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Setting up Social Studio for the first time

What the five-step setup wizard asks for, what it creates, and what you can safely skip.

Updated

Setup is a five-step wizard that captures your brand name, what your business does and who it speaks to, then saves that as your Business DNA and Brand Brain so later drafts have something true to work from. It creates one brand and, optionally, one saved draft; it never publishes anything.

You can leave setup at any point using "Do this later" and come back to it from the Today page, where it reappears as "Finish setting up your account".

BEFORE YOU START

  • You need to be signed in and to be an active member of the organisation you are setting up. If your membership is not active the page returns you to the dashboard without an explanation, so check with an administrator if that happens.
  • You need the "administer" permission. Every step of the wizard saves through an endpoint that requires it, so a member without it will get "administer permission required." on the first Continue.
  • Nothing else is required. You do not need a connected channel, a paid plan or any credits to finish setup.
  • Step 4 offers to write a first draft for you. That needs an AI text provider configured on this deployment. If none is configured the wizard says so and gives you a starting structure to edit instead.

STEPS

  1. Open Today and choose "Continue setup", or go to /app/onboarding for the organisation you are setting up. The wizard opens with no sidebar and no menus, which is deliberate: there is nothing to navigate to yet.
  2. On "What's your brand called?", type the brand or business name and choose "Continue". This step cannot be skipped, because everything after it hangs off a brand.
  3. On "Tell us about your business", fill in as much as you want to. Only "Main goal" is really doing work; website, description, audience and the platform checkboxes are all optional. Choose "Continue", or "Skip".
  4. On "Save your brand knowledge", choose "Save and continue". This writes what you have typed into your Business DNA and your brand's Brand Brain as version 1 of each. Choose "Skip for now" if you would rather write them properly later.
  5. On "Create your first post", either choose "Generate a draft", or choose "Use a starter template" and edit the text it puts in the box, or just write something yourself. Choose "Save draft" to keep it, or "Skip". A saved draft becomes a campaign and one piece of content; it is not scheduled and not published.
  6. On the last step, choose "Go to my dashboard".

WHAT YOU SHOULD SEE

You land on Today for that organisation, and the "Finish setting up your account" prompt is gone. Your brand appears at /app/brands. If you completed step 4, Business DNA shows "Version 1 is current" and the brand shows a "Brand Brain v1" chip. If you saved a draft in step 5, it is waiting in your content, unscheduled.

WHAT THIS WILL NOT DO

  • It does not read your website or your social profiles. The address you type in step 2 is stored as a fact about your business; nothing fetches it, and no brand voice is inferred from it.
  • It does not connect any channel. Connecting accounts is a separate job, and on this release only Bluesky can actually publish.
  • It does not publish or schedule anything, including the draft from step 5.
  • The mobile app's setup screens record your answers but create nothing. There is no brand-name field in the mobile wizard, so it never creates a brand, a Business DNA version, a Brand Brain version or a draft. Finish setup on the web if you want those written for you. The mobile screens say this on the screen rather than implying otherwise.

IF IT DOES NOT WORK

  • "administer permission required." means your role cannot write organisation settings. Ask an administrator to run setup, or to change your role.
  • The page bounces you back to the dashboard as soon as it opens: your membership of that organisation is not active, or the organisation id in the address is not one you belong to.
  • "The AI provider is not available, so we could not generate a draft." means no text provider is configured on this deployment. That is a deployment setting an operator controls, not something you can switch on. Use "Use a starter template" or write the post yourself; the rest of setup is unaffected.
  • "We could not reach the generator, so we do not know whether a draft was possible." means the request did not complete. Nothing was charged and nothing was saved; write the post yourself or try again later.
  • Any "We could not save..." message keeps what you typed on screen. Retry the same step rather than starting again.

COMMON QUESTIONS

Can I run setup again?

Yes. It is resumable rather than one-shot, and returning to /app/onboarding picks up where you left off. Steps you completed are already saved.

Does skipping a step lose anything?

No, except the thing that step would have written. You can write Business DNA, a Brand Brain and content from their own pages afterwards.

Does generating the first draft cost credits?

Yes. Step 4's "Generate a draft" is an ordinary text generation and is reserved and settled against your credits like any other. A generation that fails is not charged.

  • Writing your Business DNA

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

  • Writing a Brand Brain

    How one brand's tone, audiences, banned phrases and claim rules are recorded, and which of them are actually enforced.

  • Adding and managing brands

    How to create a brand, what your plan allows, and why the brand count on the page can differ from the number you can see.

  • Connecting your channels

    What the Connections page shows, which networks can publish today, and what the account health states mean.