Facebook – schedule posts
Facebook allows you to schedule posts up to 6 months in advance, meaning that you prepare a post that will be published on your page on a specific date & time in the future that you select yourself. When you decide to schedule posts (to win time, or to ensure continuity on your page on moments when you are busy), make sure to schedule your posts directly on Facebook, and don’t use a third-party tool like HootSuite or SocialOomph. It’s very likely that Facebook’s Algorithm Edgerank will penalize your page when you use external tools.
1. How to schedule posts on Facebook
You just write your update like you would normally do (text, photo, link, page mention, ..), and when you are happy with your post you click on the little clock symbol at the bottom as shown on the screenshot below:
Once you click on the clock you will be able to select your desired date & timing in the future, and ‘future’ can be the same day but at least 10 minutes later. Date selected, and timing filled in? Just hit the blue “Schedule” button. That’s all folks!
2. How to backdate posts on Facebook
Facebook & the way it works changes all the time > a while ago you could just fill in a date in the past, and you were done. Now this is not possible anymore, and you need to click on Schedule Post to get a dropdown with the option “Backdate Post” allowing you to put the post on your timeline but with a date & timing in the past, like shown on the screenshot below.
To be honest I never use this functionality. For an important event that is already over, it’s more interesting to use a Milestone post instead. Next to that you should also know that when you backdate your post, people might still see it in their newsfeed immediately after you posted it. On your Timeline it will be shown at the appropriate place related to the date that you have set.
3. Check or edit your scheduled posts in your Acitivity Log
When you often schedule posts I strongly recommend to check your Activity Log, where your scheduled & published posts are collected, on a regular basis. I have nothing against scheduling as long as your still in control => it’s possible that you scheduled a post about an event that has been cancelled… In Belgium it was recently announced that Heinz Belgium will close, and that all the people that work there will lose their job. That same day on the Belgian Facebook Page of Heinz Belgium there was a post published to celebrate Heinz Day, that same day… This was probably scheduled, and nobody thought of removing this…a very painful situation!
Next to posts that have become irrelevant you may also expect interaction when you post, so in my case I only try to post when I’m available to follow-up, and luckily to follow-up I only need a smartphone and the Facebook Pages Manager App to alert me when there is an interaction, where ever I am as long as there is highspeed internet 🙂
To go to your Activity Log, you click on “Edit page” (see top of your page) and select “Use Activity Log”.
You will then get an overview of your scheduled posts in chronological order. Normally you will also be able to “edit” your scheduled posts. A while ago Facebook added this functionality allowing Facebook Page Managers to edit their posts, but as with all their updates they don’t roll it out for everyone at the same time (like Facebook Graph Search)… I manage several pages and for 90% of the pages the Edit functionality is available. If this functionality isn’t available yet for your page, you’ll only be able to edit an update containing an image that you uploaded directly on Facebook. In that case you click on the picture in your Activity Log, and you’ll be able to update the description.
What kind of updates can you schedule?
You can schedule status updates containing links, photos & videos. Unfortunately cover photos, photo albums, events, milestones, offers & shares of other pages posts’ can’t be scheduled. Sometimes there are workarounds, for example you can schedule shared posts on your Facebook Page via Buffer. But as mentioned earlier, I advise against this because of Edgerank.
I truly hope this article is useful to you, and as always please don’t hesitate to get in touch in case of questions or remarks;-)