After your event is live, go to AdminEvents[event]Promote to publish it to social media and external calendars.
Connect your accounts
Connect your venue's accounts under AdminVenues[venue]Edit in the Social Accounts section. Accounts are shared across all events at the venue.
X / Twitter — once connected, posts go live immediately.
Facebook and Instagram — these require Meta Business Verification and App Review approval before your venue can post. Once approved, connect your venue's Facebook Page and Instagram account. Facebook posts go to your Page's timeline. Instagram posts need an event image.
Posting schedule
Under Social Accounts on the same page, the Posting schedule card sets a series of automatic posts for every event at your venue — you don't have to remember to post. Noctern ships a default schedule of five posts:
| When | Post time (24-hour) | |---|---| | 14 days before | 10:00 | | 7 days before | 10:00 | | 3 days before | 10:00 | | 1 day before | 12:00 | | Event day | 09:00 |
A venue that has never set up a schedule starts with these five steps prefilled but turned off. Nothing posts from your own pages until you switch the schedule on and save.
Each step has:
- Days before — how many days ahead of the event's date the post goes out.
0means the event day. - Post time — in your venue's time zone, which is shown beside the field.
- Platforms — X, Facebook and Instagram. Only accounts you have connected can be ticked; the others say "not connected".
- Message — the text of the post, with placeholders that Noctern fills in for each event. Click a placeholder chip —
{{title}},{{artist}},{{venue}},{{date}},{{dayOfWeek}},{{time}},{{doorsTime}},{{url}}or{{daysUntil}}— to insert it where your cursor is.
Below each message a Preview shows a mock-up of the post on each network the step goes to — hover a tab for "How it will look on Facebook / Instagram / X". The text is exactly what would post, and you can pick which of your next upcoming events to preview it against ("Sample event" is always the last choice). X allows 280 characters, counting every link as 23; the count on the X tab turns red when the step is over. Instagram needs an image: if the event has none, the Instagram preview says so and that post is skipped.
Use Add step and Remove step to change the list (up to 12 steps), and Reset to Noctern defaults to go back to the five-step schedule above. Save shows any problem next to the step it belongs to.
A post is only sent within two hours of its scheduled time. If an event is created or a step is changed after that moment has passed, the step is marked Missed rather than posted late.
Changing the schedule for one event
Each event's Promote page has a Scheduled posts panel showing that event's posts: the local date and time, the platforms, and the status of each — Upcoming, Posted (with a link to the post), Skipped or Missed (with the reason), or Failed (with the error).
A badge shows where the schedule comes from: Venue schedule, Custom for this event, or Off for this event. From the panel you can:
- Edit — change the steps for this event only. Steps whose time has already passed are read-only.
- Turn off for this event — no automatic posts for this event.
- Use venue schedule — throw away this event's changes and go back to the venue's schedule.
Manual posts
The Promote page also lets you write and publish a post by hand for each platform your venue has connected. Manual posts always go out from your venue's own accounts. If an account isn't connected, the page says so and links to your venue settings. Edit the copy before posting — the draft is a starting point, not a final announcement. Manual posts are recorded alongside the automatic ones.
Publish status
After posting, the Promote page shows a Published badge for each platform with the timestamp of the first post. Noctern stores this in publishedPlatforms on the event record; the Scheduled posts history has every post.
Calendar distribution
Click the Calendar Distribution tab to route your event to external calendar platforms (such as community arts calendars). Noctern coordinates the submission — you do not post directly to the calendar service.
Available methods:
- Auto — Noctern submits via the platform's API or web form automatically
- Manual / Email — Noctern generates the submission content; you (or Noctern support) complete the submission by hand
Connect social accounts at the venue level (Venue → Edit → Social Accounts) before you try to promote individual events, and set up your posting schedule once so every event is covered.