In this article, we explain all of the steps associated with using the ZiftONE social media content manager, including our social media calendars, creating new posts, adding posts to campaigns, editing and archiving existing posts, and more.
Intended Audience
Channel Marketing Leader, Channel Sales Leader, Partner Marketing Director, Partner Channel Sales Director, or Partner Channel Account Manager.
Before You Begin
See About Social Media in ZiftONE to understand the basics of our social media content manager.
Determine if you will be creating a Scheduled (time sensitive) or a Library (can be sent at any time) social post.
If you will packaging a Library post into a campaign, make sure you have already created the campaign before creating the post in ZiftONE. You can then either link to the campaign when creating the social post, or add the post to a campaign as a tactic. For more on creating campaigns and adding content to campaigns, see Create and Manage Campaigns.
We recommend having the content of the social media post available before adding the post into ZiftONE.
Follow these guidelines when creating your own posts in ZiftONE:
| Supported Platforms |
Facebook, X, LinkedIn LinkedIn: If a user wants to connect their personal LinkedIn profile/account to a Company Page that represents their organization, their profile/account must be granted Super admin access to the page. |
| Character Limits | Facebook - 60000 X - 280 LinkedIn - 3000 |
| Accepted Image Filetypes | JPG, PNG |
| Image Limits | Facebook - 30MB X - 5MB LinkedIn - 8MB Make sure images follow the latest social media image size best practices for each platform. When in doubt, keep images at either a 1:1 or 2:1 ratio, e.g. 1200x1200px or 1200x628px |
| Accepted Video Filetypes | MP4, WMV, MOV |
| Video Limits | X - 140sec ZiftONE file size limit - 250MB |
| Content Restrictions |
|
| Other Guidelines |
|
Contents
Click on the + to expand the instructions for the desired task.
How to Create Social Posts
To create social posts, follow these steps:
- Navigate to Partner Marketing > Social Media.
- Click Create New Post. You can access the option from the Weekly View, Monthly View, or Social Posts tab on the left sidebar.
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Provide this information, as applicable:
Parameter Type Description Post Type Dropdown Select from Library Social Post, Scheduled Social Post, or Both.
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Scheduled Social Post - posts that will be sent at a predefined time set by you. If you allow Partner Personalization, the partner will be able to change the date/time set.
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Library Social Post - posts whose content is not time-sensitive. Using this type allows the partners to publish the post at any time.
Use this type if you intend to add the post to a campaign.
Library posts automatically expire 12 months after the last update.
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Both - select this type to create both a Library and a Scheduled version of the post.
In the partner portal, the post will show under Upcoming Posts as a scheduled post. Once the schedule date has passed, the post will then display under the Social Post Library.
If you add a Both post to a campaign, it will show in the campaign and under Upcoming Posts as a scheduled post.
Once you click Save for a post, you can't change its Post Type.
Post Customizations Checkbox Select the type(s) of customization you will allow your partners to carry out on the post.
Social Form
Enable this option to present a Social Form with your social posts, which anyone trying to engage with your social media content must complete to provide basic information about themselves before proceeding to the post content. The social form can be personalized in the partner portal to meet each partner’s branding guidelines.
If this option is enabled, your partners can choose whether to include their Social Form when they use your Social Posts.
You can also require that the partner has no choice and must always include a Social Form with their activations of your posts. Contact your ZiftONE team if you're interested in using this option. The partner must have personalized their Social Form before they can use your Social Posts if the form is required.
This is an example of a Social Form, as it will be presented to partners for customization in the partner portal:
Enable Partner Personalization
The partner can edit the social post once you've made it available to them in the partner portal. We recommend allowing this option so that partners can personalize the message to their brand voice. They can also change the date/time to send out scheduled posts.
Post Date Date Selector Available for Scheduled Social Post or Both post types.
Select a post date/time from the calendar, then click the
icon to set the time.
Visibility Dropdown Select the Partner Group(s) that will have access to the post.
Share with Unifyr+ Followers Checkbox [Optional] Select this option to make this post available to potential partners who are following you in the Unifyr+ platform.
This option is shown if you’ve opted in to our Unifyr+ platform, where partners can browse a list of registered suppliers and the content and sales/marketing support they provide.
For information on opting in to the Unifyr+ portal, see Unifyr+ and Supplier Locator.
Note
Contact your ZiftONE team if you want to join other suppliers making themselves available to potential partners in Unifyr+.
Platform icons Select / Multi-select Choose the social media platform for which to create the post - Facebook, X, or LinkedIn.
Click the relevant icon to highlight it and select the platform. Click again to deselect it.
You must select at least one platform. Multi-select is permitted, although we recommend creating unique posts for each platform.
Post Body Text Add the text content of the post.
Warning
Do NOT copy/paste hashtags or merge fields into the Post Body. For our system to recognize and properly format them, they must be typed manually.See Follow these guidelines when creating your own posts in ZiftONE at the beginning of this article for information on content and file size restrictions.
Enter the post copy in the content area of the form. As well as text, you can include these items:
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Emojis
Click the
icon to get the list of emojis for selection when adding your body content.
- URLs, for example links to content hosted on 3rd party services such as YouTube or Vimeo
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Dynamic fields, which are placeholders for partner-specific information or ZiftONE information that gets generated as partners send out the posts.
The list of available fields is based on the Custom Fields you have configured in ZiftONE.
- Access the drop down menu
- Select the field you want to add to the content
- Click Add Partner Field. The dynamic field is added to the post copy in the form ${Partner Name} (for the Partner Name field)
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Links to marketing activities such as website plugins or multimedia
If you are targeting a showcase, you can target specific pages where you want your content to appear. In each area, you will see a selection of sub-pages that can also be targeted.
- Click Add Target
- Select the type of activity you want to reference - Website Plugins, Multimedia, Library Content
- Click the name of the activity/asset you want to add. A link to the content is added to the post copy.
In this example, the post body contains text with a dynamic field to generate the partner's name when they send the post, plus a URL to a microsite:
Load Image / Video
File Upload [Optional] Upload image(s) or a video for your post. Upload your images or videos if you'd like them to autogenerate a preview in the social feed. This option is in line with current social media best practices.
See Follow these guidelines when creating your own posts in ZiftONE at the beginning of this article for information on content and file size restrictions.
To upload an image or video in this field:
- Click the Upload Image/Video icon
- Browse for the image or video you want to upload, and select it
- If you're uploading images, you can repeat the steps to upload up to 4 images to your post
- To remove an image from the post, click the X in its top left corner
Link to Image / Video
URL [Optional] Link to image(s) or a video for your post. Rather than uploading a file directly to ZiftONE, you can link to hosted image URLs or a hosted video URL.
See Follow these guidelines when creating your own posts in ZiftONE at the beginning of this article for information on content and file size restrictions.
Do not link to content hosted on third-party services, such as YouTube or Vimeo, here. Add those links in Post Body.
To add a link to an image or video in this field:
- Click the Link to Image/Video icon
- Add the URL to the file in the Paste Media File Address Here field
- Hit Enter
- If you're uploading images, you can repeat the steps to upload up to 4 images to your post
- To remove an image from the post, hover over the image and click the X in its top left corner
Social Tags Checkbox Choose the social tag(s) with which to categorize your post.
Syndicated social posts are organized by social topics such as Language, Product, Industry, etc., each with a set of tags. Categorize your Social Posts with these social tags and partners can opt in to the subjects that are most relevant to them.
Social topics/tags are managed as Tags in ZiftONE - they are tags of type Social Content. For more information, see About Tags and Taxonomy
The tags you see here are unique to your ZiftONE account setup - your administrator can manage the tags you need in > Settings > Tag Management > Social Content. There’s a link to the page in the Create Post form.
You MUST check at least one Social Tag for the post to show up in the partner portal.
When partners are subscribing to tags in their Social Settings, it is important to note that the tags they select are collated with an OR statement. This may have an effect if they want to define tags for individual languages. You can mitigate this by using Partner Groups to separate posts per language.
Campaign Association Dropdown [Optional] Select the campaign into which to package the Social Post. This option is available when creating a post of type Library Social Post. this option is available when creating a post of type Library Social Post or Both.
The dropdown menu displays a list of your published campaigns.
Note: The post will be included in any new activations of the campaign. Existing activations will not include it.
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Click Save to create the social post. If you’d like to save your current post and create a post for the same social platform(s) again, click Save & New.
Your new social post is added to your list of social posts. If you created a post of type Scheduled Social Post or Both, you can see the Scheduled version using the Weekly View, Monthly View, or the Social Posts tab. Library Social Posts are only listed in the Social Posts tab.
Review and Edit a Social Post
To review and edit your social post, follow these steps:
- Navigate to Partner Marketing > Social Media.
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The Weekly View, Monthly View, or Social Posts tabs include lists of the social posts you have created for your partners.
In Weekly View or Monthly View, you can find the post you want by date.
In Social Posts, you can search for posts using the search bar and available filters. You can search by keywords or specific text.
- Click the social post you want to edit.
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In this view, you can review or edit any of the details of the post, if its date is in the future. You can also Archive and Delete the post.
- Click Save.
Use AI To Generate Social Post Content
When creating or updating the content of a social post, you can use our AI Expert to help you, if it's enabled. The Expert uses information from the collateral you have in your system to generate content for your posts.
For more information abut the AI Expert, and how to enable it, see ZiftONE's AI Experts.
- Navigate to Partner Marketing > Social Media.
- In Social Posts, create a new post or open the social post whose content you want to generate/update for edit.
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In the post body area, click the AI icon
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Give the AI Expert some guidelines on what you want to say, then click Generate. The expert generates the content, by analyzing data in the collateral assets you’ve uploaded to ZiftONE Admin.
- You have 3 options for what to do with the content:
- Regenerate - get the AI Expert to provide a new version of the same information from the same prompt
- Insert - add the generated content as the body of your social post. You can edit it yourself once it’s been added, if required.
- Generate - ask the AI Expert to generate content from a new prompt
- When you’ve added the content the AI Expert has generated to the post, click Save.
Note
Our ZiftONE Admin AI Expert is currently in beta testing and may make mistakes, so review important information carefully.
Update Social Posts in Bulk
You can update social posts with a bulk action - these actions are available:
- Remove and add tags
- Archive
- Navigate to Partner Marketing > Social Media > Social Posts.
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Click the checkbox next to the social posts you want to update.
Alternatively, click the checkbox at the top of the leftmost column to select all posts in the list.
- Click Bulk Update.
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In the Bulk Update window, you can modify these areas:
Step Function Description 1 Remove Tags Select the tags you’d like to remove from your selected Social Posts.
Note: The window doesn't show the tags that are currently applied to the selected posts, as it may be different for each one.
2 Add Tag Values Select the tags you’d like to add to your selected Social Posts.
Note: The window doesn't show the tags that are currently applied to the selected posts, as it may be different for each one.
3 Add Filters Coming soon
4 Set Status Set the status of the posts to Archived
5 Review Review the number of posts being updated and the edits you selected in steps 1-4. To make a correction, use Previous to return to the relevant step.
Type CONFIRM in the field at the bottom of the window.
Click Submit Bulk Update. Your updates will now be completed.
You will see a message at the top of the page letting you know that the Bulk Update is in progress. Additional Bulk Operations cannot be carried out until this one is complete. The page will refresh when the Bulk Update is complete.
Share a Social Post in the Unifyr+ Platform
If you’ve opted in to our Unifyr+ platform, where partners can browse a list of registered suppliers and the content and sales/marketing support they provide, you can share social posts with partners who are following you on the platform.
For information on opting in to the Unifyr+ portal, see Unifyr+ and Supplier Locator.
Note
Contact your ZiftONE team if you want to join other suppliers making themselves available to potential partners in Unifyr+.
Before you share social posts to Unifyr+, make sure that you’ve specified Social as a type of resource to share with your followers. This is done in your Unifyr+ Opt In/profile configuration page - choose the Social option in the Select Your Partner Resources area. For more information, see Configuring your Profile for Unifyr+.
To make a social post available to your followers in Unifyr+:
- Navigate to Partner Marketing > Social Media.
- Navigate to the Social Posts tab in the left sidebar.
- Find the post you want to make available in Unifyr+, and click on it to open it for edit.
- Enable the Share with Unifyr+ Followers option.
- Click Save.
Archive a Social Post
To archive a social post, follow these steps:
- Navigate to Partner Marketing > Social Media.
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The Weekly View, Monthly View, or Social Posts tabs include lists of the social posts you have created for your partners.
In Weekly View or Monthly View, you can find the post you want by date.
In Social Posts, you can search for posts using the search bar and available filters.
- Click the social post you want to edit.
- Click Archive.
- You're asked to confirm that you want to proceed with archiving the post. Click Archive to continue.
Notes about archiving:
- If archiving a library post, the post is removed from both your Social Posts list and the Library Posts page in the partner portal
- The effect of archiving a scheduled social post differs, based on whether a partner has approved it for sending:
- Approved - the post remains scheduled, and is listed in the partner's Upcoming Posts page
- Not approved - the post is removed from the Social Posts list
- You can't unarchive (restore) an archived post.
Copy a Social Post
You may find it useful to copy an existing social post, for example if you want to create multiple posts that share a lot of content/details.
To copy a social post:
- Navigate to Partner Marketing > Social Media.
- The Weekly View, Monthly View, or Social Posts tabs include lists of the social posts you have created for your partners.
In Weekly View or Monthly View, you can find the post you want by date.
In Social Posts, you can search for posts using the search bar and available filters.
- Click the social post you want to copy.
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Click Copy.
- A new version of the post is created. Make changes to the content and settings as required.
- Set the Post Date for the new post.
- Click Save to create the new social post. If you’d like to save the new post and create a post for the same social platform(s) again, click Save & New.
Delete a Social Post
To delete a social post, follow these steps:
- Navigate to Partner Marketing > Social Media.
- The Weekly View, Monthly View, or Social Posts tabs include lists of the social posts you have created for your partners.
In Weekly View or Monthly View, you can find the post you want by date.
In Social Posts, you can search for posts using the search bar and available filters.
- Click the social post you want to edit.
- Click Delete.
- You're asked to confirm that you want to proceed with deleting the post. Click Delete to continue.
Notes about deleting:
- Deleting a social post from ZiftONE Admin will remove all future access of the social post for partners. It won't undo previous use of that particular post.
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Deleting a Campaign Social Post will remove the post from all future activations of the campaigns that include it. The post will remain in place for partners who activated the campaign prior to the post being deleted.
View Weekly Calendar of Scheduled Posts
Note
All Scheduled Posts in this view will be displayed in the UTC timezone.
Navigate to Partner Marketing > Social Media and choose Weekly View from the left sidebar.
The Weekly View is the default view for our social media feature. It displays your Scheduled Social Posts in an easy-to-digest weekly calendar. Our calendar view is intended to help you plan content for your partners, giving you a visual of the scheduled posts already in the system. Use the right and left arrows at the top of the page to move forwards and backwards through weeks.
You can see a short preview of each of your scheduled posts in this view. Click on a post to see the full view and/or edit it.
You can also create a new post or import social posts in bulk from the Weekly View. Learn how by going to the How to Create Social Posts and the How to Upload Social Posts in Bulk sections of this article.
View Monthly Calendar of Scheduled Posts
Note
All Scheduled Posts in this view will be displayed in the UTC timezone.
Navigate to Partner Marketing > Social Media and choose Monthly View from the left sidebar.
The Monthly View displays your Scheduled Social Posts in an easy-to-digest monthly calendar. Use the right and left arrows at the top of the page to move forwards and backwards through months.
For each day on the calendar, you can see how many posts you have scheduled for each social platform. You can drill down further and click on a post to see the full view and/or edit it.
You can also create a new post or import social posts in bulk from the Monthly View. Learn how by going to the How to Create Social Posts and the How to Upload Social Posts in Bulk sections of this article.
Export Social Posts
You can export a list of selected Social Posts from ZiftONE Admin. This allows you to view the social media content you have available for your partners, the type of the posts, their content, and their scheduling.
- Navigate to Partner Marketing > Social Media > Social Posts.
- Select the posts you want to export by checking the box next to each one. Alternatively, check the box at the top of the leftmost column to select all posts.
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Click Export.
A CSV file is downloaded to your desktop. The file contains a row for each social post you selected, and columns for each piece of information about each one, including the tags assigned.
How to Add Social Posts to Campaigns
You can add up to 50 social posts to a campaign.
Notes
- Only posts of type Library Social Post and Both can be added to campaigns.
- If you are adding a post of type Both to a campaign, in the partner portal the post will show both in the campaign and under Upcoming Posts as a scheduled post. It will not display in the Social Post Library.
There are two ways to add a social post to a campaign:
- By selecting the campaign in the Campaign Association field when creating or editing your social post. For more information, see the How to Create Social Posts section of this article.
- By adding the post as content when creating or editing your campaign. Choose the Asset Type of Social Posts. The social post(s) will be listed in the Campaign Social Posts section of the campaign’s detail view. For more information, see Add Content to a Campaign.
How to Import Social Posts in Bulk
Note
All Scheduled Posts in this view will be displayed in the UTC timezone.
ZiftONE allows you to import social posts in bulk from a .CSV UTF-8 format file. You can download a sample file from the Import Social Posts page to use as starting point, if required. The file being imported must not exceed 50MB in size.
Content restrictions for social posts apply for bulk imported posts - for more information, see Follow these guidelines when creating your own posts in ZiftONE at the beginning of this article.
Follow these steps to upload social posts in bulk:
- Navigate to Partner Marketing > Social Media.
- In the Weekly View, Monthly View, or Social Posts tab, click Import Posts.
- [Optional] In Import Social Posts, click Download a sample file to get a CSV file to use as the basis for your import.
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Prepare the file for import. It must contain this information for each post:
Notes:
- Ensure you provide a value for Yes/No fields, or leave a field blank if it doesn't require a value.
- Separate multiple values with a semi-colon
- ZiftONE will flag entries as invalid if they contain the default text provided in the sample file - ensure it’s removed if a value isn’t required.
- There is no option to include dynamic fields as placeholders for partner information when bulk importing posts.
Column Header Description Content Enter the post copy. As well as text, you can include URLs, for example links to content hosted on 3rd party services such as YouTube or Vimeo.
See Follow these guidelines when creating your own posts in ZiftONE at the beginning of this article for information on content and character number restrictions.
Important Note: Remove all custom formatting such as font, text color, borders, alignment, and fill. Additional characters and line breaks can be included.
Character Count [Optional - not included as default] You can add a column with a formula to count the characters in the Content field to ensure you are keeping within the required limits. The formula is “=LEN(insert Content cell here)”
ZiftONE will not upload this column. It is just for your personal information when creating posts in the bulk import spreadsheet.
Platforms List the social platforms you'd like to assign to the post. Although we recommend creating unique posts for each platform, you can specify multiple platforms by separating them with a semicolon and no space.
For example: LinkedIn;Twitter;Facebook
Use Twitter as the identifier for the X platform here.
Both Specify whether you’d like to create both a Scheduled and Library version of this post.
Possible values: Yes or No
If you choose No, the type of post created will depend on the value given for Scheduled Date.
Scheduled Date Add date information, depending on the type of post you're creating:
- Scheduled Social Post or Both: Add the date/time on which to send the post, in the yyyy-mm-dd hh:mm format. For example: 2024-07-30 09:00. You may need to use Excel's formatting options to put the date in the required format.
- Library Social Post: Leave the field blank
Partner Groups List the Partner Groups to which to post will apply.
Separate multiple Partner Groups with a semicolon and no space, for example Adventurer Tier Partners;Gold Partners.
Social Form Specify whether to present a Social Form with the post.
Possible values: Yes or No
If the form is provided, anyone trying to engage with your social media content must complete the form to provide basic information about themselves before proceeding to the post content. The social form can be personalized in the partner portal to meet the partner’s branding guidelines.
This is an example of a Social Form, as it will be presented to partners for customization in the partner portal:
Enable Partner Personalization Specify whether the partner can edit the social post once you've made it available to them in the partner portal.
Possible values: Yes or No
We recommend allowing this option so that partners can personalize the message to their brand voice. They can also change the date/time to send out scheduled posts.
Social Tags Specify the social tag(s) with which to categorize your post. You’ll see a column for each tag category. Specify tags for each category as required. Separate multiple tags in a category with a semicolon and no space.
For example: English (UK);English(US)
The social tags must be named exactly how they are in your ZiftONE account. To see the list, go to Partner Marketing > Social Media > Create New Post and open the Post Filters area.
Syndicated social posts are organized by social topics such as Language, Product, Industry, etc., each with a set of tags. Categorize your Social Posts with these social tags and partners can opt in to the subjects that are most relevant to them.
Social topics/tags are managed as Tags in ZiftONE - they are tags of type Social Content. For more information, see About Tags and Taxonomy.
The tags you see here are unique to your ZiftONE account setup - your administrator can manage the tags you need in > Settings > Tag Management > Social Content.
Video Url [Optional] Add a link to a URL of a video for your post. This must be to a video you host yourself.
See Follow these guidelines when creating your own posts in ZiftONE at the beginning of this article for information on content and file size restrictions.
Do not link to content hosted on third-party services, such as YouTube or Vimeo, here. Add those links in Content.
Image,
Image 2-4
[Optional] Add a link to a URL of up to 4 images for your post. This must be to an image or images you host yourself.
See Follow these guidelines when creating your own posts in ZiftONE at the beginning of this article for information on content and file size restrictions.
- Save the file in .CSV UTF-8 format.
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When you've prepared the file to import, click Import Social Posts > Choose File and select it.
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A validation page lists all valid and invalid post entries in the file. Click Import to continue with importing all valid posts.
For invalid entries, the row is highlighted in red and includes a message outlining the issue. You can click Download these entries to download and correct the errors if required, then carry out the import again.
Your new social posts are added to your list of social posts. If you created a post of type Scheduled Social Post or Both, you can see the Scheduled version using the Weekly View, Monthly View, or the Social Posts tab. Library Social Posts are only listed in the Social Posts tab.
Add Social Posts to the Partner Portal
To make your social media content available to your partners, use the Social Media feature bundle, or any of its individual feature pages.
For more information, see Feature Bundle: Social Media.
Identify Social Posts that are Shared in the Unifyr+ Platform
If you’ve opted in to our Unifyr+ platform, where partners can browse a list of registered suppliers and the content and sales/marketing support they provide, you can share social posts with partners who are following you on the platform.
If you’re not already signed up as a Unifyr+ supplier, and you’d like to be, contact your ZiftONE team for information.
If you are already a Unifyr+ supplier, there are two ways to find out which social posts you’ve shared to your followers in Unifyr+:
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Each post that has been shared on the platform displays a Unifyr+ icon:
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The Social Posts page includes a Unifyr+ filter, which you can set to Shared with Unifyr+ or Not Shared with Unifyr+ as applicable.
Note
Posts that appear in the Not Shared with Unifyr+ filter are published to your official partners via your ZiftONE portal.
Social Media Dashboard
The Social Hub Dashboard is a customizable analytics dashboard that provides you with a comprehensive view of your social media efforts and performance. You can set alerts, filter by desired dates, download raw data, schedule email reports, and more.
You can access the dashboard in two ways:
- Go to Partner Marketing > Social Media and click Dashboard in the left-hand sidebar.
- Navigate to Analytics & Reports > Marketing Performance > Social Hub.
Learn about the information included in the social media dashboard here.
Training
Learn more with our training course:
You will be prompted to log into your CustomerONE account to access the link.
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