Skip to content

Planning 30, 60 or 90 days with Autopilot

How Autopilot lays out a run of content on your calendar, and the three separate runs that fill it in afterwards.

Updated

Autopilot lays out a run of planned content across your channels for a period you choose, spreading themes and formats over the days at the cadence you set. Planning creates a campaign and one empty draft per slot on your calendar; it writes nothing, approves nothing and publishes nothing, and it spends no credits.

Filling those slots in is three separate runs you start yourself afterwards: the copy, the pictures and the videos. They are charged separately, and the video run cannot complete in any current deployment.

BEFORE YOU START

  • At least one brand in a workspace you can reach. Autopilot writes for a brand, so one has to exist first.
  • The "create" or "administer" permission to plan. Generating afterwards needs the separate "generate" permission, because planning is free and generating spends credits.
  • A text provider configured on this deployment, if you want the copy run to work. An image provider, if you want the picture run to produce pictures.
  • Credits for the copy and picture runs. Planning itself needs none.

STEPS

  1. Open Create and choose "Autopilot", or go to /app/autopilot. Choose "Plan my marketing".
  2. Pick the brand, then how long the run should be. The page offers 30, 60 and 90 days, plus a custom length between 7 and 365 days.
  3. Pick how often it should post: Light is about 2 posts a week, Standard about 4, Active about 7, Very active about 12. If you pick Custom you must enter a figure yourself; there is no default.
  4. Pick what the run is for. This shifts the mix of themes rather than the amount of content.
  5. Tick the channels. Choosing a channel plans content for it; it does not connect the account and does not mean Social Studio can publish there.
  6. Set a start date and check the timezone, then choose "Build my plan".
  7. Read the preview: the item count, the dates, the content mix and the theme breakdown. Then start the runs you want, one at a time: "Write the copy", "Make the pictures", "Render the videos".
  8. Use "Check how far both runs have got" to read progress. Nothing on this page refreshes by itself.

WHAT YOU SHOULD SEE

A plan with the item count it promised, and one draft on your calendar per slot with an empty body and a status of draft. The copy run fills those bodies in. Every item is reviewed and approved through the normal content editor; Autopilot adds no approval step of its own.

WHAT THIS WILL NOT DO

  • It does not publish, schedule or submit anything for approval. Everything it creates is a draft.
  • It does not invent evidence. Themes that would need proof you have not recorded - product claims, customer proof, testimonials and offers - are dropped from the mix unless your Business DNA supports them.
  • The video run cannot finish. No video compositor is active in any deployment, so the video run sends nothing to render, charges nothing, and reports the videos as still outstanding. Planning videos works; rendering them does not.
  • The web page keeps no list of plans. Once you leave the page, there is no way back to a plan from the web. The mobile app does keep a plan list, and the mobile app cannot start the video run.
  • Images and videos have no credit tariff, so no figure on the page covers them. The page says "unknown" rather than zero, because zero would read as free.

IF IT DOES NOT WORK

  • "Your role cannot create content in this organisation." means you cannot plan. "Your role can plan this content but cannot generate it." means you can plan but not run the generation.
  • "There are no brands in {organisation} that you can plan for." means create a brand first.
  • "This run needs more credits than the balance holds." offers "Start it anyway". Accepting means the run produces what the balance covers and then stops; nothing already made is lost.
  • "The run stopped because no AI text provider is configured in this environment." means nothing was charged and every remaining item is still planned. The run resumes from where it stopped once a provider exists.
  • Slides marked "Waiting for an image provider" are not failures. They are untouched and are picked up by a later run.
  • If the picture run stops short it does not report why. The page says so rather than leaving you to guess; the reason reaches the audit log only.

COMMON QUESTIONS

Are 30, 60 and 90 special?

No. They are the lengths the form offers. Any length between 7 and 365 days behaves identically.

Why did my plan not contain any testimonials?

Because your Business DNA does not evidence any. A testimonial post for a business with no recorded testimonials would have to invent one.

Can I run Autopilot twice?

Yes. A second plan sits alongside the first; it does not replace it.

  • Writing your Business DNA

    The eight facts about your business that generation is allowed to cite, and how saving a new version works.

  • Writing and approving content

    The content editor - saving versions, submitting for approval, approving, and why an author cannot approve their own work.

  • Planning your week

    Building a week from your own calendar and posting history, and why no suggestion is ever a predicted best time.

  • Following a render

    The renders page, what each render state means, and the rule that a render is charged only when a provider produced something.