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Getting started with the social media planner

Schedule and publish posts on Instagram, Facebook and TikTok from Bugalou: turning it on, connecting accounts, creating and scheduling posts, and what happens after publishing.

Overview

With the social media planner you create, schedule and publish posts on Instagram, Facebook and TikTok, from the same app you use to help your customers. Comments and DMs on your posts land in your Bugalou inbox.

The planner is an add-on of ā‚¬24 per month (excl. VAT) on any paid plan: Starter, Pro or Enterprise. On a yearly plan it's ā‚¬259.20 per year.

Turning on the planner

  • At checkout: tick Add-on: Social media planner when you choose a plan. If you start a trial, you try the planner along for free.
  • Later: go to Billing and click Add next to the social media planner. You can also stop it there.

Once it's on, Social appears in the menu.

Connecting accounts

  1. Go to Channels and choose Instagram, Facebook Messenger (for your Facebook Page) or TikTok.
  2. Log in and grant all permissions in the Meta or TikTok window. The planner needs permissions to publish and to read statistics.
  3. Under Social ā†’ Settings you see per account whether it's ready for the planner.

Is an account missing permissions, or has a connection expired? Then you see a yellow notice at the top of Social. Click Reconnect and grant all permissions again.

Creating a post

  1. Click New post and choose the accounts you want to publish to.
  2. Choose the format and add your photos or video:
    • Post: one photo or video.
    • Carousel: 2 to 10 photos or videos.
    • Reel: one video of 3 seconds to 15 minutes.
    • Story: one photo or video (up to 60 seconds), Instagram only.
    • TikTok: one video. See Publishing videos to TikTok.
  3. Write your caption, or click Write with AI. The AI writes a caption from your idea or from a product in your webshop, in the tone, length and language you choose.
  4. Adjust the caption per network if you like and check the preview per network on the right.

Hashtags, first comment and tags

  • Hashtags: pick from your own hashtags (with the reach they brought) or from saved hashtag sets.
  • First comment: automatically post a first comment under your post, for example with your hashtags. This works on Instagram and Facebook.
  • Tag Facebook Pages: type @ and search for the Page you want to mention.

Publishing or scheduling

  • Publish now: the post goes live right away.
  • Schedule: pick a date and time, or click Best time. Bugalou suggests the moment when your followers are most active and your posts perform best.
  • Save as draft: finish it later.

The calendar shows all your posts. Drag a scheduled post to another day to move it. Reuse makes a copy of an existing post.

Team approval

Turn on approval under Social ā†’ Settings. Posts by team members then only go live after an owner or admin has approved them.

After publishing

  • Click a post to see the status and statistics per account: reach, views, likes, comments, saves and shares.
  • Under Insights you see the results of the last 30 days. In Analytics ā†’ Social media you find followers, growth and the best time to post.
  • Comments and DMs land in your inbox. Comments under your posts don't count towards your conversation limit.
  • Did a post fail or was it partially published? Open the post, read the reason and click Retry.
  • A scheduled post can be edited, moved or deleted as often as you like. A published post is deleted or changed on the network itself.
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