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A publishing queue is a weekly set of time slots for a social profile. Once your slots are set up, you can add posts to the queue and Vista Social publishes them in the next open slot, so you don't have to pick a date and time for every post.
Queues are a good fit when you post on a regular schedule, for example at the times your audience is most active. Not sure when that is? See Optimal Time Suggestions: Find the best times to publish on your socials.
Video guide
How to set up a publishing queue
- Go to Settings > Publishing Settings > Publishing Queues.
- Select the profile group, then the social profile you want to set up.
- Click Add a slot.
- In Create a time slot, choose the time and the days of the week for the slot.
- Optional: add a tag to the slot. Search for an existing tag or type a new one to create it. Tags let you run more than one queue per profile (see below).
- Optional: turn on Mark slot as evergreen to save the slot for evergreen posts (see below).
- Click Save.
Repeat these steps to add more slots. Your slots show in a weekly grid, one column per day.
- Edit a slot: hover over it and click the pencil icon.
- Delete a slot: hover over it and click the trash icon.
- See what's queued: click the posts in queue link above the grid.
Run more than one queue per profile with tags
Tags let you split one profile's queue into smaller queues, for example a "Classes" queue for class announcements and a "Studio tips" queue for educational posts. When you queue a post, you choose which tagged slots it can use.
- Add a tag to a new slot: pick or create the tag in Create a time slot.
- Add a tag to an existing slot: hover over the slot, click the pencil icon, add the tag, and click Save.
- View one queue: use the Tags filter above the grid to show only the slots with that tag.
- Manage your tags: click Manage tags in the slot window.
Evergreen slots
Turning on Mark slot as evergreen saves a slot for evergreen content. Vista Social fills open evergreen slots with posts you've marked as evergreen, so your best content keeps getting reused without rescheduling it by hand. Evergreen slots show a leaf icon in the grid.
Evergreen posts only go into evergreen slots and never replace posts you've already scheduled. To learn how to mark posts as evergreen and set how often they repeat, see Evergreen Auto-Repurposing.
Copy a queue to other profiles
Once one profile's queue is set up, you can copy it to other profiles instead of building each one from scratch. Click the three-dot icon above the grid and select Copy queue. To remove all slots from a profile's queue, select Clear queue.
For the full steps, see How to create a publishing queue for multiple profiles.
How to schedule a post with your queue
- Click Create and write your post.
- At the bottom of the publisher, select Add to queue and click Next.
- Choose where the post goes in the queue:
- Queue next: adds the post to the front of the queue. Posts already in the queue move back one slot.
- Queue available: adds the post to the next open slot. This is useful for filling gaps left by deleted or rescheduled posts.
- Queue last: adds the post after the last post in the queue.
- Under based on, choose which slots the post can use. Pick a tag to use only that tag's slots, or leave All queue labels to use any slot. (The publisher still calls tags "queue labels" here.)
- Check the date shown for each profile and click Schedule.
Important notes
- Each slot holds one post. To publish a post and a story at the same time, create two slots a minute apart or schedule one of them manually.
- If you queue a post to several profiles and one of them doesn't have the tag you picked, that profile uses its regular queue instead.
- Changing your slots only affects posts you queue afterwards. Posts already in the queue keep their scheduled times.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: Can I schedule a story and a post to the queue in the same time slot?
A: No. Each slot holds one post. Create slots a minute apart, or schedule one of the posts manually.
Q: When I edit a queue, do posts that are already queued move to the new times?
A: No. Editing a queue only changes the times used for posts you queue from then on. Posts already in the queue keep their scheduled times.
Q: Do evergreen posts replace my queued posts?
A: No. Evergreen posts only fill open slots marked as evergreen.
Need help?
Reach out to our support team, and we are happy to help.
Related Reading:
How to know which posts are in your publishing queue
How to create a publishing queue for multiple profiles
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