How to automate social media posts from Notion to Vista Social with Zapier

This guide will help you connect Notion and Vista Social using Zapier. By setting this up, you can easily schedule your social media posts directly from Notion. It saves you time and simplifies managing profiles and content on different networks.

Enjoy a smoother experience with your social media tasks!

• Step 1: Locate and Prepare Your Profile IDs
• Step 2: Create or Update Your Planned Posts project
• Step 3: Create a Custom Relationship Property
• Step 4: Set Up Zapier Trigger 
• Step 5: Set up the Vista Social Action
• Step 6: Test and Validate

Step 1: Locate and Prepare Your Profile IDs

When you make a task in Notion for a social media post, we need to know which profiles to post to. Specifically, we need the IDs of these profiles. To simplify this, we'll first gather your profiles and then add them to Notion.

A. Locate Profile IDs in Vista Social:

• Go to Settings > Connected Profiles in Vista Social
• Select a profile (e.g., Instagram account for "Matthew's Coffee")

Copy the final number in the URL (Example: 25055 in https://vistasocial.com/settings/profiles/25055)

B. Create a Profile IDs Multi-select property in your project

• Create a new Multi-select property (e.g., Profiles to post to) in your Notion project
• For each social media profile, create a new selection option.
• Use this naming convention: ID - Profile Name (Network)
  (Example: 25055 - Matthew's Coffee (Instagram)).

Step 2: Create or Update Your Planned Posts Project

Next, identify your planned posts project (or create a new one). This project will include all the posts you plan to publish.

A. Add Required Custom Properties

Add or verify these required custom properties:

• Post Schedule Date (Date and time property)
• Caption (Text property for the post caption)
• Media (File property with image/video to be used for the post)

Here's a breakdown of the other available fields and whether or not they're mandatory:

B. Create a Custom Status

To streamline task management, create a custom status for posts:

• Name the status Ready for VS (Vista Social)
• Use this status to mark posts that are ready to be sent to Vista Social via this automation

Step 4: Set Up Zapier Trigger

A. Trigger the Automation

1. Use the Updated Database Item as the Zap trigger event
2. Configure it to monitor the tasks database for changes
3. Ensure tasks have the following completed before triggering a test :
   • Caption
   • Scheduled date and time
   • Selected social profiles (via the relationship field)
4. Set up a filter to only continue if task status contains Ready for VS

C. Get all task details

Notion only sends a few details around this task, so we need to ask if to send more details.

1. Create an action step with the event "Retrieve a page"

2. Configure it to send more details of the Task, by mapping it to the Page ID of the task in original Trigger step.

C. Format the Date and Time

Notion sends dates/times to Zapier in a format Vista Social doesn't support. So, we need to adjust it to meet Vista Social's requirements.

1. Create an AI by Zapier step with a "Analyze and Return Data" action event to reformat the scheduled post date property of your Notion task into Vista Social's required format:

You can use this prompt:

reformat input date time to YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM (24hr based). Only output result, not any other information {Mapped field}

Make sure to map it to the date/time property from Notion task.

D. Extract Profile IDs

Set up a Formatter with a "Text" action to get profile IDs from the property in your planned posts. This step prevents sending profile names to Vista Social, avoiding errors. Vista Social only needs Profile IDs.

Use the "Extract Number" transform function and map the input with the "Retrieve a page" action in step 2:

Step 5: Set up the Vista Social Action

With the data formatted and profile IDs ready, set up a Vista Social action to schedule the post:

1. Add a Vista Social Action:
   • Choose the "Schedule Post" event
   • Authenticate with your Vista Social API key
2. Map the Fields:
   • Profiles: Map the profile IDs from the Formatter in step 5 where you extracted the IDs
   • Caption: Map the caption from your Notion task's caption field
   • Media: Map the URL to the media file from your Notion task's custom media field
   • Publish At: Map the formatted date/time from the Formatter in step 4 step (YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM)
   • Map any other fields: If you created any other network-specific or optional custom fields in Notion, make sure to map them to the Vista Social action.

Step 6: Test and Validate

1. Test the Zap with a sample social post task.
2. Verify the following in Vista Social:
   • Correct profile(s) selected
   • Media attachment appears as expected
   • Caption and post type are accurate
   • Scheduled date and time match your settings
   • Optional fields have worked as intended

Step 7: Go Live

Enable the Zap and start automating your posts!

Need further help?

Our services team is ready to assist with setup. Just shoot us a note for a quote on setting up your custom workflow. 💙

Related Reading:

Zapier Integration Overview

How to Automate Social Media Posts from ClickUp to Vista Social with Zapier

Bulk Scheduling - CSV format explained

How to Export Your Calendar in CSV Format

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