Social publishing

Social publishing is where you compose a post once, choose which connected accounts it goes to, and either publish it now or schedule it for later - without logging in and out of each platform.

Who can publish

Creating, scheduling, editing, and deleting posts is an Editor capability (including admins who also edit). Other roles can open the planner and calendar in read-only mode.

Where it lives

Open External from the top navigation and choose the Social Media tile. The composer, the list of scheduled posts, and the calendar all live here.

Compose a post

1. Choose your channels. Pick the connected accounts you want to publish to. Selection is per account, not just per platform - so you can post to several accounts, across several platforms, in one go. A platform with no connected account is shown greyed out.

2. Pick a post type. Post, Reel, or Story. The available types depend on the platforms you selected (see the table below).

3. Add your media. A Post takes up to 10 images; a Reel takes one video; a Story takes one image or video.

4. Write your caption. One caption is shared across every selected platform - it publishes the same to all of them. The character counter reflects the most restrictive of your selected platforms. (YouTube also needs its own Title, up to 100 characters.)

5. Add any extras. Depending on the platforms selected, you can add a first comment (Instagram/Facebook), tag people, or invite collaborators (both Instagram) - see below.

6. Publish or schedule. Publish now, or pick a future date and time and let HIVE post it for you.

Post types and media

Platform	Post types
Instagram	Post, Reel, Story
Facebook	Post, Reel
LinkedIn	Post, Reel, Document
TikTok	Reel (video)
YouTube	Reel (video)

The composer only offers the post types your selected platforms share - mix platforms and you’ll see the types they have in common.

• Post - up to 10 images.
• Reel - one video.
• Story - one image or video (Instagram).
• Document - one PDF (LinkedIn - see Document posts).

Caption and AI help

The caption is a single editor shared by every selected platform - there’s no separate caption per platform. The live counter turns red if you go over the limit of the strictest platform you’ve selected.

Stories are media only

When you select Story, the caption editor doesn’t appear - an Instagram Story publishes as media only (no caption, tags, location, or collaborators).

You can draft a caption yourself, or use AI to generate one: give it a key message and a goal (and, if you like, a tone, language, and how many variations to produce), and HIVE returns a set of caption drafts. Insert the one you like and edit it before publishing - the drafts are a starting point, not a finished caption.

First comment

When you have Instagram or Facebook selected and you’re not posting a Story, you can add a first comment. HIVE posts it as the first comment once your post goes live - useful for hashtags or links you’d rather keep out of the caption itself.

Note

First comment is available for Instagram and Facebook only. It isn’t offered for Stories.

Instagram extras

These apply to Instagram only, and not to Stories:

• Tag people. Tag accounts in your post - position tags on a photo, or list them on a reel. Up to 30 per post. Handles are checked before publishing.
• Collaborators. Invite up to 3 public Business or Creator accounts as co-authors. Once an account accepts, the post also appears on its profile.

Document posts (LinkedIn)

Add a PDF to a LinkedIn post and it publishes as a document post - the swipeable deck LinkedIn shows inline in the feed, rather than a file to download. Useful for reports, decks, and one-pagers.

• LinkedIn only, and one PDF per post. A document post carries no other media alongside it.
• A title is required - LinkedIn renders it as the header above the deck, up to 200 characters. It’s required to save the post at all, including as a draft.
• Up to 100 MB. LinkedIn also caps documents at 300 pages; a longer file is refused by LinkedIn rather than by HIVE.
• PDF only. Other document formats aren’t offered.

The composer preview shows the deck the way LinkedIn will render it, and the post’s media tile in your list and on the calendar shows page one as its thumbnail.

Note

LinkedIn processes the document after HIVE hands it over, so a document post can take a little longer to go live than a regular post.

Scheduling

Choose Publish now, or schedule for later by picking a date and time. A scheduled time has to be in the future. Scheduled posts appear in your list and on the calendar until they go live.

Tracking your posts

Every post has a status, shown as a colour-coded badge:

Status	Colour	Meaning
Draft	Blue	Saved, not yet scheduled
Pending	Yellow	Being processed
Publishing	Teal	Going out right now
Scheduled	Purple	Queued for a future time
Published	Green	Live on the platform
Partial	Amber	Some platforms published, some didn’t
Failed	Red	Didn’t publish
Deleted	Grey	Removed

• Editing is available while a post is Scheduled. Once it’s published, it can no longer be edited.
• The calendar on the publishing page has Year, Week, Month, and List views, colour-coded by the same statuses, so you can see what’s going out and when. Each view carries a status legend, split into a Posts group (the statuses above) and an Events group (planning statuses) - the two vocabularies share some words but mean different things. See External calendar.
• Preview: open a post to preview it. Before it’s published you see a platform-faithful phone preview of how it will look on each platform. Once it’s published, the preview shows the post’s detail (media, caption, status and engagement stats) with its conversation beside it. See Unified inbox.
• Open it on the platform: a published post carries a link to the original, labelled with the platform’s name. It sits in the preview’s header, and on the latest-posts rows on the External home. Selecting it opens the post on the platform in a new tab.

TikTok posts and the link back

Every other platform hands HIVE the link the moment a post goes live. TikTok issues it later, after its own processing, so a published TikTok post can sit for a while with no link to open. Rather than showing nothing, HIVE shows a short chip saying why:

Chip	What it means
Link pending	Published. TikTok is still processing it and hasn’t issued a link yet - the link appears here shortly.
Waiting in your TikTok inbox	Not published. TikTok put the video in your inbox in the TikTok app, and it stays there until you open the app and post it yourself.
Private on TikTok	Published with a privacy setting other than public, so TikTok issues no shareable link. It’s live for the audience you chose.
Rejected by TikTok	TikTok accepted the upload and then rejected it during its own review. There’s no link and nothing to open.
No link available	TikTok issued no link for this video.

Hover a chip for the full explanation. The chip only ever stands in for a missing link - once TikTok issues one, the link replaces it.

Imported posts

HIVE also brings in the posts you published outside HIVE, straight on the platform. Your planner, calendar and post list then show everything that went out, not only what HIVE sent.

• Nothing to switch on. Once an admin connects an account, HIVE imports its posts on its own.
• Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and TikTok are imported. YouTube isn’t available - videos published outside HIVE aren’t brought in.
• What comes in: the caption, the media, the post’s own engagement stats, and a link back to the original.
• Clearly marked. An imported post carries an Imported from … badge beside its platform indicator, so it’s never mistaken for something HIVE published.
• Deleting one removes it from HIVE only - the original stays live on the platform, and the confirmation tells you so.

When imported posts show up

• Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn are checked every hour.
• TikTok works differently. HIVE pulls your full public history within a minute of the account being connected, then checks once a day after that - so a video you publish in the TikTok app can take up to a day to appear in HIVE.
• TikTok imports public videos only. A video that isn’t public never appears, however far back HIVE looks.

Limits and known behaviours

• Media: a Post takes up to 10 images; a Reel or Story takes a single video (or, for a Story, a single image).
• Instagram aspect ratio is checked before you publish. Media that’s outside what Instagram accepts is flagged - clearly out-of-range files are blocked, and borderline ones get a heads-up about cropping.
• YouTube needs a Title (up to 100 characters) and a privacy choice before it will publish.
• Captions over the limit of your strictest selected platform are flagged by the counter.
• Publishing to several platforms at once: if some succeed and some don’t, HIVE reports a Partially Published result so you can see which platforms went out.