ever send out multiple messages back to back?
I have the same questions as the users above regarding the scheduling algorithm, and scheduling multiple posts per day on specific days. In addition, if you are posting to multiple platforms posts have to be scheduled individually which creates a lot more work.
Right now, it is only useful if I don’t have any posts scheduled for that particular day to limited platforms.
Thanks.
Hi Everyone,
Thank you for your kind words and insightful questions regarding AutoSchedule. Like all of our tools, we’re always looking to improve on AutoSchedule’s functionality as time goes on. Your suggestions and questions really help us figure out how HootSuite features are being used and ways we can improve them.
AutoSchedule uses a proprietary formula, so we can’t give away our algorithm but I hope to answer a few questions we’ve been receiving:
- AutoSchedule posts for your local time that is set by your computer
- The timing takes into account the different social networks, so different networks will have different times
- There is no frequency control at this time
- There are no timing parameters that can be set (Ex. you cannot customize AutoSchedule to work from 9am – 5pm on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday)
- AutoSchedule currently only works for 5 profiles at a time
- AutoSchedule for mobile is currently not supported but it is on our roadmap
I hope that answers many of your questions. Any additional questions can be directed to @HootSuite_Help or the Help Desk. Our support rangers are best suited to answer any technical questions you might have. Your questions and feedback play a big role in guiding our product development. Thanks for your help!
I have tried this new functionality and it works so good. I auto-scheduled a couple of tweets and the had higher impact than usual.
On the other hand, I have read some research about the optimal timing for publishing on Twitter and it matches Hootsuite auto-schedule…
hey if i turn on auto schedule, will it post any time of the day when i auto scheduled it? or is it possible that it will get published any day of the week/month?
First of all, I LOVE this functionality being built in to a tool I already love. Great job!
Just wondering though, is there anyway to adjust the frequency of the posts? It would be nice to space posts out a little and even adjust the times I would have them post (See Buffer for a great example).
Keep up the great work.
This is what would be great:
(1) It’s not scheduled by local time it’s UST
(2) It’s not scheduled by social media lore
(3) It is scheduled by examining your feeds and seeing at what times of day (UST) your posts get the most feedback – and auto-scheduling around those times.
This makes it a real autoscheduler, not just a coach. And it will avoid the problem of suddenly 7:30-7:45 is the brookyln tunnel at rush hour. Each profile will have their own optimal times.
I have been using AutoSchedule for a while, but I want to know how it determines the optimal posting times?
This seems pretty neat. I’ll experiment with this feature and see about the results.
Great feature. However I’d like to know if its possible to autoschedule a message for a future date, and let hootsuite select the best time on that date.
Thanks!
Hi Nicolas,
Currently that feature doesn’t exist but we encourage you to suggest it on our Feedback Channel.
Why not just buy bufferapp and integrate it… Then you’d absolutely dominate third-party twitter/social media apps (if you also fixed the all the other little bugs with the mobile platforms e.g. photos simply posting as links when you send to facebook from the android app.
I love the “autoschedule” feature, it’ll even better if I can autoschedule a list of tweets for a specific day, not to span the autoscheduled into several days. BTW, can I drag and drop schedule posts?
Thanks,
David
Hi David,
Thanks for the suggestion. Let us know about it on our Feedback Channel.
And yes, you can drag and drop in publisher view. I like to use the monthly view to get a better picture of what’s scheduled.
Would be neat if you can set auto-scheduler for daily, weekly, bi-weekly, monthly. That way you can post many on “one day” and they will go out randomly at the best time on different days of the month automatically.
It would be really good to be able to set a daily limit on auto scheduals so we can set posts up for autoschedual but not have loads on one day. Say for instance we only want to post 1-5 posts per day. Currently you set posts for auto schedual and they all go on the current day but i dont want them all on one day but still want to make use of the optimal times autoschedual provides. can this be added please?
Add me to the list of users who would like to be able to set a day for auto-schedule!
I would like to drip feed using autoschedule. I would like to have a blackout period of time when tweets don’t get sent. (Like the middle of the night.) I would like to limited how many tweets get sent out. (No more than 5. When I set autoschedule, it wants to send out something every two hours. That’s too frequent.) Lastly, I would like to have an ajax functionality where I can rearrange the tweets on the fly.
I’m not sure if I’ve missed it, but I can’t see that anyone from Hootsuite has actually answered the repeated question on this topic: how does Hootsuite calculate this ‘optimal’ time to send? It’s vital to know – otherwise you’re just swapping your manually controlled tweet scheduling for something entirely random. Need more info please!
The last comment was on the 22nd, and i see still no answer, so im assuming that for 1. No u cant set it for a later date then the present day. 2.:Optimal Time” it really just seeming like a Random thing.. as of right now.. Hopefully they can elaborate on this feature, it def would be a great one!
-Concerned.
Hi FredStar,
Currently, you can’t set AutoScheduled updated for a later day. As for the Optimal Time, our algorithm is proprietary information.
Let us know if there are any features you’d like added by voting or suggesting ideas on our Feedback Channel.
Proprietary information??? In other words there really is no ‘optimal time’, its just random but that can’t be made public as many people would be upset?
I think you will have to give some insight into your proprietary algorithm for optimization.
What I would like to do with this feature is set it so that it auto schedules my posts for the same time each day. Our Facebook page is to have 1 post a day, posted at 3pm. At this point, we have to schedule each and every post even though the timing is the same. Thanks!
This has really helped my daily operation. When you have many accounts to watch over it definitely does save time and effort. Thank guys!
Having just read through these comments starting over five months ago, it’s clear that a lot of users appreciate the autoschedule function, but would like to have it so that they can schedule ahead of time, more than one day.
Isn’t the whole point of autoschedule that you can reduce the time of scheduling? If I don’t want to send out 15 tweets a day, but maybe only 4-5, how much time is it really going to save me? Not much, for sure. Is it really that difficult to include this functionality?
Hi Tom,
Those suggestions are certainly in the roadmap but we have no definite timeline quite yet.
+1 for all of the above comments. Cool feature but not useful if I can’t specify the date.
Handy feature. Wish I’d discovered it earlier! I’d love the ability to schedule further in advance as well.
Ditto to everything everyone else said about spacing the posts further apart!!!!
Thanks for finally writing about >Easy Scheduling ~ AutoSchedule in the Dashboard – HootSuite
Social Media Management – HootSuite Social Media Management <Liked it!
Does anyone from Hootsuite actually answer these many questions? I have exactly the same Q’s about auto scheduling… wondering if there is an answer elsewhere? H E L L O?
Hello,
What are your questions about auto scheduling? We’d love to help you.
Sam
Sam,
Many of us were wondering how the auto scheduler works.
Is it ‘smart’ ie. reading past posts and posting at optimal times for maximum engagement, or are the posts just randomly posted over hours or days depending on how many posts are placed in the auto scheduler at any one time?
Id love some information on this.
Thank you.
You’ve got it! The auto-scheduler is ‘smart’ and will look at what you and your followers have done in the past to send at the optimal time for maximize engagement. It also learns based on your current activity how many posts are right for each social account, and fine-tunes the posting algorithm to better suit your followers. Hope this helps! If you have other questions, our support team is always available in the community support forum (hootsuite.com/forum) and would be happy to help you out!
Thanks again,
Sam @HootSuite
Sam, Still, how many can we schedule at a time… I would like to ramp up my posts on Twitter and would like to schedule more and more since the links re only viable for a small window of time. How does this tool take that into account?
Hi there,
Auto schedule will only schedule for optimal engagement, which might be fewer tweets than you’d like to send out. It sounds like bulk scheduling is the best way to go for you! Here’s more information on getting that set up: http://help.hootsuite.com/entries/21723778-Scheduling-in-Bulk. Please let us know if you need more information
Does this mean that if I post enough, Auto-schedule will post over multiple days?
It looks like Autoschedule only applies to the day you’re posting. Is there any way of using Autoschedule to upload pictures all at once and have them be posted continuously throughout an entire month?
Hello Hootsuite team, this feature is great, and it really saves a lot of time!
Some advice: In the near future, I believe users should be given the chance to modify permanently the times when tweets/messages are sent. Sending tweets everyday at 7:15 am when my community is just snoozing the alarm clock is not very useful.
Thanks again for such a great tool! Cheers!
Phil