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How to Schedule Facebook Posts: It’s Fast and FREE!

marketingcawpuser 4 years ago 6 min read

Are you always scrambling to schedule Facebook posts?

Do you forget to hit ‘publish’ and end up missing the window for the content you’ve created?

The answer to the problem is simple – you need to schedule Facebook posts ahead of time!

There are a few ways to do it. Most are free. Some have a small fee but come with extra features.

Let’s dive in to what they are and how they can work for you.

Why schedule Facebook posts?

We’ve all been there – there’s this fun social media holiday you want to post about.

Or maybe you’re planning a sale that you really want to drive traffic to.

But you forget to prepare the post ahead of time. The day comes around and you’re scrambling for the perfect content.

Then something comes up and you forget. The opportunity goes by.

This is why scheduling Facebook posts is so important. You never miss the window to post. You always send something that your audience can relate to.

Plus, you always know what content you need for which day. You can easily see what’s scheduled and where you have any gaps.

You might even find you save time because you can batch jobs. Make a week’s worth of graphics one day, do the captions another, then schedule. Finished!

Once your content’s ready, you can schedule a month’s worth of posts in half an hour! I’ve done it – you can too.

Create the right content

But before you can schedule a thing, you need to have some content ready.

Think about your Facebook content – what’s working that you can use for inspiration? What haven’t you tried for a while?

Refer to your social media content planner or these social media holidays for inspiration. They may seem a bit silly but are great conversation starters.

Using the planner will ensure you have a good mixture of post types.

Create a number of posts to upload in a batch. Aim for a week or even two.

Not a professional designer? Try getting visual content ready with one of these graphic design tools for non-designers.

Many design tools offer easy ways to make picture quotes, and you can always add in a meme or a GIF.

Link posts may not do as well, but if you have a blog, you’ll want them in there too. And even here, you can mix in different ways to post links to Facebook.

How to schedule Facebook posts to your Page

Let’s start with scheduling a post to your Facebook Page and setting it ahead of time.

Pop in your caption and upload any images or content just like you would if you were posting right now. If that’s what you wanted to do, you’d hit the blue ‘share now’ button.

But to schedule the post, click the drop down beside the ‘share now’ option right under the post. You’ll find four options – now, schedule, backdate, and save draft.

Select ‘schedule’ and another box will open. This one lets you choose when you want to schedule the post.

Select the time and date then hit the blue ‘schedule’ button.

You’ll go back to the original screen and now that drop-down menu will show ‘later’.

You’ll need to hit the large blue ‘schedule post’ button at the bottom of the box to complete your scheduling.

Checking the post is scheduled

Want to make sure the post is scheduled? Or remember which posts you have scheduled for when?

Then go to ‘publishing tools’ on the top menu of your page. Along the side menu there’s an option for ‘scheduled posts.’ Click that to see all the stuff due to post in the future.

Amending a scheduled post

That’s not all you can do with this section – you can also change the post.

Select the post and the details will come up. There’s an ‘actions’ drop down at the right side which gives you some choices.

These include to reschedule (change the date) or cancel schedule (make into a draft). You can even delete.

How to schedule via mobile

Scheduling from mobile is even quicker than posting from desktop.

Go to Facebook Pages Manager app, select your Page, and hit the ‘publish’ button on the left-hand side.

You can write in your status, add media and links, then hit continue. Tap on ‘next’ to get publishing options.

Select ‘publishing options’ and you can either select publish now, schedule for later, or save as draft.

Then hit ‘done’ in the top right corner to schedule the post.

You’ll also be able to see posts scheduled via mobile on the desktop app in case you need to change anything.

How to use Creator Studio to schedule Facebook posts

If you want something more comprehensive to schedule Facebook posts, look no further than Creator Studio. This is Facebook’s content publishing and analysis program. Plus, it also includes scheduling to Instagram!

To access it, visit the dedicated page and select ‘create post’ from the top left corner.

You can choose to create a post, add a story, upload video, or even go Live. Plus, you can post a video across Pages if you have more than one.

Select your page then the usual post creation box will open up. Pop in your status and any media or links.

At the bottom, select ‘publish’ and the publishing schedule box appears. Fill in when you want the post to go live and hit ‘schedule’.

Once the post is scheduled, you then need to move to your content library to find it. Here you can see all the posts published but also along the top menu, there’s an option for ‘scheduled.’

As with your Page scheduling tool, you can select the post to amend it, reschedule it, or even see post insights once it has published.

One of the great things about Creator Studio is you can schedule posts to both your Facebook Page and Instagram account in the same place. You can also schedule other Instagram content to save time. Just toggle at the top from one to another.

Creating posts via a scheduler

Another way to schedule posts to Facebook Pages is with a third-party scheduler tool.

So, why would you pay for something you can do for free?

One of the big things I find with scheduler tools is the option to make content ‘evergreen’ – which means it recycles after a certain time.

Say you have some Christmas posts that always do well. You can set them as evergreen for a certain date or period of time. Then the tool will post them out again for you.

No need to try to remember to do it yourself!

It’s optional. You don’t have to use a third-party scheduler. But if you want more control, extra features, and sometimes added analytics, it can be worth it.

Here are some favorite options (prices currently $9–$15 per month; try them out free):

To find engaging content that you can edit and schedule in minutes, try PromoRepublic.

To find viral content to share, and to recycle evergreen content, try Post Planner.

To schedule your blog content on autopilot, try Missinglettr (or read my review here).

Make posting to Facebook simple

Five to seven posts a week is a good posting frequency for most Pages. That’s 21 to 31 posts for any given month.

Batching content and scheduling ahead of time will make running your small business Facebook Page much easier.

You’ll save so much time over posting one-by-one. Imagine stopping what you’re doing, finding what you want to post, and coming up with something to say. That’s surely at least 10 minutes each time you post –if you remember!