How to schedule your Facebook posts
Did you know you can schedule your Facebook company posts? Let’s assume you need to post some company news. It’s 10.00 am and you prepare your post content and its accompanying link but the timing of posting it right now is not quite right. You know your audience is more active after 7.00 pm, but you’re not at work after 7.00 pm.
Likewise, you may have different audiences in different time zones. The Facebook scheduling tool will allow you to draft posts and schedule them to publish at a time more suited to a specific audience.
Preparing your Facebook posts and scheduling them to publish later
The process of preparing your Facebook posts now and scheduling for publication later, directly within Facebook (not using a third-party scheduling platform), is really very simple; once you know how to do it.
Your working week might not always be a smooth set of daily tasks with a set allocation of time to complete each task. Like many, you probably have super busy days and days when you could slot in a few more tasks. On these days, you could spend a little more time preparing a few Facebook posts and scheduling them to publish across the following week/fortnight/month. This takes the pressure of your workflow commitments and ensures your company Facebook page is still getting the love it deserves.
A step-by-step guide to prepare and schedule a Facebook post
Create your post
Find the ‘Write a post’ box on your Facebook page’s Home tab.
Click on ‘Write a post’ and the following should appear.
Write your post, just like you would if you were going to write it and publish it straight away.
Enter your link, if you’re sharing a web article. Remember, you can add a URL and once Facebook loads the image and meta tags for that link, you can then remove the typed linked from your post.
Do NOT press ‘Share Now’ at the bottom of the screen (pale blue box).
You need to select the ‘Share Now’ box with the drop-down arrow to the right of it instead.
Now, from the drop-down list, select ‘Schedule’ and Facebook will show you your scheduling options.
Add your desired date and time. Note, you can only schedule posts a minimum of 10 minutes from the time you are preparing the post. For example, if you are preparing your post at 10.00 am, the soonest you can schedule it to publish, is 10.10 am.
If you have set your Facebook profile to the correct time zone, your post will schedule in your time zone. If you have not done this, you will see, next to the time you are selecting, the actual time zone related to the scheduling.
Once you’re satisfied with your post and the date and time you’ve selected for it to be published, hit ‘Schedule’.
What if I need to change the post contents or the date and time schedule?
From time to time, you may schedule your Facebook posts but find you need to make changes to your post. You may need to change the content, the link, the image or the date and/or time you scheduled it to publish.
You can do this under ‘Publishing Tools’ on your company Facebook page. This is located in the top menu.
Select ‘Publishing Tools’ and on the left side menu, select ‘Scheduled Posts’
You’ll then be shown any posts you’ve got in your publication schedule.
To make any changes, you simply click on the post you want to amend and select ‘Edit’ at the bottom of the post. This then gives you the following options:
- Publish (to publish immediately)
- Remove schedule (to remove it from the schedule, meaning it will not publish)
- Re-schedule (to change the date and time it publishes)
- Backdate
- Delete
Note, you also have the option here, to ‘Boost Post’. This is an advertising option for your post.
For more about advertising options on Facebook, have a look at:
- Is Facebook advertising right for your law firm?
- Should I boost that Facebook ad?
That’s a wrap for scheduling your company Facebook posts, using the Facebook platform.
Third-party platforms for scheduling social media posts
There are several third-party platforms for scheduling posts also. These are more likely to be useful if you are scheduling posts across multiple platforms; for example, Facebook and LinkedIn and Twitter.
Many have a ‘free account’ option but you will be limited to how many posts and how many platforms you can use. Some other features are also limited on the free accounts which usually makes it more effective to have a paid subscription if you are publishing regularly and across multiple social media channels.
Three of the most common ones are:
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