Open the show from AdminEvents and click Promote & social posts in the Marketing group. The page is headed Publish Event and is at AdminEvents[event]Promote.

Connect your accounts

Connect your venue's accounts once, under AdminVenues[venue]Edit in the Social Accounts card. Accounts are shared by every show at the venue.

X / Twitter — once connected, posts go live immediately.

Facebook and Instagram — these need 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.

The show's own links

Two cards at the top of the Publish Event page are just things to copy:

• Event URL — the public ticketing link for the show, with Copy and an open-in-new-tab button. This is what you paste into a post, an email or a flyer.
• iCal Calendar Feed — a subscribe link for the show. Share it so people can add it to Google Calendar, Apple Calendar, Outlook and the rest.

Posting schedule

Under Social Accounts on the venue's edit page, the Posting schedule card sets a series of automatic posts for every show at your venue, so you don't have to remember to post. Noctern ships a default schedule of five:

A venue that has never set a schedule up starts with these five steps prefilled but turned off. Nothing posts from your pages until you switch the schedule on and save.

Each step has:

• Days before — how many days ahead of the show's date it goes out. 0 means the day of the show.
• Post time — in your venue's time zone, 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, with placeholders Noctern fills in per show. Click a placeholder chip — {{title}}, {{artist}}, {{venue}}, {{date}}, {{dayOfWeek}}, {{time}}, {{doorsTime}}, {{url}} or {{daysUntil}} — to insert it at the cursor.

Below each message a Preview mocks the post up 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 upcoming shows 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 show 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 above. Save shows any problem next to the step it belongs to.

Changing the schedule for one show

The Publish Event page has a Scheduled posts panel for that show, headed with your venue's time zone. Under Venue's channels it lists each step's local date and time, its platforms, and what happened: Upcoming, Posting soon, Posted (with a View post link), Skipped or Missed (with the reason), or Failed (with the error).

A badge says where the schedule comes from — Venue schedule, Custom for this event, or Off for this event — and three buttons act on this show only:

• Edit — change the steps for this show. Steps whose time has already passed are read-only.
• Turn off for this event — no automatic posts for this show.
• Use venue schedule — throw this show's changes away and follow the venue's schedule again. It only appears once the show has its own.

Posting by hand

Further down the Publish Event page, under Social Media, there is a card per platform. Click Post to X (or Facebook, or Instagram) and the card opens up:

• Posting account — confirms it will post from your venue's account, naming the handle or Page. If the account isn't connected it says so and links straight to your venue settings.
• Post Content — a draft written from the show's details. Edit it; it posts exactly as typed. On X a character count sits under it and turns red over 280, warning that the extra will be truncated.
• Media URLs (optional, one per line) — prefilled with the show's image. Instagram and Facebook use the first valid URL.
• Link URL (optional) — prefilled with the show's public link.
• Live Preview — how the post will look, image and all.

Then publish. Edit the copy before you do — the draft is a starting point, not a finished announcement.

Once a platform has been posted to, its card shows a Published badge, the date, and a View Post link. Remove Post deletes the post and clears Noctern's record of it. Instagram is the exception: its API cannot delete posts, so the card gives you Delete on Instagram (which opens the post) and Forget this post (which only clears Noctern's tracking).

External calendars

Submitting the show to local music calendars, alt-weeklies and listings sites is a separate page, not a tab here: Calendar distribution in the show's Marketing group. See Distributing a show to local calendars.