In this article, we'll cover all you need to know to get started with HeyOrca; from beginning your free trial, creating your first calendar, and adding your first social accounts, to inviting team members/clients, scheduling your first posts, uploading media to your library, and more!

First, you can begin a free trial of HeyOrca! Once you fill out your information, you will be sent an email to set up a password. In HeyOrca you can begin setting up your first calendar.

Once you've got your HeyOrca trial account set up, it's time to create your first calendar!

Then you can connect your first social account. Make sure you are logged into the correct account in another tab.

Once you connect your first social account, you can begin using creating, scheduling, and publishing content on your calendar!

Learn more about adding social accounts to your calendar.

Learn more about adding users to your calendar.

Each calendar has its Calendar Settings. Only Calendar owners, Internal admins, and External admins have access to the calendar settings. To go to your Calendar Settings, go into your calendar and click on the gear icon.

In the Calendar Settings, you can:

Learn what you can edit in your Calendar Settings.

You can add a new calendar to your account by clicking + Calendar on the side navigation bar or on your main dashboard.

If you are currently at your calendar limit, you will receive a message that will prompt you to upgrade your account.

On the next screen, you will be able to choose how many total calendars you need and then you can click Subscribe.

The next screen will allow you to edit or add your account information and checkout. You can also add any new coupons at this stage.

Note: The price you see here does not show any existing discounts you might have.

If your account is not on our current pricing structure, you will need to reach out to our support team to upgrade your account.

You can reach our support team using the in-app chat or by emailing customercare@heyorca.com

To connect an Instagram account to HeyOrca as a business profile, you will need to confirm a few things:

1. Is your Instagram account a Professional or Creator profile? To check this:

• Log into the Instagram account

• Go to your Settings

• Click on Account

• Scroll to the bottom

View if it is a Professional or Creator Account. If it's not, it will be listed as a Personal Account and will provide you with an option to switch to a Professional or Creator Account.

2. Is your Instagram account connected to a Facebook page? To check this:

• Log into Facebook

• Go to the Facebook page that your Instagram account should be connected to

• Go to your page Settings

• Click on the tab that says Instagram

Your Instagram account should be listed there!

Note: You should not see a message saying Review Connection anywhere on this page. If you do see this message, an admin on the Facebook page will need to click on the message and follow the steps.

3. To connect the Instagram account to HeyOrca, you will need to have admin permissions on the connected Facebook page. Here are two ways to check that:
Through the Facebook page:

• Log into Facebook

• Go to the connected Facebook page

• Go to your page Settings

• Click on Page Roles

You should see your name listed under either Admin or Editor!

OR

Through Facebook Business Manager:

• Log into Facebook

• Go to Business manager

• Go to Business settings

• Click on Pages

• Find the correct page

Once there, you can expand your name and your permissions should look like this:

Once those three steps are confirmed, you can connect your Instagram page to HeyOrca.

Instagram Personal pages can be connected to HeyOrca by connecting it as a Placeholder channel, but due to changes in Instagram’s API they can no longer process analytics.

• Open a new tab and log into the correct Facebook account
• Navigate to your calendar settings in HeyOrca
• Click Add Facebook
• Follow the prompts.

This article can show you a bit more about connecting your business page in HeyOrca.

Note: You will need to have admin access to the Facebook page you are trying to connect.

• Open a new tab and log in to your X (Twitter) account
• Navigate to your calendar settings in HeyOrca
• Click Add X
• Follow the prompts.

• Open a new tab and log in to your LinkedIn account
• Navigate to your calendar settings in HeyOrca
• Click Add LinkedIn
• Follow the prompts.
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• Open a new tab and log in to your LinkedIn account
• Navigate to your calendar settings in HeyOrca
• Click Add LinkedIn
• Follow the prompts.

Note: You will need to have admin access to the LinkedIn page to connect it.

If you are admin, you will see Admin View when you view the business page:

• Navigate to your calendar settings in HeyOrca
• Click Add Google My Business

• You will be redirected to Google to confirm which account you will be using with HeyOrca. You will be prompted to sign in to your account if you are not already signed in.

• Choose the location you wish to connect in HeyOrca
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Learn how to connect a GMB channel to HeyOrca!
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Some social channels are not supported for direct publishing, but you can still plan content in HeyOrca for them using a Placeholder channel!

To add a Placeholder channel to your calendar, click Add a Placeholder button in your calendar settings.

Learn how to use and connect placeholder channels.

There are two main types of users in HeyOrca: Internal Members and External Members

Internal Members are anyone that is internal to your agency or team (i.e. social media managers, copywriters and account managers). They can be assigned to, or request to join, multiple calendars in your agency. All Internal members will receive an invitation to set up an account with HeyOrca, and will log in with an email and password. There are 4 internal roles that can be assigned to team members in each calendar:

Calendar Owners are able to create content, approve/reject content, and leave comments. They have access to the calendar, the media/content library, calendar settings, and analytics. They are also able to delete the calendar, any users and any social accounts in the calendar settings. They are able to re-authorize social accounts.

​Internal Admins are able to create content, approve/reject content, and leave comments. They have access to the calendar, the media/content library, calendar settings, and analytics. They are able to remove users and social accounts in the calendar settings. They are able to re-authorize social accounts.

Internal Copywriters are able to create/edit content, and leave comments, but cannot approve/reject content to have it publish. They have access to the calendar, the libraries, and analytics. They do not have access to the calendar settings.

Internal Stakeholders are only able to approve/reject content, and leave comments. They have access to the calendar, the libraries, and analytics. They do not have access to the calendar settings.

External members are typically your team’s clients. They are confined to whichever calendar they are assigned to and do not have the ability to see or interact with your other client’s calendar. What your client sees in HeyOrca depends on what role you give to them. There are 3 client roles in HeyOrca: External Admin, External Copywriter, and External Stakeholder.

Note: External stakeholders will not log in to HeyOrca and will not get an invitation to create an account. Instead they will be sent the content you want them to see using a shareable link.

Learn how to add internal and external members to your calendars.

Learn tips and channel specific requirements for uploading photos and gifs!

Learn tips and channel specific requirements for uploading videos.

HeyOrca can publish single image, carousel, videos, reel and single image stories directly to your Instagram account!

To do so, you'll need to connect your Instagram account as a business profile (Business or Creator Instagram account that is paired to a Facebook page) within your HeyOrca calendar.

You can also publish your content using our email notifications, or mobile app for times where you may want to add additional features not available via direct publishing such as trending audio or filters.

Learn how to publish to Instagram using email notifications.

Learn how to publish to Instagram using the mobile app!

HeyOrca makes getting client approvals easier than ever! If you want a post to be approved before it can be published, you can set the post to Awaiting Approval, then you can select who needs to approve it. You can select one or multiple persons as approvers.

Internal users, External Admins, and External Copywriters will receive a notification in HeyOrca that they have a post to approve. External Stakeholders need to be sent a shareable link of posts to approve. If the reviewal process is more of a “nice-to-have” for your client, send posts over to them pre-approved.

Learn more about the post approval stages.

Learn how to configure approvals.

HeyOrca makes collaborating with your team as easy as pie. 🥧 You and your team can:

Social Media Analytics help you and your client understand how effectively your content is performing.

Our reporting suite for Standard plans includes Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, X, TikTok reports and AI Report Summaries!

As part of HeyOrca Pro, you'll have access to the reports above as well as our Pro reporting suite which includes Custom Reports, Competitor Reports and Date Range Comparison Reports, and Automated Reports!

Visit our guide to learn about what metrics you can view in each of the reports.

Every client is unique, so their media library should be too! Each calendar comes with a media library to store any media you want to use for content. Clients and team members can easily text images into the media library. You can also track if media has been previously used in content and organize your media with tags.

The media library is visible to all users, except External Stakeholders. External Stakeholders, Internal Copywriters, and External Copywriters cannot upload media in the media library, but they can text images into the media library.

The media library for each calendar is located on the left navigation bar within the calendar. When you click on the library icon, you will automatically be brought to the media library.

Inside the media library, you will have the option to toggle between the Media and Content Library.

In the Media Library you will see all your uploaded media. Each asset has a description, tags, and used indicator. You can also:

To access your Organization Settings, hover over your name in the bottom left of HeyOrca, then select Organization Settings.

In your Organization Settings you can:

Note: Account owners will have a crown icon next to their name in the Organization Settings.

To access your Profile Settings, hover over your name in the bottom left of HeyOrca, then select Profile Settings.

To access your Notification Settings, hover over your name in the bottom left of HeyOrca, then select Notification Settings.

In your Profile or Notification settings you can:

Note: Only account owners can access the payment settings.

In the payment settings, you can:

To access your Payment Settings, hover over your name in the bottom left of HeyOrca, then select Payment Settings.

Learn how to update your Payment Settings.

Reauthorization is necessary in all 3rd party platforms, that includes HeyOrca and our competitors. All platforms may require re-authorization at times for various reasons. Basically, if they identify any behavior on the admin side of a page as risky (ie. an admin changes a password, an admin gets removed from a page, etc.) they will trigger a reauthorization as a security precaution to ensure you want to continue publishing content via HeyOrca (or any other service you may use!). These social channels also do regular roll-outs for security purposes. These roll-outs typically occur every 30 to 60 days.

Learn how re-authorization works in HeyOrca as well as helps to troubleshoot any issues you may run into!

For a visual platform like Instagram, an aesthetically pleasing profile is important. However, trying to communicate your brand vision for clients Instagram is hard.

We get it, that’s why we’re excited to introduce Instagram Grid Preview in HeyOrca!

Finally, an Instagram Grid Preview that you can share with your clients! 🎉

Learn how to use our Instagram Grid View feature.

HeyOrca has a built in photo editor to make creating content easier than ever🎉No more using third party photo editors, you can edit your photos directly in your post. You can also use the photo editor in the media and content libraries.

Using the photo editor you can:

If you are a Canva user, you already know how simple it is to create unique and stunning graphics for your social content! With the Canva button, you can use your previous designs and create new ones without having to leave your post! 🙌

Our integration allows you to plan content in HeyOrca, get approvals, and then push your content to Facebook Creator Studio for scheduling. You can use this feature to boost posts and access other features in Creator Studio.

Learn how to use our Facebook Creator Studio Integration.

HeyOrca’s copying feature makes it easier than ever to copy your content from one social account to another (or many). You can also copy content from one client calendar to your other client calendars.

Learn how to copy posts from one social account to another social account and other calendars.

Using Bulk Actions in HeyOrca, you can:

​Learn how to use bulk actions.

Does your client have an important event coming up? 🗓 Use our event feature to mark the calendar. The event feature lets you easily see what important events are coming up, and plan your content accordingly. You can also set recurring events for your calendars.

Events strips aren't just limited to events or holidays, however. You can customize them to communicate your content strategy across to your team, to create bookings or details on classes help, or even use then as a hashtag base to keep that calendar's most used hash tags!

Learn how to use event strips.

At HeyOrca we understand that categorization and organization are critical in the planning process, which is why we have a feature to allow you to tag your posts.

Tagging your posts internally allow you and your team to be able to categorize your content, as well as filter the calendar by that post tag so that you can keep organized and track your posts.

Learn how to use Post Tags.

Filters allow you to stay organized, search for past posts, and much more. You can filter by social account for those posts, and approval stages, and by post tags.

Learn how to filter posts in your calendars.