12.8 Scheduling Posts for Communities (via Social Planner)

Purpose:

You can use the main Social Planner tool (the same one used for scheduling posts to Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, etc.) to schedule posts to appear in your Close Master Community Channels at a specific future date and time. This is great for planning announcements, discussion prompts, or content sharing in advance.

Setup (One-Time Connection):

  1. Connect Community Channels: First, you need to add your Community Group(s) and their Channels as "social accounts" within the planner.
    • Navigate to Marketing → Social Planner → Settings tab (gear icon within the planner).
    • Go to the Social Accounts section.
    • Click + Add Account.
    • Look for and select Community as the account type.
    • You should see a list of the Community Groups you manage. Select the Group(s) you want to be able to schedule posts into.
    • Optionally, set a default User whose profile will be used as the author when posts are scheduled to this group (can often be overridden per post).
    • Save the connection. The channels within the selected group(s) should now be available targets in the planner.

Scheduling a Post to a Community Channel:

  1. Navigate to Marketing → Social Planner.
  2. Click + Create New Post.
  3. Select Account(s): In the account selection area (usually top left), choose the specific Community Channel(s) you want this post to appear in. You can select multiple channels if the post is relevant to more than one.
  4. Compose Post:
    • Add Title (Required for Community posts).
    • Write your main post content in the text area (supports text, images, video uploads, hashtags, etc., similar to posting directly in the community).
    • Use the preview area to see how it might look.
  5. Select Author (User): Choose the Close Master User whose name and profile picture should appear as the author of this scheduled post within the community feed.
  6. Choose Scheduling Option:
    • Post Now: Publishes immediately.
    • Schedule Post: Select the desired future Date and Time for the post to be automatically published to the selected channel(s).
    • Recurring Post options might also be available for repeating posts.
  7. Click Schedule Post. Your post is now queued and will be published automatically at the specified time. You can view and manage scheduled community posts alongside your other social media posts in the Social Planner calendar or list view.