Help

Social posts & the Share studio

The Share studio turns what's already happening at your library into a ready-to-post caption and a branded image — so posting to Facebook or Instagram is 10 seconds, not 20 minutes. Nothing from the studio goes out until you say so: you review and edit it, then either share it yourself or — once a Page is connected — press Post now. (Drafts ToyHive makes on its own are covered further down.)

How it works

1. Pick a card. Each shows live data — "Next open: Sat 2 Aug", "4 new toys this week", your most borrowed toy this month, a membership invite, a grant thank-you, or a blank card you write yourself. A card greys out when there's nothing honest to post from it: the next open session moves on to the following day once today's session has finished, "new toys" uses the same new arrival window as your browse pages (Settings → Toys), the membership invite is hidden while online joining is switched off, and only grants with acknowledgment wording recorded can carry a thank-you.
2. We generate a caption (in a warm, plain voice) and a branded image in both Facebook (1200×630) and Instagram (1080×1080) sizes. If AI copy is unavailable, a simple template is used instead — you can always edit it.
3. Post now sends it to your connected Page — and to Instagram in the same press, if an Instagram Business account is linked. It usually appears within a minute, and shows up in Social → Review queue → Post history like any other post. No connection yet? Use Copy text, Download image, or Share… (on a phone that hands straight off to the Facebook/Instagram app; on a computer, where there is usually no share menu at all, it copies the caption to your clipboard and tells you it did). Regenerate the copy as many times as you like.

The rules we keep for you

• Sponsored toys are always credited. If a featured toy has a sponsor, the sponsor's name is added to the caption — omitting it would break the sponsorship.
• Grant acknowledgments are exact. A grant thank-you includes the funder's required wording verbatim and their required tags, plus their logo — the acknowledgment you agreed to.
• Captions stay within platform limits. If a caption would be too long for Instagram, the part we (or you) wrote is shortened — never the sponsor credit or the funder's wording.

Facebook events

Facebook removed event creation from its API, so ToyHive can't make the event for you. The event pack gives you a pre-written name, description and a cover image to paste into Facebook's create-event form in about 30 seconds. Each open session and public event also has its own public page under /events with a share-friendly link and "Add to calendar". The list of them, What's on, is linked from the header of your public pages and the member portal.

Monthly digest

Draft monthly digest assembles this month's open days, new toys and any roster gaps into a newsletter draft and opens the Announcements composer prefilled — review and send from there.

Access is behind the Create social share packs, event packs, and the digest draft permission, granted by default to Owner, Manager, Committee and Staff.

Connecting your Facebook Page

Settings → Social posting connects the Page ToyHive posts from. You sign in to Facebook, pick the Page from a list, and that's it — we store the Page's access, not your password.

• You need an admin or content role on the Page in Facebook. If the list comes back empty, that's why: ask whoever manages the Page to add you first.
• On the way back from Facebook the browser passes through toyhive.app for a moment before landing on your library's own Social posting settings with the list of Pages. That hop is normal — Facebook sends everyone to the same address, and we work out which library you were connecting from there.
• Instagram is connected at the same time, automatically, if the Page has an Instagram Business account linked to it. A Creator account can't be posted to by any app — switch it to Business in Instagram's settings and reconnect.
• Connecting and disconnecting is behind the Connect the library's Facebook Page / Instagram and set auto-publishing permission — Owner and Manager only. Binding the library's public voice is a settings-grade decision, so it deliberately sits above the share studio's permission.
• Once a day we quietly check the connection still works. Page access dies when the Facebook password changes, someone loses their Page role, or the app's access is revoked — so if that happens you get an email with a Reconnect link rather than discovering it from a post that never appeared. The connection also shows the problem on this settings page.
• Disconnecting is instant and safe: past posts stay on Facebook, and nothing further is published.

What auto-publish does

Two kinds of post can go out without anyone approving them, each with its own toggle in Settings → Social posting.

• Auto-publish open-session reminders — off unless you turn it on. When on, a drafted reminder for your next open session is published on schedule without anyone approving it. These are the most repetitive and lowest-risk posts — "we're open Saturday".
• Post closure notices automatically if no one reviews within 2 hours — on unless you turn it off. When you add a closure, the cancellation post is drafted straight away and emailed to everyone with the share permission, exactly as before. You have two hours to approve it, reword it, or skip it. If nobody does anything, it publishes itself — because the one post that must never be lost in an unchecked queue is the one telling families not to come. Skip it and it stays skipped; it is never re-drafted.
• Everything else always waits, whatever the toggles say — new toys, featured toys, membership invites and grant thank-yous.
• Withdrawing the closure still stops the post, whether a person approved it or the two hours did. The facts are re-checked one last time at publishing.
• Post history always shows whether a person or ToyHive approved each post.
• Flipping either toggle is recorded in the activity log, with who did it and when.
• Nothing is generated at publishing time: the words and the image you approved are exactly the words and image that get posted.

How your posts sound

Settings → Social posting → Voice sets the tone once, for everything ToyHive writes — the drafts in the review queue and the captions in the Share studio, whatever the post is about. Choose no emoji, a little, or lots; add up to five signature hashtags that go on every post (one word each — we tidy them into lowercase #hashtag form for you); and list up to ten things we must never mention — an old library name, your prices, a hall you no longer use. Changing it only affects posts drafted from then on; anything already sitting in the queue keeps the words it was written with.

The never-mention list is enforced, not just requested: if the wording that comes back contains one of your terms anyway, we throw it away and post the plain built-in template for that draft instead. Two things are deliberately outside it. Your own data still speaks — if a term is your toy's name, your funder's required acknowledgment or the reason you typed into a closure, it stands, because dropping a sponsor credit or a funder's exact wording to honour a style preference would break a real promise. And closure notices ignore the emoji setting entirely: they are always plain, because the reason might be a bereavement.

The review queue

Once a Page is connected, ToyHive drafts posts for you and puts them in Social → Review queue. You never have to think of the idea or open the studio — you just say yes, no, or "reword that".

What gets drafted, and when:

• One post a day, maximum. If two posts want the same evening, the more time-critical one keeps it and the other moves to the next free day. Cancellations ignore this — they can't wait.
• We stay quiet while you're closed. If you're shut for three days or more (school holidays, a Christmas break), the routine posts skip that stretch instead of cheerfully posting into it.
• Add a closure and we handle both sides. Any "we're open" reminder covering those days is pulled, and a plain-worded cancellation is drafted immediately and emailed to the team — and, unless you turned that off, published on its own if nobody reviews it within two hours. Remove or shorten the closure and the cancellation is pulled and the reminder comes back.
• Cancellation posts are deliberately flat — no cheer, no emoji, whatever tone your other posts use. The reason for a closure is sometimes a bereavement, and we're not told which.
• Edit is one box: the caption and hashtags together, exactly as they'll be posted. Regenerate image redraws the picture from the facts saved with that draft — it will never quietly become a different post about today's data.
• Skip is safe. Nothing is published, and the recurring kinds simply come back next week or next month. A skipped grant thank-you or cancellation stays skipped.
• Expired means nobody got to it in time and the moment passed — the session started, the month ended. Nothing was published; the tab keeps a count so you can see if reviews are being missed.
• Post history shows what actually went out on each platform, whether a person or the auto-publish setting approved it, and anything that failed or needs checking on Facebook.

How your posts did

Once a day we ask Facebook and Instagram how each post from the last month is going, and record the answer. Each published post in Post history then shows a line of numbers — reach, impressions, reactions, comments, shares, and saves on Instagram. They update daily, so a post from this morning shows nothing until tomorrow, and different platforms report different things (Facebook has no "saves"); anything a platform doesn't report is left out rather than shown as zero.

The numbers are not stuck on that page. They are a full reporting area, so Reports → Custom report builder → Social posts can break them down by month, by platform, by post type, by layout, or by whether a person approved the post or it went out automatically — and you can chart that onto a dashboard, export it to CSV for a grant acquittal, or have it emailed on a schedule like any other report. The plain-English box understands them too: "which of our posts got the most reach last month" or "did auto-published posts perform worse" both work.

You'll get an email when a post that matters is waiting: session reminders and cancellations only, one per post, to everyone with the share permission.

When an approved post actually goes out

Approved posts are published on their own schedule, within about five minutes of the time shown on the card. What you approved is what goes out — the words and the picture are never regenerated.

• A post more than an hour and a half late is not posted at all. If we were offline over its evening, a session reminder is marked expired (it would now be untrue) and the weekly/monthly kinds are simply skipped until next time.
• Closure notices are the exception: "we're shut until Thursday" is just as true at lunchtime as it was at breakfast, so a cancellation goes out whenever we get to it, right up to the end of the closure it announces. After that it expires unsent.
• The facts are re-checked one last time. If the session was cancelled, the featured toy went out on loan, or the closure was withdrawn between approval and publishing, the post is dropped instead of published. Nothing else is re-checked, and nothing is rewritten.
• A hiccup is retried; a real problem is reported. Rate limits and Facebook outages just push the post back a while. If it genuinely can't be published, it is marked failed in post history and everyone with the share permission gets an email so you can post it by hand if it still matters.
• If your Page access dies mid-post, the post fails and you get the usual "reconnect" email — the connection is the thing to fix, and queued posts resume once it works again.
• "Needs checking" in post history means we were interrupted between calling Facebook and recording the result. We deliberately do NOT try again: open the Page and look. If it's there, you're done; if it isn't, post it by hand. A missed post is better than the same post twice.