Hootsuite is a great tool for consolidating social platforms. It can be used to interact with friends and followers, and best off all, schedule updates in advance (individual or bulk) to save time and effort in your social media efforts.
One thing that frustrates a lot of Hootsuite users is getting used to the format that is required for bulk upload of updates into Hootsuite. Generally users employ Microsoft Excel to generate the updates. The file and field requirements for bulk upload are straight forward, but little mistakes can cause a Hootsuite rejection of the file to be uploaded. General requirements include:
- The Excel file must be saved in a “*.csv” file format with only three columns.
- The first column (schedule date and time) must be formatted using Excel’s custom date and time: dd/mm/yyyy hh:mm
- The second column is used for the message and simple text is fine. For posting to twitter accounts this field may contain up to 140 characters long, 120 characters if you plan on inserting a URL (column 3).
- The third column is for the URL to be shortened and inserted into the update. The URL should contain the leading http:// to properly work and no additional characters.
- The file should not contain column headings.
Save it as a comma separated file (csv), upload and that’s all there is to it. The path to upload a file in Hootsuite is “Publisher->Schedule in Bulk”
For those of you that are not to Excel savvy, the link below provides a tool that can be downloaded specific for use in uploading files to Hootsuite. The tool uses tips and error messages to assist you.
Happy tweeting.
