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Most teams blast through Metricool's signup and end up with the wrong time zone, the wrong plan tier, and no team structure — then wonder why reports don't add up. This walks through a clean setup the first time.
Who this is forFounders or marketing leads creating their first Metricool workspace, or anyone moving from Hootsuite/Buffer who wants to avoid carrying old mistakes across. If you're managing 2+ brands or 5+ social channels, the setup decisions you make in the first hour will define your reporting for the next year.
What you'll need
Step 1
Free, Starter, Advanced, Custom — channel and brand limits differ. Picking wrong now means downgrading channels later and losing historical data.
Metricool's plans gate by number of brands (workspaces) and number of social profiles per brand. Free gives you 1 brand and 1 profile per network. Starter unlocks unlimited connections for 1 brand. Advanced unlocks multiple brands.
If you run 1 brand and have Instagram + TikTok + Facebook + LinkedIn + X, you need Starter. Free will let you connect one of each and silently cap the rest.
If you manage 2-10 client brands, Advanced is the only correct tier — multi-brand on Starter is not a feature you can hack around.
Best move: start with the lowest tier that fits all your channels for 90 days. Metricool's annual billing is meaningfully cheaper, but don't commit annual until you've used the tool daily for 4 weeks.
Verify pricing in your country — Metricool runs in EUR by default and prices vary by region.
Step 2
Workspace time zone drives every scheduled post, every analytics window, and every CSV export. Change it later and you break historical reports.
Open Settings → Brand settings → General. Set the brand time zone to where your audience actually lives, not where you live.
A US e-commerce brand with a UK founder should set the time zone to ET or PT (where the buyers are), not GMT.
If you serve global audiences, pick the time zone of your single largest market. Metricool best-time-to-post analytics use this as the reference frame.
Inside the Planner, you can override per-post if needed — but the brand-level setting is the default for every schedule.
Avoid changing time zone after 30 days. It re-anchors your historical data and the best-time charts get confusing for the next quarter.
Step 3
Brands in Metricool are workspaces. One agency client = one brand. Sub-locations of the same business = also separate brands if reporting must be split.
If you are an in-house team running one company, you almost certainly need one brand.
If you are an agency managing 6 clients, that is 6 brands — never try to manage multiple clients inside one brand. Reports cross-contaminate.
If you are a multi-location business (3 GMB locations, 3 Instagram accounts), the question is: do executives want one rolled-up report or 3 separate ones? Rolled-up = 1 brand. Separate = 3 brands.
Brands are not free on Advanced and up — adding the 6th brand may push you into a Custom plan. Know your seat math before you commit.
Step 4
Add the brand, set the industry, country, and language. Then invite teammates with the right role: Admin, Editor, Approval, or Viewer.
In Metricool, Settings → Brands → Add brand. Name it after the company (not the year or campaign).
Set Industry — this powers the competitor suggestions and benchmark data later.
Country and language drive default hashtag suggestions, content ideas, and report localization.
Invite teammates: Admin (full control), Editor (can post but not change settings), Approval (can review queued posts before publish), Viewer (analytics only).
Most teams over-grant Admin. Default new teammates to Editor — promote only when needed.
Step 5
Connect your most-active channel first. Verify analytics back-fill happens, then connect the rest. Doing all 8 at once makes it impossible to debug a failure.
Pick the channel you care most about (usually Instagram or TikTok).
In the dashboard, click Connect channel. Authenticate via the channel's OAuth flow — you'll be redirected to Instagram/Facebook/etc., approve permissions, then back to Metricool.
Wait 5-10 minutes. Metricool will back-fill up to 90 days of historical analytics on most channels.
Open the analytics dashboard for that channel. Confirm you see real follower counts, recent posts, and engagement numbers. If numbers are zero or "Connection error" shows, fix that one connection before continuing.
Once one channel is fully working, the next setup tutorial covers connecting the rest.
Step 6
Metricool can email you a weekly performance digest and notify on engagement spikes — but the defaults are noisy. Tune them once and forget.
Settings → Notifications. Turn ON: Weekly performance summary, Failed scheduled post, New comment on connected post.
Turn OFF: Every-post notifications, daily digest (it's redundant with weekly), and competitor activity alerts (you'll tune those separately).
Set the weekly digest to land Monday morning. That's when leadership wants the prior week's data.
For agencies: enable per-client digest emails so clients can opt into their own weekly summary without you forwarding.
Step 7
Schedule one test post, verify it publishes, check analytics, and pull a one-week report. If any step fails, fix it before adding the team.
In the Planner, schedule a single low-stakes post (e.g., a milestone celebration) for 30 minutes out. Pick one channel only.
Wait for publish. Confirm the post appears on the live channel at the right time, with the right caption and image dimensions.
Open Metricool Analytics → check the post appears in the recent posts list within 1-2 hours.
Export a one-week report. Verify the data matches what you see natively on the channel.
If anything doesn't line up — usually time zone or channel-type mismatch — fix it now before scaling.
Common mistakes
Picking Starter when you need Advanced
What goes wrong: You hit the brand limit two weeks in, downgrade some channels, and lose historical data on the de-connected ones. Re-buying Advanced doesn't restore that data — you wasted the first month of analytics.
How to avoid: Map out your real channel + brand count before signing up. If you manage even 2 client brands, start on Advanced. The $20/mo delta is cheaper than redoing the setup.
Leaving the time zone on auto-detect
What goes wrong: Posts schedule in your laptop's local time, not your audience's time zone. Half your scheduled queue publishes at 3am for your customers. Engagement craters and you blame Metricool.
How to avoid: Hard-set brand time zone to your audience time zone on day one. Override per-post only when intentionally targeting another region.
Connecting personal accounts instead of business accounts
What goes wrong: Instagram and Facebook block analytics access for personal profiles. You connect via your personal handle, see zero analytics for 3 weeks, and assume Metricool is broken.
How to avoid: Convert Instagram and Facebook to Business/Creator accounts FIRST. Then connect via Facebook Business Manager so Metricool gets the right token scope.
Over-granting Admin to the whole team
What goes wrong: Six people can change the time zone, delete brands, or accidentally disconnect channels. One bad click and the whole queue is gone.
How to avoid: Default everyone to Editor. Admin role only for the 1-2 people who own the workspace. Approval role for stakeholders who review-but-not-publish.
Starting with annual billing before validating
What goes wrong: You commit to a year of Advanced at $50+/mo per brand, then realize Buffer or Loomly fits your workflow better. Refunds are pro-rated at best, often non-existent.
How to avoid: Run monthly billing for the first 4 weeks. Use the tool daily. Only switch to annual after one full monthly billing cycle confirms it sticks.
Skipping the test post step
What goes wrong: You configure 5 channels, schedule a week of content, and discover on Monday morning that LinkedIn rejected everything because of token expiration. A whole week of content gone.
How to avoid: Always schedule one test post per channel on day one. Watch it publish. Confirm analytics return. THEN load the queue.
Recap
Done — what's next
How to connect Metricool to Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, and more
Read the next tutorial
Hand it off
Setting up Metricool once is a project. Running a publishing-and-reporting cadence across 5+ channels every week is a job. A vetted social media manager from EverestX will configure Metricool, build the publishing calendar, and own weekly reporting — typically $400-1,200/mo at $14-16/hr depending on channel count.
See specialist rates
For most teams under 10 channels, yes — Metricool's analytics depth and per-brand pricing beat Hootsuite, and the Planner is more flexible than Buffer. The detailed comparison is in our Metricool vs Hootsuite vs Sprout tutorial.
Most channels back-fill 90 days of post-level analytics within 10-15 minutes of connection. Instagram sometimes takes up to 24 hours. If after 48 hours you don't see history, disconnect and reconnect via Facebook Business Manager.
Yes. Metricool keeps all your data when you change billing cadence. Switching plan tiers up is also lossless. Switching DOWN can de-connect channels you exceed the limit on — read the warning before confirming.
For a single client, Metricool's auto-generated PDF reports are overkill. Starter is fine. The white-label and brand-multiplexing features only pay off at 3+ clients.
Three usual culprits: (1) the IG account is still Personal (must be Business or Creator), (2) it isn't linked to a Facebook Page (required for API access), or (3) you're authenticating via a personal Facebook login that lacks Page admin rights. Convert IG to Business, link a Page, and re-auth.
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