Prepare files for social

What this is about

Social teams do not receive one file, they receive a publication task: a video, a cover frame, a caption file or a burned-in version, post copy, a link, a hashtag set, a scheduled date and a rule about which account posts it. When any of those arrives late, the post slips, and the slip is usually blamed on the video. A clean handover package removes that entire category of friction, and it costs an hour once you have a template. The measure of quality is simple: can a colleague publish it correctly on a day you are unreachable.

The order matters more than the tools. Skip a step and you usually notice two steps later — by which point the fix costs several times as much.

What runs differently here

Where this differs from the general case:

• One folder per post, not one folder per format — the person publishing thinks in posts
• File names carry channel, format, length, language and version so nothing is identified by opening it
• Supply the cover frame as an image file; the automatically chosen thumbnail is rarely the one you would pick
• Include the caption file and a burned-in alternative, because platforms handle uploaded subtitles differently
• Add the post copy, the link and the intended date in a text file inside the folder, not in an email that scrolls away

Step by step

This order gets you there fastest:

1. Ask who publishes and in which tool before you export. A team using a scheduling platform needs different assets than a person uploading manually from a phone.
2. Check the current upload specification of each channel for file size, length, aspect ratio and caption support. Specs change quietly, and a rejected upload always lands on the deadline.
3. Build one folder per planned post containing the video, the cover image, the caption file, the post copy and any alternate version, so nothing has to be assembled by the recipient.
4. Name every file to the same scheme with channel, format, duration, language and version. The name is the only metadata that reliably survives being copied into a shared drive.
5. Export a cover frame deliberately rather than letting the platform choose. Pick a frame with a face or a clear subject and check it reads at the size the feed will show it.
6. Write the post copy alongside the file, including the opening line, the link and the hashtags. The video and its text are one product, and separating them creates two approval loops.
7. Add a one-page publication sheet: which file goes to which channel on which date, from which account, with which text. This is what makes the package usable without you.
8. Do a test upload of one asset per channel before the campaign date, on a private or scheduled post. Format problems appear at upload, and finding them a day early costs nothing.

Common pitfalls

What most often goes wrong in practice:

• Sending a download link with eleven files and no explanation of which goes where
• Letting the platform pick a thumbnail that freezes someone mid-blink
• Delivering a file that exceeds the channel's size limit on the morning of the campaign
• Writing the post copy in the delivery email so it disappears the moment the thread grows

With TillyGen

Because TillyGen carries the channel list and the deliverables from the briefing onward, the handover package is assembled against an agreed plan — the number of folders is known before the edit starts, not discovered at delivery.

Change one constraint and the consequences travel through the whole plan: affected shots are flagged, the call sheet is regenerated, and nobody keeps working from yesterday's version.