Key Takeaways
- HighLevel's Social Planner has two CSV importers. The advanced one is the only one worth learning.
- Advanced format adds stories, reels and shorts, Google Business Profile tags and categories, scheduled first comments, and an optional watermark.
- Download the sample file first and build from it. The column shapes are not guessable.
- The review screen catches formatting errors before anything is scheduled, and you can fix them right there instead of re-uploading.
- You can switch on an approval step so a client or a teammate signs off before posts go live.
HighLevel released a walkthrough of the advanced CSV importer in Social Planner, which loads weeks or months of content into the calendar from a single file. For a marketing automation San Jose operator running content for more than one business, that is the difference between an afternoon of clicking and a ten minute import. On Point Tech Solutions schedules social for clients out of Los Gatos, so we went through this one carefully, including the part the video is right to spend the most time on.
Basic Versus Advanced
Go to Marketing, then Social Planner, then New Post, then Upload from CSV. Two options appear.
Basic format handles the plain data types: date, text, link and media. That is it.
Advanced format matches how people actually post now. Stories, reels and shorts. Google Business Profile tags and categories. A first comment scheduled to land under the post automatically. An optional watermark. If you post anything other than a static image with a caption, basic will not carry it, so pick advanced and move on.
Start From the Sample File
The next step looks like it should be uploading your file. Do not. Download the sample file first.
The importer expects specific column headers and value formats, and there is no forgiving parser waiting for you. Fill the sample by hand, or hand it to an AI tool and review what comes back. The video is upfront that AI can do the heavy lifting on the content but you still want a human pass before it goes in. That matches how we work: the tool fills the rows, a person decides whether any of it is worth posting. There is also a formatting tips panel next to the upload. Read it once. Thirty seconds there saves a failed import.
Channels and the Approval Gate
After the upload, you pick the social channels the content schedules to. Facebook and Instagram in the demo, but it is any or all of the accounts you have connected.
This same screen carries the approval step, and it deserves more attention than it gets. Switch it on and posts wait for a named approver before they schedule. That could be the client, the business owner, or a team member who owns quality.
Leave it off and everything schedules the moment you hit create. That is fine when you wrote every row yourself. It is not fine when a bulk file came out of a generator and nobody read it end to end. We have a standing rule that nothing external publishes without a human yes, and this toggle is where you enforce it inside HighLevel.
The Review Screen Catches What You Broke
Hit create and the importer processes the file, then drops you on a review screen showing every post it built. You see the Facebook version and the Instagram version side by side: caption, image, follow up comment, watermark, category, tags, and whether each one is a feed post, a reel or a story. The scheduled date and time sits at the top of each.
Then it flags the errors. In the demo, one row was marked as a reel on both Facebook and Instagram but had no video attached at all. The importer caught it and said so, before anything was scheduled.
You can fix the row directly on that screen, or go back to the CSV, correct it and re-import. There is also a filter that hides everything except the posts with errors. The demo file had six broken rows out of thirty.
That number is why the screen exists. Twenty percent of a bulk file being wrong is normal. Finding out after it posted is not something you can walk back.
Why This Matters for Bay Area and San Jose Businesses
Most Bay Area small businesses are not short of things to say. They are short of Tuesdays. A restaurant in Willow Glen, a contractor in Campbell, a clinic in Santa Clara: all of them can find an hour a month and none of them can find twenty minutes a day. Loading a month in one sitting fits how they actually work.
The Google Business Profile support matters more here than the social channels do. Local search is where a San Jose business gets found, and GBP posts are the part of local SEO almost nobody keeps up. Being able to schedule those in the same file as the Instagram content means they stop being the thing that slips.
One caution, and we mean it. Bulk import makes it easy to schedule thirty near identical posts, and a feed like that trains people to scroll past you. Use the importer to speed up the scheduling, not to skip the writing. Write thirty things worth reading, then load them in one go.
Practical Steps
- Choose advanced format, not basic, unless every post is a plain image and caption.
- Download the sample CSV before you write a single row.
- Draft the content first in whatever tool you like, then map it into the sample columns.
- Read the formatting tips panel once before your first upload.
- Turn on the approval step for any client account, every time.
- Work the error filter until it is empty. Do not schedule around a known broken row.
- Check the first comment column. A scheduled first comment is free reach and most people leave it blank.
- Include your Google Business Profile in the channel selection. It is the one most likely to be forgotten and the one that moves local search.
Watch the Walkthrough
Final Thoughts
Bulk scheduling tools get sold on speed. The valuable part of this one is the error screen, because it is the only thing standing between a big CSV and a month of broken posts going out under a client name. Use the importer for the calendar work and keep a human on the content and on the approve button.
On Point Tech Solutions is a Go High Level consultant in Los Gatos serving San Jose and the Bay Area. We build the funnels, automations and content systems behind this, and our clients own what we build. Done for you, or taught to your team with an SOP so it runs without us. Take a look at optechsol.llc.