You’ve probably heard lots of talk about the benefits of scheduling your social media posts. Many small businesses though don’t use scheduling tools like HootSuite and rely on good old fashioned manual posting. Last year, Facebook introduced an in-site scheduling tool that many still don’t know about. This simple little tool can make your Facebook strategy much more effective.
The idea behind scheduled posts is that you can spend a little extra time early in the day or early in the week when it’s convenient for you. You can predetermine what you want to post throughout the day or week, or even the month. Once scheduled, you just have to stay alert to comments and engagement. This feature also allows you to take advantage of high engagement times. I often get high engagement early in the morning (before 9 am Pacific time) and scheduling posts for the early hours allows my audience to see the posts without my physically having to be online posting that early in the day.
Prior to Facebook including scheduling tools in their business pages, scheduling had to be done through 3rd party applications. Now, however, you can actually write a post just like normal, right on your Facebook wall, and then just tell Facebook when to post it. Here are simple instructions on how you can use this tool yourself:
1. Start typing a post on your Facebook page
2. Add photos or videos or links as needed
3. Click on the little clock icon at the bottom of the post
4. Select the Year, Month, Day, Hour, and Minute for when you want to schedule your post
5. Once complete, click “Schedule”. You will receive a pop-up notification that your post has been scheduled.
6. To view your scheduled posts you will need to use the Activity Log from your admin panel
The activity log will show you all scheduled upcoming posts. If you need to change the date or time or even delete a scheduled post, you can handle those admin functions from the activity log.
You can schedule posts for any period of time in the future (or past) – from minutes away to months away. You can schedule up to a maximum of 6 months into the future. Facebook also requires scheduled posts to be at least 15 minutes apart.
If you are scheduling many posts on your Facebook page, I recommend that you check your activity log at least once a day to remind yourself what is posting that day and at what times. This way you can be prepared for responses and engagement.
I hope this information helps get you scheduling on Facebook and gives you a little more time to focus on other business responsibilities.
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Thanks Jenn!!!! You just jogged my memory on this valuable tool! Honestly, I read this before but totally blocked it out. Great post!
Great! I’m glad you found it useful Michael!
Thanks! Great tip. I use Hootsuite for Twitter, but didn’t realize I could also schedule posts on Facebook.
You’re welcome Darcy! I use this tool a lot and it makes life so easy.
Nice post, Jenn! Keep on doing great job!
I love FB in-site scheduling tool and use it myself quite often, but it’s not an ideal one and has lots of bugs. For example, sometimes it doesn’t show a proper thumbnail, or doesn’t dowload the chosen picture. I keep refreshing the page like crazy and switch between browsers.
Usually it works fine, but when it won’t I still have to use BuzzBundle [http://www.link-assistant.com/buzzbundle/] that normally runs very smoothly.
My suggestion is to experiment with many tools and have some alternatives for force majeure.
Hey Jenn,
I’ve used this feature in the past but lately have had problems with it because I find that Facebook won’t allow me to schedule for an hour anything beyond the actual time of day. I.e. if it’s only 10 a.m., I can’t schedule for 3 p.m. that day. Doesn’t seem to make any difference if it’s for the same day or a future day. Has Facebook changed this or am I just doing something wrong? I don’t seem to find any options.
That’s very unfortunate and sounds extremely frustrating. I definitely haven’t encountered that problem and I frequently schedule posts for later in the day or for upcoming days. I haven’t had any of the issues you’re describing.
I don’t know how to fix it specifically but I did find this forum discussion that may help: https://www.facebook.com/help/community/question/?id=4786063015069
It might be worth a try. I hope it helps and if not, you might just have to do a little more digging into a solution. Good luck and I hope it works out for you!
I have the same problem…checked out the thread Jenn referenced but none of those solutions has worked for me either
Sorry to hear this Michael. I will look to see if I can find out anything else for those of you encountering this problem.
I really like the idea of scheduling posts on Facebook because people get really ticked off if your business makes multiple posts about themselves in a short time interval. The problem is that the tools that Facebook offers for this are not very good. You have to select a year, specific date, time, etc and the whole UI is just awkward. The best UI for this kind of task is sort of like how Tumblr does it, you just add a post to a queue and decide on how many posts per day you want to make. It’s a little less control for a lot more convenience. I think that Facebook should err on the side of convenience because there are just so many small businesses out there that are relying on Facebook for reaching out to their customers. The mere fact that there are hundreds of companies listed on http://www.buyfacebookfansreviews.com alone really illustrates how many small businesses use Facebook to connect with their fans. Facebook, on the whole, has some great design talent, but they’re not perfect and I think that going to more of a queue style UI would benefit most businesses. There are some third party services that provide this type of system, but I’d think that Facebook would want to improve what they offer directly.
Thanks for your comments on this. I agree that for Twitter, the queue style posts work really well. Personally, I prefer the Facebook scheduling tool for Facebook. It allows me to schedule specific posts at targeted times of the day to reach specific audiences that I know are online at specific times. Rather than just sending out a post every 4 hours, I can make sure that the post that goes out is targeted.
I agree that Facebook isn’t perfect, and at this point I don’t think any scheduling tool out there is. I think we’re all learning to utilize the tools that work best for our pages and needs.
I am really frustrated with trying to find the little clock at the bottom of the box for scheduling! All my box has is Post and Photo/Video (the events option is not there) and the only options in the left bottom are to tag who I am with and the location. Is there something I am missing? Some setting I need to choose or box that needs to be checked? Help please!? =) Has anyone else had this problem? I have googled and googled but can’t find the solution.
Sincerely,
Frustrated Facebooker =(
APeekIntoMyParadise.blogspot.com
Hi Cathy, I’m sorry you’re frustrated. It sounds like you’re using Facebook as a personal page. At this time Facebook doesn’t allow scheduled posts for personal pages, only for business pages. You would have to start a business page to take advantage of the scheduling tools. Here’s the link to Facebook’s instructions on creating a business page: https://www.facebook.com/business/build
Hi and thanks a lot. Unfortunately I didn’t work for me. In my Facebook it let me add a year (up to current year), a month (up to current month) and a day (up to today). Which kills the whole purpose with scheduling…So, what am I missing?
BR,