How to schedule and automate content from an Autolist

What is an Autolist and How Does it Work

This feature allows you to create lists of posts that are automatically repeated according to the frequency you want. You can stay active on social networks and recycle your content. Autolist help you plan your social media content more quickly. You can schedule your posts periodically and take the hassle out of managing your social networks in just a few steps:

Create your content list: Organize the posts you want to publish.
Set the frequency: Choose the days and times for your posts.
Automate publication: Let the auto list do the work for you.

👀Considerations

• Post limit: Each auto list can include up to 200 posts. If you exceed this limit, additional posts will not be published.

• Tags on Instagram: It's not possible to tag people or products in posts from an auto list.

• Attachments: The maximum allowed in auto lists is 10 attachments per post.

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Overview and Scheduling with Auto Lists

The overview shows the date of the next post, the active networks, the pending posts, and if the repetition is activated. From here, you can activate or deactivate each autolist and delete them by clicking the trash icon.

The posts will be published in the set order and will be deleted once published, except if you activate the "repeat" option, which will make your list circular.

Each line adds a time, and in each one, you can select the days of the week. The autolist will be read vertically daily.

Here's an example 👇

With this schedule, the content will be published in the following chronological order: Mondays at 9:00 AM, Wednesdays at 9:00 AM and 12:30 PM, and Fridays at 12:30 PM.

This is how it will look in the calendar of scheduled posts from an autolist. Once the content is published, accessing the post notes, you can review what was scheduled from an autolist.

Glossary

We explain the main fields to configure your autolists successfully:

• Name and configuration: create a name that defines the content that the list will contain (best posts, periodic tweets, etc.).

• Repeat: the repeat option is used to turn the autolist into a circular list. Once a content is published, it moves to the end of the list to be published again when its turn comes. If you do not activate the repeat option, when content is published, it is removed from the autolist to avoid being republished.

• URL shortener: This connected feature will automatically shorten your URLs without the need for any other shortener. By using the URL shortener, you will have statistics on the clicks received on your links.

• Networks to publish: Activate the social networks where you want to share your posts simultaneously. If you prefer, you can also create autolists to manage each social network independently.

• Scheduling: schedule when the next post will be by choosing the time and days you prefer. We advise you to check your best times to post on each social network beforehand. Add as many rows as you want or select multiple days at once.

• Post position in the list: the number next to the camera icon indicates the position it occupies, so you can quickly see which will be the next post. You can change the post position by dragging it to the desired position or clicking the number.

• Pause button: An on/off button that allows you to pause any active post in your autolist. It is very useful when the post should not be published because it is seasonal content.

• ** Save texts**: add copy or hashtags that you usually use to include them with a click in the autolist. Click add at the beginning to see the options and click the folder icon.

• Trash: A button to delete the added content from the list when you no longer want it to be published.

Setup your autolist

Click on New Autolist
Select the networks you want to include in the automatic list.
Set the global settings (here you can activate the repeat button so that your list is circular) and by social network.
Program the day and time for posting the content. Autolist have a weekly frequency, add as many rows as you need.
Add the content.

Duplicate an Autolist

To duplicate the content of an autolist, click on Download CSV, create a new autolist, and add the content again by clicking add from file (CSV). Set the new configuration and you're done.

Adding content

You can add content to your autolists by clicking on different options:

• Insert post: you will manually add your posts. Once the first post is created, the add post to end option will be enabled.

• Add posts with AI: you will create your posts with artificial intelligence, see the details here.

• Add from file (CSV): allows you to add posts in bulk, see the details here.

• Linked RSS feed: your posts will be added automatically based on your RSS feed settings (images will only be added for Instagram and Pinterest).

Remember that in each post you can schedule different types of files, images, videos, or gifs. You can attach them from your PC, as a URL, from Google Drive or select material from our image, video, or gif library. You can also schedule documents for the LinkedIn social network. Additionally, you can add emojis.

💡 To change the position of the posts, select and drag to the desired position or click on the position number

How to Link an RSS Feed

💡 Want to learn more about what an RSS feed is and how to use it? Check out here for all the details.

👀Considerations

• The system is designed to work with RSS feeds from blogs that follow the standard XML format. You can check if it is valid here.

• Although other types of feeds (for example, YouTube, Instagram, or other services) may sometimes be read, their structure is different and they are not fully compatible, so they may not work correctly.

Link your RSS Feed in a few steps:

Add the feed URL and click search. If the file is correct, the recent content contained in the feed file will be discovered.
Complete the following fields:

• Prefix: text that will go at the beginning of all posts containing your feed.

• Suffix: text that will be placed at the end of each post. At the end of the configuration, you have three options to choose from:

• Include previous posts: if you click on this option, the latest content contained in the RSS will be included along with the upcoming ones. If you do not select this option, only the following ones will appear, that is, the autolist will start when a new post is made.

• Add disabled posts: this means that the added posts will be included as disabled, so they will not be published on your social networks until they are manually activated.

• Add to the beginning of the autolist: if you select this option, new RSS posts will be added to the beginning of the autolist. If you do not select this option, they will be added by default at the end of it.

Click save, and your RSS Feed will be linked.

Reading the RSS Feed in Our System

If you're wondering how we process the information from your RSS feed, here's a simple explanation:

The description field and images:

• Even if you’ve included an <img> tag in the description field of your feed, that’s not the standard way to specify the main image.

• So, we don’t pull the image from there.

Where do we get the images?

• For each item in the feed, we look at the <link> property. For example:

<link>https://www.example.com/articles/amazing-news</link>

• On this URL, we search for the og:image (Open Graph) tag, which contains the representative image for the page.

What happens if your page doesn’t have OG tags?

• If your page doesn’t include Open Graph tags ( og:image), our system won’t find a specific image.

• In that case, we show the first available image, which is usually your logo (or the first image that appears in the code).

How can you fix this?

• To make it work properly and display the right image, ensure your pages include OG tags. A basic example:

<meta property="og:image" content="URL_TO_YOUR_IMAGE">

💡 Use tools like Open Graph Checker to check if your pages have these tags correctly set up.

Particularities by social network

How the image is displayed in the auto list and in the final post depends on the social network:

• Instagram and Pinterest: Metricool downloads and displays the image (og:image) directly in the auto list and in the post.

• Other networks (Twitter, LinkedIn, Google Business Profile, Facebook...): Metricool does not download the image. The auto list will only show the link, and the social network itself will generate the preview when the post is published (if the page is correctly configured).

👉 For this reason, if you do not see the image in the auto list for networks like LinkedIn or Facebook, this is expected behavior. The preview will be automatically generated by the social network at the time of publication.