We know how important it is for your team to be able to validate your content before it gets published to your social media channels, and that it may not be possible for your full team to collaborate entirely from within Social Media Management.
With shareable preview links in Publish, you can let any third party review your upcoming and published content in a few clicks.
In this article:
Sharing a single post
You can quickly and easily share a single post via the Publish editor. Click to open any post in a Draft, Awaiting Approval, Scheduled, or Published state in the Publish editor, then click Share at the bottom of your post preview.
A preview screen of your shareable view of the post will open, displaying the post, any notes on the post, and options to customize the title of your shared page, the expiration date, and domain of your shareable URL. Click Generate and copy URL to copy your shareable view URL to your clipboard for sharing with your stakeholder.
When a third party clicks on your shared link, they will see a mobile-friendly view of your content with any externally shared notes from your team, along with options to sort your posts if desired and leave a note or approve the post externally.
Creating a shareable view from a Content by State list
Any Social Media Management user with an Admin, Content Creator, or Editor user role can share Publish content externally. Follow the below steps to create a shareable view from a content by state list:
- Navigate to any of the following sections under Content in the left-hand navigation sidebar in Publish: All, Drafts, Awaiting Approval, Scheduled, or Published (external sharing is only supported for these content states).
- Under the Content menu you selected, you can use the filtering options at the top to filter for the specific posts you would like to share.
- The Filter dropdown allows you to filter your posts by various parameters, such as Channels or Networks, depending on the specific Content menu you selected.
- The Filter on labels bar will allow you to search for unlabeled content or posts with labels that your team has applied to them.
- The Match All or Match Any dropdown can further sort your post selection to apply all or any of the selected filters.
- The Date Range filters allow you to display posts from a specific date range. If you selected either the All, Drafts, or Awaiting Approval menus, you can also use the icon next to the Date Range filter to include any posts without a scheduled date.
- The Newest First dropdown will sort your filtered posts by either Newest First or Oldest First.
- The Filter dropdown allows you to filter your posts by various parameters, such as Channels or Networks, depending on the specific Content menu you selected.
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After you have applied all desired filtering options to your posts, click Share in the top-right corner of the screen to generate the shareable view of your posts. Alternatively, you can use the checkboxes next to your posts to select the specific posts you would like to include in your shareable view, then click Share.
- The following screen will display both a desktop and mobile preview of your posts and include all of your selected and/or filtered posts as well as any externally visible notes left on the post previously. In the URL settings box, you will see an auto-generated name for your page. Click the pencil icon to edit the page name if desired. You may also adjust your page to sort your posts by Newest first or Oldest first, adjust the selected date range of your shared posts if needed, select a specific expiration date for your page, and use a custom domain if desired.
Once you're ready, click Generate and Copy URL in the bottom right and your external sharing link will be copied to your clipboard.
Through the URL, any third party can get instant access to your shareable view without needing to log into Social Media Management. Any one URL can be shared with as many third parties as you'd like. No other areas of your organization's environment or data are accessible through this link.
If you did not set a custom expiration date for your URL, it will be valid for four weeks or until you delete the URL and manually remove the access. In the meantime, if you make any changes to the shared content, your shared view will automatically stay updated.
Creating a shareable view from the Publish calendar
You can also create a shareable view directly from the Publish calendar. The shareable view will automatically pull all posts that are displayed in the calendar date range you have selected. First, adjust the calendar's filters to display the week or month of posts you would like to share, then click the Share in the top right.
After making any adjustments to your shareable view, click Copy and Generate URL in the bottom right to copy the link to your clipboard.
Note:
If the week or month you have selected in the calendar does not have any drafted, scheduled, or published posts, no content will display in the shareable view.
External post notes and approval
When a third party views your shared URL, they will see a preview of all of the posts you selected to share as well as any notes on posts that your team has selected to share externally.
Leaving externally visible notes on posts
By default, any notes you add on posts in Publish will be internal. If you would like your third party stakeholders to see certain notes on your posts when they review them on your externally shared page, you can add an externally visible note to the post.
- Within Publish, click any post to open it in detail view.
- Use the Notes section to the right of your post to type a note in the text box.
- Check the Visible externally checkbox to allow the note to appear on shareable views whenever you share the post externally with third parties. Admin and Team Leader users have the ability to change the visibility of existing notes.
- Click Add External Note to leave your note, and you will now see it displayed in the Notes thread. Any external notes will be labeled and highlighted in yellow.
When you then share the post externally, the external note will be visible alongside the post for third party viewers to see.
Third party interactions
When reviewing your externally shared page, third party users can leave notes on posts and also leave an approval note on any post using the Notes options to the left of each post. Before leaving a note or approval, the user will be asked to input their email address and a name to post with.
Afterwards, the user can type in their comment and click Add note.
When a user clicks Approve Post, the system will leave a templated “Approved” note in the post notes.
When a third party user leaves a note or an approval on a post, the Social Media Management user who created the shareable view link as well as the user who created the post in Publish will receive an email notification about the note.
Note:
Any external approval notes left by third parties on an externally shared page are not part of Publish’s internal approval flow. An internal Social Media Management user will still need to approve/publish an externally approved post.
Managing your shareable views
Navigate to Shared Externally in Publish's left-hand navigation sidebar to find an overview of all your currently and previously shared links.
All currently shared views and all expired views that you have access to will be listed and sorted by their creation date. Admin users will be able to see all shareable views from across your organization, while users with other user roles will only see the shareable views they've created themselves.
If needed, you can copy a URL again using the Copy button to the right of each link, or delete a URL using the trash can icon. Deleting a URL will immediately remove access to it for any third parties you have shared it with.