HeyOrca offers two publishing methods: direct publishing and notification publishing.
Understanding the difference helps you choose the right option based on the platform you’re posting to and any API limitations that may affect how your content can be published.
Direct publishing
Direct publishing allows HeyOrca to automatically publish your post to the social platform at the scheduled time. Direct publishing works when the platform allows third-party tools like HeyOrca to publish directly through their API.
To use direct publishing, you must have your accounts connected. HeyOrca currently supports direct publishing for the following social channels:
Facebook
Instagram
LinkedIn Personal Profile
LinkedIn Company Page
TikTok
Google Business Profile
Pinterest
Threads
YouTube
Set up Direct publishing
If you have successfully connected your social accounts to HeyOrca, these accounts should automatically be set up for Direct publishing.
To verify that they are set up for Direct publishing:
From your workspace, select Settings in the left-hand menu.
Navigate to the Integrations tab.
In your workspace Settings, locate the social channel you want to verify.
For Instagram: Custom Publishing Method is an option for Instagram as there are additional publishing settings to tailor the publishing methods for post types (Post, Story, and Reel).
Notification publishing
Notification publishing sends a notification via email or push notification in the HeyOrca mobile app to an assigned team member 5 minutes before publishing time to publish the post manually.
The notification received will include:
Any media for the post
The copy for the post
Any publishing notes
Notification publishing is a helpful option that allows you to plan posts for social media channels that don’t currently integrate with HeyOrca or have API limitations for third-party tools.
To set-up notification publishing, you can set up a social channel as a placeholder account, change a channel’s publishing settings or change the publishing settings for an individual post.
Set-up Notification Publishing for a channel
1. From your workspace, select Settings in the left-hand menu.
2. Navigate to the Integrations tab.
2. In your workspace Settings, locate the social channel you want to update.
3. Click on the dropdown menu to the right of the channel name and select Notifications.
4. For Instagram, Threads and TikTok: Select if you would like to receive notifications through mobile push notification, email notifications or both.
Mobile: you must have the HeyOrca mobile app downloaded and logged in to your HeyOrca account. You also need to have your push notifications on from your device as well.
Email: The email address in the dropdown is the account the notification will be sent to. If you’d like to change the email address that will receive this notification, select another user email from the dropdown.
For Instagram, you should also select which post type (Post, Story and Reel) is set to a publishing type.
Change Notification publishing recipient
From your workspace, select Settings in the left-hand menu.
Navigate to the Integrations tab.
Locate the social account you want to change the recipient for.
From the social account, navigate to the Notification Settings section and click the dropdown menu with an email address listed in it.
Select the new recipient of the notification from the dropdown list.
The notification receiver should now be updated.
Select publishing type on an individual post
Available for Instagram, Threads and TikTok:
From the Create Post modal, under the scheduled publishing time, there is a dropdown menu that will say Direct publishing, Notification or Disable publishing.
Click the dropdown menu to select the desired publishing type.
Publishing - Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
What’s the difference between Direct Publishing and Notification Publishing?
What’s the difference between Direct Publishing and Notification Publishing?
Direct Publishing automatically posts your content to a social media channel at the scheduled time. Notification Publishing sends you a notification for you to post it manually.
Why did my Instagram post switch from Direct Publishing to Notification Publishing?
Why did my Instagram post switch from Direct Publishing to Notification Publishing?
While Instagram recently increased its image carousel to 20 images, their API is still limited to 10 images/media. If you have an Instagram post with more than 10 images/media, the post will automatically switch from direct publishing to notification publishing.
My post says it’s published in HeyOrca but it’s not published on the social channel. What happened?
My post says it’s published in HeyOrca but it’s not published on the social channel. What happened?
Double-check that the post didn’t switch to Notification publishing by clicked the published post in your Calendar and viewing the publishing type. If it says Notification, it was set to notification publishing and will not have been published directly to the channel.
This can happen if the post exceeds the API limitation such as adding more than 10 carousel images (Instagram) or photos are added to TikTok post.