A step-by-step guide to connecting your social accounts, composing posts, and scheduling content across Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, and more — without ever leaving your UniLink Dashboard.
- The Social Planner is UniLink's built-in scheduler that lets you compose, schedule, and publish posts to Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter/X, Pinterest, YouTube Shorts, and Telegram from a single interface.
- Find it in the Dashboard under Social Planner in the left sidebar; each platform must be connected once via Settings → Integrations → Social Planner before you can post.
- The most important setting is platform selection per post — you compose once but can uncheck platforms that need different captions or aspect ratios, so one session does not mean one-size-fits-all content.
- Instagram requires a Creator or Business account — personal accounts cannot connect; TikTok OAuth tokens expire every 90 days and must be manually reconnected.
Maintaining an active presence across multiple social platforms is one of the highest-effort parts of running a personal brand or small business online. The typical workflow — log in to Instagram, draft a caption, upload a photo, add hashtags, post or schedule; then switch to TikTok, do it again; then LinkedIn, then Twitter — burns an hour before any actual work gets done. And when you manage a team, or when you need approval before anything goes live, the tab-switching becomes a coordination problem on top of a time problem. The Social Planner in UniLink consolidates that entire workflow into one place. You draft a post once, choose which platforms it goes to, set a time, and it publishes — whether you are online or not.
What the Social Planner does
The Social Planner is UniLink's native content scheduling and publishing tool. It connects directly to your social media accounts via official OAuth integrations and publishes posts on your behalf at the scheduled time, using each platform's publishing API. You write the caption, attach media, pick platforms, choose a date and time, and the Planner handles the rest. Posts appear in a calendar view so you can see your entire content pipeline at a glance — gaps in the schedule are immediately visible, and you can drag posts to different days without reopening the composer.
The Planner connects to eight platforms: Instagram (feed posts, Reels, Stories), TikTok (standard videos and Shorts-length clips), Facebook page posts, LinkedIn (personal profiles and company pages), Twitter/X, Pinterest, YouTube Shorts, and Telegram channels. After publishing, the Planner pulls performance data back from each platform's API — reach, likes, and comments per post — and displays them inside the UniLink post detail view, so you get per-post analytics without opening each platform separately. For high-volume publishing, a CSV bulk upload lets you load an entire month's content queue in one import. Evergreen posts can be set to auto-recycle, re-queuing them automatically after a defined interval so top-performing content stays in rotation without manual re-entry.
The Social Planner handles content distribution — it does not replace the creative work of producing platform-native content. A 16:9 landscape video will publish to TikTok, but it will appear letterboxed on a platform that expects 9:16. A caption with 30 hashtags will post to Instagram, but LinkedIn's algorithm treats heavy hashtag use differently. The Planner lets you select different platforms independently and edit captions per platform, which is where that production polish happens — but you need to make those decisions consciously. The Planner will publish whatever you give it; the judgment about what works on each platform is still yours.
Getting started
- Confirm your account type on each platform before connecting: Instagram requires a Creator or Business account — personal accounts are blocked by Meta's API and cannot be connected regardless of follower count. If you currently have a personal Instagram account, convert it first in the Instagram app under Settings → Account → Switch to Professional Account. TikTok, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter/X work with standard accounts.
- Go to Settings → Integrations → Social Planner: In your UniLink Dashboard, open the Settings panel from the left sidebar, navigate to Integrations, and select Social Planner. You will see a list of all supported platforms, each with a Connect button.
- Connect each platform via OAuth: Click Connect next to a platform. A browser popup opens with that platform's standard OAuth authorization screen — you log in to the platform (if not already logged in) and grant UniLink publishing permissions. After authorization, the popup closes and the platform shows as Connected in your integrations list. Repeat for each platform you want to post to.
- For Facebook and LinkedIn company pages, select the correct page: When you connect Facebook or LinkedIn, UniLink asks which page or company profile to attach — your personal account may have admin access to multiple pages. Select the correct one. You can connect multiple Facebook pages or LinkedIn company pages by repeating the connection process.
- Set your default timezone: In the Social Planner settings, confirm the timezone is set to your primary audience timezone. Scheduled times are interpreted in this timezone, so if your audience is EST and your account defaults to UTC, a post scheduled for 9:00 AM will go out at 4:00 AM EST — which is not what you want.
- Invite team members if needed: If you have team members who will create or review posts, go to Settings → Team and add them with the appropriate Social Planner permissions. Team members can be given create-only access (they submit posts for approval) or full access (they can schedule and publish directly).
How to create and schedule a post
- Open the Social Planner and click Compose: From the Social Planner section of your Dashboard, click the Compose button (or click any empty slot on the calendar). The post composer opens.
- Select which platforms this post goes to: At the top of the composer, you will see checkboxes for each connected platform. Select the ones this specific post is intended for. You do not have to select all — if a post is image-only and not suitable for TikTok, uncheck TikTok. Each post remembers its platform selection independently.
- Write your caption: Type your caption in the text area. By default, the same caption applies to all selected platforms. To write a different caption for a specific platform, click the platform's tab above the text area and edit the caption there — it will override the default for that platform only without affecting others.
- Use hashtag suggestions: As you type, the caption editor surfaces hashtag suggestions based on your caption text and previous posts. Click a suggestion to insert it. For Instagram, aim for 5–15 relevant hashtags placed at the end of the caption or in the first comment. For LinkedIn and Facebook, use 3–5 at most — heavy hashtag use on those platforms can reduce organic reach.
- Upload media: Click the media upload area to attach images or video. The composer shows aspect ratio guides and file size limits for each selected platform — a warning icon appears next to any platform where your media dimensions or file size fall outside acceptable ranges. Address those warnings before scheduling; the post will still queue, but the platform API may reject it at publish time.
- Set the schedule date and time: Click the date/time picker and select when you want this post to publish. The calendar highlights days that already have posts so you can space content evenly. If you want to publish immediately, select Publish Now instead of scheduling.
- Submit for approval or schedule directly: If your account uses the approval workflow, clicking Schedule submits the post to the approval queue. A team member with approval rights will review and either approve (which adds it to the calendar) or request changes. If no approval workflow is active, clicking Schedule adds the post directly to your calendar queue.
- Confirm the post on the calendar: After scheduling, the post appears as a card on the calendar view at the scheduled time. Click the card to review details, edit, or delete. The card shows which platforms the post will go to with small platform icons.
Key features and settings
| Feature / Setting | What it does | Best practice |
|---|---|---|
| Per-platform caption override | Lets you write a different caption for individual platforms without creating a separate post | Always override captions for LinkedIn vs. Instagram — LinkedIn audiences respond to professional narrative context; Instagram captions with heavy hashtags look spammy on LinkedIn feeds. One compose session, two tailored captions. |
| Calendar view | Shows all scheduled posts as cards on a monthly or weekly calendar grid | Use the weekly view for tactical scheduling (ensuring consistent posting frequency) and the monthly view for strategic content planning (confirming you have content on key campaign dates). Reschedule by dragging cards. |
| Post analytics (reach, likes, comments) | Pulls post-level performance data from each platform's API and displays it inside the UniLink post detail | Check analytics 48–72 hours after posting when engagement has largely settled. Use top-performing posts as templates for future content — if a specific caption style or media type consistently outperforms, document that and replicate it. |
| Bulk CSV upload | Imports a spreadsheet of posts (caption, platform, date/time, media URL) and adds them all to the queue at once | Use for monthly content batching. Prepare the CSV in a spreadsheet tool, upload once, then review each post on the calendar to spot any formatting or media issues before they publish. Do not bulk-upload without a review pass. |
| Auto-recycle | Re-queues a published post automatically after a defined interval (e.g., every 30, 60, or 90 days) | Use only for truly evergreen content — product explainers, FAQ posts, evergreen tips. Avoid recycling seasonal content, time-sensitive announcements, or posts that reference current events. Review your recycle queue quarterly and remove anything that has aged out. |
| Team collaboration and post assignment | Lets you assign a draft post to a specific team member for writing, editing, or approval | Assign posts to team members at the drafting stage, not the day before publishing. This gives the assigned person enough time to write a quality caption and source media without rushing. Set a due date on the assignment so the post reaches the approval queue before the scheduled publish time. |
| Approval workflow | Routes all scheduled posts through an approval step before they go on the calendar | Enable the approval workflow for any team account where junior members or contractors are creating content. Disable it for solo accounts where the overhead adds friction without adding safety. The approval step adds zero value if the approver rubber-stamps every post without reading it — enforce a real review. |
How to get the most from the Social Planner
Consistent publishing frequency matters more than perfect timing. The Social Planner makes it easy to post three or four times a week to each platform, but many users schedule sporadically — three posts in one week, none the next. Audience growth on every social platform rewards consistency because algorithms interpret regular posting as a signal of active engagement. Use the calendar view to enforce a minimum posting cadence: if you look at the calendar and see more than two consecutive days with no posts on a platform, fill those gaps before closing the tab.
Media quality and aspect ratios deserve attention before you schedule. Instagram feed posts and Reels expect different aspect ratios (1:1 or 4:5 for feed, 9:16 for Reels), TikTok expects 9:16, LinkedIn performs best at 1.91:1 or square. The Social Planner will flag dimension mismatches, but it will not fix them for you. If you are posting the same video to multiple platforms, export versions in the correct aspect ratio for each — a single universal crop will underperform on platforms where it appears letterboxed or cropped awkwardly. This is the most commonly skipped step and the most visible quality difference between accounts that look professional and those that look inconsistent.
Post analytics inside the Planner become genuinely useful only when you act on them. Most creators check analytics once, nod, and never change anything. The pattern to look for is: which posts got significantly higher reach or engagement than your average? What did they have in common — topic, caption length, media type, time of day, day of week? Once you identify two or three recurring patterns, encode those into your content template so future posts start from a higher baseline. If your analytics show that carousel posts on LinkedIn outperform single-image posts by 3x, that is a scheduling and format decision, not a luck factor.
For accounts with team members, the approval workflow is only as good as the approval standard you set. Write down (even informally) what makes a post approvable: caption length, hashtag count, required call-to-action, brand voice guidelines, media quality standards. Share that document with everyone who creates posts. Approvers who have a written checklist reject posts at the right stage — before they publish — rather than after the fact when all you can do is delete and apologize.
Troubleshooting common issues
| Problem | Likely cause | Fix |
|---|---|---|
| Instagram connection fails with "account type not supported" | The Instagram account is a personal account, not a Creator or Business account | In the Instagram app, go to Settings → Account → Switch to Professional Account, choose Creator or Business, complete the setup steps, then return to UniLink and reconnect. The entire process takes about two minutes. |
| TikTok posts stop publishing after roughly 90 days | TikTok OAuth tokens expire every 90 days by design — this is TikTok's policy, not a UniLink bug | Go to Settings → Integrations → Social Planner, click Reconnect next to TikTok, and complete the OAuth flow again. Set a calendar reminder to reconnect TikTok every 85 days so posts do not silently fail mid-queue. |
| Post shows as "Published" in the Planner but does not appear on the platform | The platform API accepted the request but a media validation error caused a silent failure on the platform side | Open the post detail in the Planner and check the publish log for an error code. Common causes: video exceeds the platform's file size limit, caption contains a banned word or URL in a caption field that blocks URLs, or the connected account lost permissions after a password change. Address the specific error and republish manually. |
| LinkedIn posts publish to personal profile instead of company page | During setup, the personal profile was selected instead of the company page | Go to Settings → Integrations → Social Planner, disconnect LinkedIn, reconnect, and when prompted to select a page, choose the correct company page. If you need to post to both personal profile and company page, connect them as separate integrations. |
| Scheduled time is wrong — posts go out hours off from the intended time | The account timezone is set incorrectly, causing a UTC offset mismatch | Go to Social Planner settings and check the timezone. Update it to match your primary audience timezone. Note that existing scheduled posts may need to be rescheduled after a timezone change — confirm each upcoming post's publish time in the calendar view. |
| Video uploads fail or show an error before scheduling | The video file exceeds the platform's size or duration limit, or is in an unsupported format | Check the file size limits shown in the composer's platform guidance area. Instagram Reels: up to 1 GB, max 90 seconds. TikTok: up to 4 GB, max 10 minutes. YouTube Shorts: up to 256 MB, max 60 seconds. Compress or trim the video to fit the most restrictive platform you are posting to, then re-upload. |
Best fit for
- Creators and businesses posting to three or more platforms regularly who spend significant time switching between apps to manage their content
- Small teams with a content creator plus an approver, where the approval workflow prevents off-brand posts from going live
- Businesses with a content calendar and predictable posting cadence that benefits from visual scheduling and bulk upload
- Anyone who wants post-level performance data from multiple platforms consolidated in one place without logging into each separately
Not the right tool if
- You post exclusively to one platform and that platform has a native scheduler you are already comfortable with
- Your content strategy relies heavily on platform-specific features like Instagram Collabs, TikTok Duets, or LinkedIn polls that require native app interactions the Planner cannot replicate
- You post exclusively reactive, real-time content (live commentary, trending audio on TikTok) where scheduling hours in advance defeats the purpose
Frequently asked questions
Yes. You can connect multiple Instagram accounts — each appears as a separate integration in Settings → Integrations → Social Planner. When composing a post, the platform selector lists each connected account separately, so you can choose which Instagram account(s) the post goes to. This is useful for agencies managing client accounts or creators who run separate personal and brand profiles.
Yes, Instagram Stories are supported. When you select Instagram in the post composer, a post type selector appears — choose Feed Post, Reel, or Story. Story posts have a maximum duration of 15 seconds for video and display in a 9:16 vertical format. Note that Story analytics (views, taps forward/back) are available for 24 hours after posting while the Story is live, after which the data is no longer retrievable from Instagram's API.
The post will fail to publish and will show a "publish failed — authentication error" status in the calendar. UniLink sends an email notification when a token expires or is near expiration. The post remains in your queue — once you reconnect the platform and reauthorize, you can reschedule the failed post from the post detail view without rewriting the caption or re-uploading media.
Yes. Create the post and schedule it for the time that works best for the first platform. Then duplicate the post (using the Duplicate option in the post context menu), adjust the scheduled time for the second platform, and uncheck all platforms except the second one. This creates two separate post entries with different times pointing to different platforms — the same caption and media, different schedules. This is the recommended approach when you want to post on Instagram in the morning and LinkedIn at midday without using a single simultaneous publish time.
The Social Planner queue limit depends on your UniLink plan. Free and starter plans have a limited queue size (check your plan details in Settings → Subscription). Paid plans include an unlimited post queue. The CSV bulk upload respects the same limits — if an import would exceed your plan's queue limit, UniLink will import posts up to the limit and display a warning for the remainder.
- Connect each platform once via Settings → Integrations → Social Planner; Instagram requires a Creator or Business account and TikTok tokens must be renewed every 90 days.
- Write one post and use per-platform caption overrides to tailor the message for each audience — do not publish the same generic caption to every platform simultaneously without adjustment.
- Use the weekly batching habit — one 30-minute session per week fills the calendar for seven days and removes the daily decision cost of what to post.
- Post analytics are pulled from each platform's API after publishing; use them to identify repeating performance patterns and encode those into your future content structure, not just to check numbers.
- When posts fail silently (Published status but not visible on the platform), open the post detail and read the publish log — the specific error code tells you exactly what went wrong and how to fix it before rescheduling.