Thursday Tutorials: UPDATED: How to Schedule Posts via Facebook

Today's Thursday Tutorial is a guide showing how to Schedule Posts within Facebook. This has changed since the original tutorial posted in February 2014, found here. It's even easier to schedule posts than previously.

For this guide, I'm using one of my fanpages for UO Home Decor, to demonstrate scheduling a post.

Access the page you wish to schedule a post for.  At the top right corner of the status update box, insure that it's set to post as that page, as seen below.

Once verified, click in the status update area. This will generate the box where you can add text as well as the "Publish" button and the drop down button to the right of it. If you click on the down arrow you get a menu like this: 

Note: if you click on "Schedule" at this point and you put the date in and click Save it will error out because there is no text in the status field. So don't try to schedule the post till you have text in the field.

Once you've posted your status for the future, click on Schedule. This window will pop up where you can schedule a date and time.

Fill out the time and date you want and hit schedule.

If you accidentally forget to change the date and hit schedule, the following error message will pop up.

Once you've successfully scheduled the post, the pop-up boxes will disappear and a message like this will appear beneath the status box.

And that's it.

Remember, scheduling posts ahead of time is a great way to keep your Facebook page current and active.

Thursday Tutorials are a series of tutorials designed to help people who may not be as Facebook savvy as other people.  Some tutorials will be targeted towards newbies to the social media world, others will include tutorials for more advanced users.  Thursday Tutorials are written for the layman and are designed with everyone in mind.  You can find all the Thursday Tutorials by clicking on the Thursday Tutorials tag below.

A little apology

I tend to write a month or so of posts at once on a weekend before my work day hits - the exceptions being The Monday Search and sometimes Friday Facts or Saturday Sharings as some of those come across my newsfeed during the week and I just reschedule those posts later for more pertinent posts.

So last weekend, I was coming down with something - I had been coming down with it Thursday into Friday but kinda blew it off.  Resulting in me sleeping Saturday and Sunday away.  I felt immensely better, managed to get Monday's two posts written and went to work.  Felt pretty good on Monday then woke up Tuesday to feeling like I got hit by a semi.  Fever, throbbing headache, body aches, etc.  The full gamut.  I wasn't thrilled by this.  Needless to say, nothing got written Tuesday or the rest of the week because I was getting as much rest as possible when I wasn't at work.

That being said, I've been working through getting posts done for the rest of February and some of March this past weekend and plan to do more writing during the week so that the lapse doesn't happen again.

Thanks to everyone who keeps reading this blog.  Viewership has increased, which is why I am upset on missing posts for almost a week.  Hope everyone understands and is doing well themselves.

Saturday Sharing: Reflections

I haven't really talked about this here because it's not really something related to social media, but because of the topic I'm about to talk about today it's pertinent.  There were a lot less posts in October and November than previous posts as well as a lot less promotion of my own material because I've had a lot going on in my real life.

What I haven't mentioned is we're buying a house and are in the process of closing, cleaning and moving.  The big move happens just before Thanksgiving, but that doesn't mean we haven't been busy before that. We've been going through stuff.  Packing. Sorting. Selling.  Donating.  Rinse and repeat. On top of that we have had school stuff going on, craft fairs, filling custom orders (especially the first half of October), writing blogs, NaNoWriMo, and our day jobs.  So often times when it's come down to me just sitting down and writing my blog posts I've been tired or just wanting to vegetate by playing video games - yes I play video games and enjoy the relaxation.  And I also realize that Warlords of Draenor is releasing and I want to play that but i have so many other obligations....so I know i have a lot of planning to do.

Unfortunately what I have noticed for any site I write for, if I don't have the posts written ahead of time, they won't get written and they won't get promoted as quickly and my monthly hits drop - drastically.  I know this is true for anyone, but some times it's hard to accept that.  Thus, this reflection.  Many people don't realize if they don't post regularly, even daily or almost daily, to their website or blogs and promote it, people lose interest and don't come back. You have to do what you can, despite your crazy schedule, to get things posted ahead of time.

I was horrible at this in October because I had two writing jobs due and they killed my ability to write anything else.  And as I will be transitioning back to full time writing again, I anticipate this happening again, but I need to strive to do better.  And I will strive to do better.

All of this being said, I am looking for guest and regular writers for this blog and other sites I own/run.  Please feel free to contact me if you are interested.

Sunday Reflections: The last month

I've often mentioned if I don't get posts written ahead of time, they won't get done and posted on time like they're supposed to.  The lack of posts from the past few weeks is a perfect demonstration of that.  Real life stresses, writing for my day job, other things going on and me just wanting to relax and not do any writing on the weekends led to these posts being behind or, in many cases, not completed at all.

Seeing as November is NaNoWriMo month, in which I am actively going to be participating, and the fact we are buying a house and moving into said house, I am making an effort to have the posts scheduled ahead of time so that all I have to do, in some cases, is put in last minute details.  Other posts will just be scheduled out and ready to go.  I'm also trying to have posts ready to go on other sites I write for so that I don't get overwhelmed and buried again.

As always, I am looking for questions to answer as part of the blog as well.  Please feel free to leave them as comments here or anywhere else.  Also, if you're interested in being a guest blogger on a regular basis (or even just once or twice,) feel free to contact me.

Tuesday Tips: June is National Safety Month - Plan Accordingly

As part of Tuesday Tips, I will provide an occasional guide on relevant things you can potentially post about during the week.  As May comes to an end, looking at June provides us with a bunch of things to potentially post about.

If you own a business where working safely is important, there are a lot of safety tips that can be shared from the National Safety Council.  All you have to do is sign up to receive a weekly email that provides tips and hints that you can post.

Some things may be good reminders for non-industry environments as well - it all depends on who your audience is.

Check them out and see what they have to offer when you're planning out posts you can schedule ahead of time for June.  Never know what might be of use.

Tuesday Tips are a series of tips released on Tuesday each week regarding a hint or tip to help you manage and market your Facebook presence better.  You can find all the Tuesday Tips by clicking on the Tuesday Tips tag below.

Thursday Tutorials: How to Schedule Posts via Facebook

Note: There's an updated version of this article here.

Today's Thursday Tutorial is a guide showing how to Schedule Posts.  A follow up guide will show you how to access scheduled posts and change when they are posting or how to delete them.

For this guide, I'm using one of my fanpages for UO Home Decor, to demonstrate scheduling a post.

Access the page you wish to schedule a post for.  At the top it should say: "You are posting, commenting, and liking as YOUR PAGE NAME — Change to YOUR NAME".  If it doesn't say this and it has "You are posting, commenting, and liking as YOUR NAME — Change to YOUR PAGE NAME," click to change it to your page name - that way you are acting as the page admin.   Scroll down to where you post a status and click in it to type your post.

You should see these options below your status window area.

The button to the left, that looks like a clock, is the scheduler.  The button immediately to the right of that that looks like a pin is the location tool which allows you to put a location with a post.

Click on the clock icon and the following should appear:

This allows you to set a date and time for it to publish.

Click on the calendar to set the date.  Use the arrow keys to change the month, then just click on whatever date you want.

The date will auto-fill in and the calendar view will disappear once you've clicked on the date you want.  You can alter this information at any time, including after you hit the schedule button, but that will be covered in another tutorial.

If you click in the "Add a Time?" box, it will let you type in a number, then provide a drop down menu to select AM or PM and a specific time from.  It looks something like this:

Select the time you want. 

Now, if you click in the status box to write your post, the options above will disappear, but you will still see the "Schedule" button instead of the "Post" button.  You don't have to set up the time and date before you type your post, but I find it helps with not accidentally posting a post if you set the time up before you create the post.

Once you create the post, just hit Schedule and it's saved.  You can change between Status, Photo/Video and Offer/Event, but I suggest selecting what you want prior to scheduling it to help with efficiency.

So now that you know how to schedule posts, you may be asking why you want to schedule posts.  The answer is simple.  If you are busy with work or attending an event or on vacation, scheduling posts allow the posts to post for you without you having to worry about it.  You should still have some page admin checking things.  But it also allows you to plan some things out in advance and not have to worry about it each week - especially if you do weekly questions or memes.

Thursday Tutorials are a series of tutorials designed to help people who may not be as Facebook savvy as other people.  Some tutorials will be targeted towards newbies to the social media world, others will include tutorials for more advanced users.  Thursday Tutorials are written for the layman and are designed with everyone in mind.  You can find all the Thursday Tutorials by clicking on the Thursday Tutorials tag below.

Tuesday Tips: Schedule Posts

One of the simplest things you can do is to schedule posts for upcoming events, sales, or other topics to automatically post on your Facebook page.  It takes a little bit advanced planning, but is well worth it in the long run.

Facebook has a nice system set up for scheduling posts and a recent upgrade to the system made it even easier.  You can tell it what day and time to post the blurb, image, video, or whatever.

If you're more tech savvy, you can schedule posts using Hootsuite to post to multiple social media sites.

If you want to learn how to schedule posts, check out this week's Thursday Tutorial, which will show you how to schedule posts via Facebook - we'll do Hootsuite at a later time.

Tuesday Tips are a series of tips released on Tuesday each week regarding a hint or tip to help you manage and market your Facebook presence better.  You can find all the Tuesday Tips by clicking on the Tuesday Tips tag below.