Facebook have introduced post scheduling for your Facebook Page. This will help to solve some of the issues with EdgeRank that occur when you schedule posts via third party software. Let's walk through getting you set up and using this awesome feature.
Been Looking For An Efficient Way To Schedule Posts For Your Facebook Page in 2012?
Many Facebook Admins have been experimenting with this for awhile. Third Party apps are not given the same priority as posting manually to Facebook, so it has been a challenge and consistent search to find a way to be more efficient AND keep your EdgeRank score or "People Talking About This" numbers up.
Some Social Scheduling Options
Popular social media dashboards and scheduling tools that many use regularly:
- Hootsuite
- Social Oomph
- Crowdbooster
- Buffer
The platforms above all have features that help with time efficiency, but the priority in the newsfeed could not be exactly determined. Further, there are several case studies that note those posts were not often seen by fans in their Facebook news feed.
Facebook Joins The Club
[caption id="attachment_2829" align="alignright" width="300"]
Image credit: Mashable[/caption]
We're half-way through 2012, but Facebook began offering a way to schedule future posts. Right on your Facebook Page so that you can do things like:
- Go to the gym.
- Teach a class.
- Eat dinner.
- Service your customers.
Isn't that great!
The feature is so new, we have no idea how this will affect PTAT scores. However, it would be logical that Facebook would prioritize these scheduled posts higher than the 3rd party apps.
How Facebook Scheduling Works
The image above shows you that once you click to type your post, the clock icon will appear in the bottom left corner. You will click that clock to choose date and time.
Here's a video that walks you through, step-by-step:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j40lYEwaNh4
Pretty simple, eh?
The video explains that you will see any posts you scheduled for the future in your Activity Log, accessed from the Admin Panel.
Your Activity Log also signals you to other activities happening on your page:
- Summary of recent posts.
- Posts made by others on your wall.
And now, you will see the scheduled posts there too. Here's an example of a single scheduled post seen in Idea Girl Media's activity log:
At first, the way the date and time must be noted is unexpected. But once you do it once, it's really quite simple!
Are you happy that Facebook now offers the scheduling feature?
Will you use it?
Please tell me your thoughts in the comments box below... :)
To reach Social Prize (mentioned in the video) on Facebook and learn more, click here.
28 Replies
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This is fine and dandy till you need to post to several places and need to schedule many posts,then it’s a pain in the ass. You could instead try a free app that does the scheduling a lot faster and easier, try it out at facebookplanner(dot)com , it has a lot of other useful features for serious marketers.
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Kelly, Thank you for stopping by to read my post. Since you’re replying to a post written in 2012, the world has changed quite a bit since then for sure! There are far more options than when the post was originally written, and many, many plausible tools. Considering all, though, it is a good idea to know how to use the Facebook scheduler. For beginning marketers, this may help them understand what tools they can upgrade to, and how to rate them according to their needs. Marketers would surely have a list of tools they keep in their marketing ninja belt. I’d recommend considering tools that: * Offers real functions that help solve real social media marketing problems. * Offer information on real features the tool will perform along with some pricing structure. * Offers available reviews by real users. * Can offer quotes by well-known leaders in the Facebook Marketing and Social Media Marketing niches. * Is actively pursuing an awareness campaign including social media marketing influencers. * Can show strong ties to country origins in countries where major social media use is taking place. So, if a website shows originating from Romania, for instance, and the main audience is in USA, Canada, Australia, and UK, it’s credibility may be subject to questions. If there are other items that should be on the list, let me know. Thanks for sharing your thoughts! ~Keri
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Bundle Post is a way more effective and efficient option for this and all other networks. #justsayin 🙂
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Robert, I do like BundlePost, you know that. I have found that organic posts do a bit better for me. However, I think a true dog-to-dog comparison would be quite the merited project. Game? ~Keri
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FYI in my browser, your floating share widget has obliterated the entire article. I would have loved to read it.
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Michele, Thank you for your comment! I had been traveling and working with someone to upgrade and re-configure my site. You probably stopped by in the midst of things. I hope you’ll stop back and give me another chance. My sincere respect for your honestly. ~Keri
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Thank you so much for this post, I’m a newbie but I have been looking for new ways to utilize my facebook! This really helps!
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Sarah, Glad you felt the information was helpful. The scheduling feature still needs some tweaking, but I’m confident they will develop it well. Thank you for your comment, ~Keri
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Well I guess when your stocks are plummeting to the ground you take the time to focus more on the business area also 😉 Let’s hope for more improvements like this!
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Victor, Facebook surely has it’s work cut out. But I think these improvements were planned far before the stocks plummeted. We can all hope for more improvements — That never hurts! 🙂 Thanks for your comment, ~Keri
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Hi Keri, I’m very pleased to have met you and look forward to connecting with you further. I’m potentially very excited about this feature but it would need to allow for posting photos to be most valuable. I love your video showing us how to use it. I just tried it and right now it wasn’t allowing to schedule the time so maybe there is a glitch at the moment. Warmly Kris
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Kristoffer, Great to meet you too! I agree – The scheduling feature without photos does not make this very appealing. I too tried to schedule a post today with no luck. Must have been a Facebook glitch. They also call them “upgrades.” 😉 Glad the video was helpful, though — Feel free to watch again when Facebook Scheduling is working. Thanks for your comment, ~Keri
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Thanks for your helpful topic. I think, I’ve need to learn about Facebook scheduling feature. Because really I’ve no idea about it.
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Dane, Facebook scheduling is easy – The video above should guide you through step-by-step. If you have any questions, please do feel free to post here. Thanks for your comment, ~Keri
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This is true that I’m a learner.Really I’ve no experience about Facebook scheduling feature.i want to learn from your by this nice helpful topic.
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James, Hope you find this and other posts helpful. Most of my posts are meant to include tips and insight. Please feel free to ask any questions that you have. Thanks for stopping by and reading, and sharing your thoughts, ~Keri
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This is definitely one more welcome improvement from Facebook. Thanks for sharing!
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Melonie, So far, I like this feature – It is indeed a welcome improvement! I’ve not found the interaction rates down, like I experience with Hootsuite & other 3rd party apps. I’m curious to see/hear what others are finding. Thanks for your comment, ~Keri
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Thanks Keri just what I needed to know in a simple straight forward way. I’ve been using Hootsuite but I’m going to give this a try and see if there’s any difference.
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Sue, Glad I could be of help! 🙂 Please let me know about your results once you use the Facebook scheduling feature. I’m curious to hear about findings and successes. Thanks for your comment, ~Keri
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My phd research was on factors contributing to perceptions of distance online. I’ve been studying these spaces for a long time. My daily podcast is relatively new. I’ve only been doing that for a little more than a year (400th episode tomorrow). Most of my fan base comes from the confluence of people discovering podcast fiction on iTunes (40 new listeners every day there) and those who are finding me on Amazon (10-15 new readers a day). With something over 25,000 fans world wide for the podcast fiction, I have a bit of leverage when the print versions get published. (Yes, the audio was published years before the print.) With that level of growth, adding a couple of dozen readers per month on my blog isn’t really a high priority. Which isn’t to say I don’t need to fix up the blog a bit. It’s a case of Cobbler’s Children and I *do* need to bring all the various blogs under a single brand. That work is underway right now. And yes, the “writerly life” is mostly boring to watch/read about. Taking time to write a 500 word post about it means half an hour when I’m not writing fiction. Worse, the time management challenges aren’t lessened as much as I’d hoped. I’m still struggling with the same balance of family and work that most people do. That’s made more difficult as the work-at-home person, I get a lot more of the “could you do…?” stuff. Although I’ll confess, life is made a lot easier by the income that I make as a writer, compared to what I used to make teaching graduate school. I’m planning to be at the NMX in Las Vegas. I’ve already penciled the dates onto my calendar and will continue to work with the podcasting planners about a slot on the program. I look forward to meeting you there. Should be a lively discussion.
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Nathan, It does sound like you have a formula working for you. The podcast seems very successful — Daily, wow! iTunes, I’m hearing from others, is bringing them a lot of success. In regard to writing and blogging. Accept my words, or don’t. There are many authors using their blogs as “rough drafts” of their books. So writing for their blogs serves dual purpose. In turn, they are attracting a new audience, pleasing their current, and moving their books forward all at the same time. Should you also embed your podcasts, I’d think you’d see quite a difference in what happens in your world. However, that is not the only way of getting things done. I too am considering NMX Las Vegas, but am seduced by the Content Marketing World in September, very close in location to me. As I examine desired and potential outcomes, that may be a good choice for me as I look at a year’s time of activities. Should I head to NMX, I will certainly look forward to meeting you there!! 🙂 Always up for a lively discussion, ~Keri
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I’m a “never schedule” guy with most social media. I *will* stack a blog post to drop once in a great while. Having the ability to put a post up in the middle of the night was handy when I ran a blog showcase site and needed to have a new post drop on even-numbered days. It allowed me to get ahead of the workload. For Facebook and Twitter? No. I never, ever schedule. As a full time fiction author, I rely on those channels too much for building immediacy to use scheduling tools. Social presence needs immediacy more than content. The other side of that coin is that my strategy is firmly rooted in micro-marketing and the idea of “regular posts” and “killer content” in order to “build traffic” aren’t part of that strategy. It’s true that I *do* need to post more often, because my fanbase *really* wants to be kept in the loop. The boring life of a fulltime author doesn’t offer much in the way of update-worthy communication. And I use a daily, twenty minute podcast for those die-hard fans who just want to know *everything* about the writing life. My website isn’t where people find me, it’s where I collect the people who have already found me. The goal is not to build my blog’s readership (or even my social media presence on FB or the Twitters). The goal is to build readership for my fiction. I recognize I’m an outlier in this data set, but so far it’s working.
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Nathan, Glad your approach is working for you! You seem to be talking about the importance of “real time” media. It is certainly a way of proving authenticity! I can tell you that my blog is my social media embassy and my social networks are the outposts. This model is built on many proven cases. I’ll tell you that when my blog stops, so does everything else. You may be achieving success where others would not, as you are using podcasting in your approach/strategy. That is like a verbal blog, so it’s place being your embassy almost proves that something must always be going. Is the life of a full time author boring? Only you can tell me. But we are both publishers, by current definition, and I would say there is always something exciting to say! 🙂 As a social media professional, I would advise that building your blog would indeed build readership for your fiction. As one blog post equals one page. One unit of posts equals a chapter. A series of posts/chapters equals a book. This method has been quite successful for many authors you see referenced in popular lists today. You said you are hoping to present at BlogWorld Las Vegas. Hopefully we’ll meet there and can discuss further. Thanks for your comment, ~Keri
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Hello Keri, I like the feature. I use it but so far it hasn’t replace me using HS and BufferApp. Though, I’m curious to hear how third party apps are reacting to this change. Jocelyn
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Jocelyn, I too like the feature. I’ve experimented with it a little, and with text updates it seems to be just great. There is no question – posts sent via 3rd party apps get less priority on Facebook, and the interaction rates are considerably less. Do I occasionally schedule a post so people will have information when I will not be available? Yes. Will I use Facebook over Hootsuite? Not sure… When I heard the photos were not posted with the scheduled text, this concerned me. As many of my desired posts involve images, I’m wondering how Facebook will fix this — Curious to experiment quickly here. Should that go well, for me, Hootsuite might not be needed to facilitate Facebook. So far, the scheduled posts on Facebook seem to be getting a good interaction. Please let me know what you find over time. Thanks for your comment, ~Keri
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Hi Keri! Thanks for your update on this topic! Should be interesting to see the different PTAT (People Talk About This) scores between FB and third parties apps. What is your experience with the different third parties apps you are mentioning in the post? I use Hootsuite. -Mattias
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Mattias, Thank you for stopping by and commenting! I’m curious to see how recent Facebook developments will affect the PTAT scores. Third party apps can help generate interaction, which contributes. Pinvolve has been a really great source of new fan attraction. Involver makes the videos look great, and adds credibility. ContactMe has been good for making human connections in this digital world. Have you plugged any of the apps in on your page? ~Keri
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