In this article, learn how to create, schedule, and publish social posts through LocationHQ, use merge codes, and fine-tuning for posting to some specific providers.

Use this article for instructions on posting to Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter. For posting to Google, use the instructions in the article Publishing to Google. 

Before you can create, schedule, and publish posts from LocationHQ, you must have associated:

• Your social provider account credentials with your Chatmeter account. See Managing Third-party Credentials in the Settings section of the Chatmeter Support Center.
• Your users’ roles with the settings they need for the part they play in creating, approving, and publishing social posts. See Managing LocationHQ Users and Managing LocationHQ Roles (User Types) in the Settings section of the Chatmeter Support Center.

Publishing a post

To create, schedule, or publish a post, follow these steps:

1. Login to your Chatmeter account in LocationHQ.
2. Select Social > Publish to display the Publish page.
3. Select Create Post and select the provider your post is to appear on.
   
4. On the Create Post page, in the Pages field, select the account pages you’d like to post to.
   
5. Type or cut and paste the content of your post into the Message text field. You’ll see your text in the Preview pane.
6. In Images & Video, select Add images and video to search to find an existing image from the Gallery or follow the instructions to Upload New Media. You can add two images or one video with your textual content. If you add a video, you can’t add a second video or images. In Facebook, you can add as many as 10 images per post.
7.  Select Add Schedule in the Schedule pane to select the Date, Time, and TIme Zone for publication, then select OK. If you want to publish immediately after you finish providing the details, don’t schedule the post.
8.  Select Schedule Post. It will appear on the Publish page as Scheduled. (If you haven’t selected a publication date, you can select Publish Now.)

Using merge codes in your posts

You can use merge codes in your posts to simplify and enforce consistency in the use of your business name, address, phone number, and website. The codes map to the names your company has provided to Chatmeter. 

Follow these steps when creating your post content:

1. Prepare to publish your post as described in Publishing a post.
2. In the post content, select the merge codes button and select one of the merge codes. Alternatively, you can type in a merge code between the double curly brackets. The available merge codes are:
• {{business_name}}—Business name
• {{business_address}}—Business address
• {{business_phone_number}}—Business phone number
• {{business_website}}—Website listed in Chatmeter. If you haven’t listed one with Chatmeter, the post will fail.

Here’s an example. We typed the following into the Message text field for a Facebook post, having selected the provider and page in previous steps.

The result that posts once you’ve finished the posting process is as follows:

Provider-specific usage tips

Keep in mind these details that are specific to the providers:

• On Twitter, your tweet (post) text is limited to 280 characters
• On Instagram, you must have at least two characters of text
• On Google, you have a choice of four types of posts—see Publishing to Google for details