How to Schedule a Post on Facebook: A Step-by-Step Guide

Schedule Facebook Post: Facebook shares a significant part of the social media platforms used by netizens worldwide. According to statistics, there are approximately 2.45 billion active Facebook users worldwide. That is quite a tempting number for businesses and brands looking for ways to reach more and more consumers.

Social media has impacted our lives and become a tool for shaping our opinions and manipulating consumer sentiments as per the brands’ desire. The world has slowly but surely realized the power and influence of top social media sites thoroughly. 

It is apparent that big brands are relentlessly competing and targeting Facebook as part of their marketing strategy to gain maximum consumer traffic for their business benefit.

However, no matter how great your targeting strategy is if you miss the opportune time, everything will go to waste.

Hence, the biggest factor that makes successful social media targeting is the right time of the post.  You will get the right impact only when the right message is sent to the consumer at the right time. 

Planning and preparation are the keys to grabbing the right time

Social media marketing has become a permanent feature of any business organization looking to maximize its reach to the common masses. A good marketing strategy can give far-reaching profits to the business organization if implemented well.

You need to effectively manage your social media platforms to reap benefits. That said, you can, without putting in an extra effort, catch the right time for sending the message across to the consumers.

Ways to Schedule Facebook Post

Quintessentially, a Facebook Business Page can schedule posts in two ways:

1. You can use Facebook’s posting scheduler to schedule posts in advance. 
2. You can use third-party schedulers like Hootsuite, Sendible, Sprout social, etc.

Yes, Facebook provides you with inbuilt tools and functionalities to run your Facebook business page smoothly. Facebook’s inbuilt scheduler comes in handy in managing all posts and strengthening your social media marketing strategy. Did you know that you can schedule your post on Facebook? In case you didn’t, here’s how you can?

Running a business Facebook page requires constant hustle. Though content is imperative in reaching audiences, yet maintaining the consistency and constant stream of ideas and posts can be quite a daunting task for even the most experienced social media managers.

From publishing informative posts to projecting your ideas and offers, it requires a lot of work. There are many social media management tools available today, which we will be focused on later.  

Use of Facebook Scheduler

Picking the right trend at the right time and then crafting posts around it can be time-consuming, sometimes leading to missing the time or waiting for the time at odd hours.

Whether you own a big or small business, your marketing strategy will require capturing the audience. It plays a pivotal role in maintaining your presence and keeping in touch with the consumers. 

That’s where Scheduled Facebook posts can help you launch pre-created content at the selected time and day.

Interesting Read: How to Create a Social Media Content Calendar?

Facebook scheduler helps:

1. To post content created beforehand on a fixed date and time. Though scheduled posts can only be done for business pages, this option is not available for personal pages. 
2. It also gives your team leverage to work on content in advance, streamline the posting and run your strategy smoothly rather than always being in a hurry to meet targets.
3. Your team will also get spare time to research more, think more, and divert time judiciously to post interesting content on Facebook on a regular basis. 
4. You can’t just post random content and get away with it. It requires careful planning and commitment to be factually correct and effective. Being constantly active on social media platforms can take its toll on you. 

It answers the question as to why many organizations switch to automated tools for scheduling Facebook posts beforehand?  Scheduling your posts provides you greater flexibility in framing the content at your ease. 

It puts off the burden of frequently organizing content for future posts. It is a good measure to de-stress your marketing team to save time for other creative activities. 

What If There A Change Of Plan?

Well, there is always an option to edit, reschedule and even delete your scheduled posts as the situation demands. So have no worries if there is some kind of deviation in the content of your Facebook posts. 

Your page administrators and editors can always generate and modify the content of your Facebook page. But please be careful that scheduling takes place according to the time zone of your location.

Track and Analyse Your Scheduled Content

Surveying what your competitors are offering goes a long way in running your business. It is always good to get a different perspective on how your scheduled posts look and feel by analysing the content of your rivals.

You can always take hints from the responses that are received by your competitors and shape your content. Make the most of the social media platforms and turn things in your favour.

Scheduling more than required posts could create monotony on your Facebook page. This would make your users lose interest and could decrease your fan base. You don’t want your page to post repetitive and boring content.

Avoid identical posts and refrain from over-posting content. It sends the message to your audience that you are desperate to work this out. This could degrade your value as a brand.

Facebook Scheduler: A Step-By-Step Guide

Let’s go through this comprehensive guide explaining to you the complete process of scheduling your posts using Facebook’s inbuilt scheduler:

Building content

• In order to publish the post, you need to first create it.
• Navigate to the news feed and hit the pages option. 
• First, go to your business’s Facebook page and then hit the publishing tools option.
• Hit the create post button at the top left corner of the page.
• A pop-up window appears with many options. Click on the appropriate button to create content.
• Facebook offers a lot of choices for building attractive content for your posts using images and videos.

Interesting Read: Facebook Boost Post Button: How to Use it and Get Results

Scheduling: setting the date and time

• It is where the actual scheduling of your posts takes place.
• After creating the content for your post, hit the drop-down arrow symbol. 
• Choose the Schedule Post option.
• Choose the date and time according to your convenience.
• Hit the Schedule Post button after completing.

Additional scheduling options

• You can alter, delete or reset the timing of your scheduled post with these settings.
• Navigate to the Publishing Tools button in the left portion of the Facebook page.

• Click on the Schedule Post button present below the Post option.

• Click on the post that you wish to edit.
• Under the Post Preview option, click on the three-dot symbol (…).

• Choose the edit Post button and modify accordingly.
• Further, you can hit the Actions options to reschedule, delete or publish your content.

• You can also track all of the modifications to the post done by you. Click on (…) under Post Preview.
• Chose View Edit History button.

Steps To Backdate A Facebook Post

You can even choose to stop your post from displaying in the news feed.

• Click on the drop-down arrow just next to Publish.

• Hit on Backdate option.

Once you select this option, the post will still be visible, but its news feed will no longer reflect on your page from the date you have chosen.

Making The Most From Facebook Tools

Now that you have learned how to schedule and reschedule your post, you can take the next step forward. Choosing the timing of scheduling goes a long way in leaving an impact on your target audience.

The Page Insights option present in your Facebook business page is a quite helpful tool. It informs you about the best times to post your content. 

It is always good to post when a majority of your followers are online on Facebook. Analysing the pattern of the data, you can easily calculate and fix a scheduling time. Be mindful when posting content live. 

Always plan beforehand and analyse the trend of the market before scheduling live posts. A wrong move could not go in favour of your business and could possibly upset the followers.

For example, you have scheduled a post that reflects a very happy and cheerful content. Things could go against you if any post is scheduled for a time not favouring the created content. Technology is for the betterment of humankind, but being careful always helps.

Third-Party Post Schedulers to Level-Up Your Social Media Management

Managing your online existence has become very difficult. It requires constant watch and effort to create, manage and publish content. You need to invest time in studying and tracking the trend of your data. What if you get a one-stop solution for all your social media needs?  

As mentioned earlier, apart from the natively in-built Facebook post scheduler, there are many social media tools out there in the market that help you in managing your Facebook content in the same way and, most of the time, a step ahead. Let us discuss a few available options that will schedule your Facebook post without any hassle.

Hootsuite

Hootsuite is the most preferred amongst business organizations on social media platforms. They have also incorporated other social media variants like Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, etc.

You get to schedule posts, present content, observe your page activities, and use the analytics feature before making decisions. You get all features under one roof using this social media management tool.

Sendible

This tool has been present for a very long time. It provides you with features like analytical monitoring, scheduling posts, generating reports, and content publishing. The recycle option in Sendible helps in reviving your popular post feed. It further helps in generating traffic and racking results.

Sprout social

This is also a very popular management tool that allows for dynamic content creation. Itit stores your resources used for creating content in a library.  It even helps to create workflows on your social media management tools. 

The tasks created using SproutSocial always ask for your consent before publishing. It is quite helpful in big business ventures which work as a team with other organizations.

Buffer

From workflows to drafting content, Buffer is a package that allows you to publish, analyse and reply. It is also a great tool to use when working in collaboration with teams of different firms. Its user-friendly interface provides you with the needed information in a single page.

You can schedule posts, create content, see calendar views, customize thumbnails, and invite other users.

Social pilot

It has a popular client base from Amazon, Samsung, to Gartner. All of these use Social Pilot in effectively managing their social media platforms.

It offers the same functionality as mentioned in the above tools. It offers analytics, social inbox, uploading posts in bulk, and enables collaborations.

It also offers content suggestions while creating and curating content. It is also available in the form of an app, browser extension, and web.

All of the listed social media management tools have standard, professional, and advanced or premium packages depending on your page requirements. These automated tools are preferred by business houses because of the multitasking they offer. 

This app allows you to create and manage content, schedule publishing, and also get a professional look for your Facebook page.  You can also avail of the free trial versions but will be restricted to limited features. 

Scheduling Posts is Indeed Helpful

Scheduling posts on Facebook has its own set of pros and cons. It depends on your prowess how you utilize the scheduler to your advantage. Social media platforms are turning to be game-changers in the business world. 

Attracting consumers and clients has never been so engaging and rewarding. The credit goes to social networking sites, which have transformed the entire outlook of business organizations.

Key takeaways

• Scheduling Facebook posts is a good option when your business demands constant content creation.
• The dependency of businesses on content for growth has shaped social media platforms. 
• Scheduling posts on Facebook has its own advantages and disadvantages.
• It is always good to revisit before scheduling and posting live content.
• There are social media management tools apart from Facebook schedulers that assist in a long way.