Just before I headed off on my half term hols (lots of Jubilee fun too) - I discovered that Facebook had launched a feature to allow us to schedule posts direct from Facebook. It's super simple and I have found on my return that now it is actually working despite initial teething troubles.
How to Schedule a Facebook Post (from Facebook!)
I'm not sure they could make it any more straight forward - just click the blue clock, (I have delicately highlighted it with the red arrow ;) Then simply fill in the drop downs one by one as they appear on the screen, year, month, day, hour, minute. Other than that post as normal!
Head over to your activity log, which is found under the 'Edit page' tab in admin in order to see all your scheduled posts and if you want to edit them just click on the drop down arrow that appears when you hover over in the top right hand corner of the scheduled post.
Scheduling Posts on facebook - Pros and Cons?
The pros are so obvious for time management, but I've always been dubious about scheduling from 3rd parties unless absolutely necessary as I can't help feeling from clients stats I've looked at that Facebook penalises you for using them to write posts. I've asked these 3rd parties directly and they say this is NOT the case... but it's a hunch of mine that I can't shake.
If you aren't on facebook itself you don't see the advertising, so my cynical self believes that Facebook has the power to tweak it's algorithm so those who post direct get more reach as a result. True or not, I don't take the chance and I always post direct on Facebook unless I'm away from my desk when I use a 3rd party. So I'm really excited about this new feature!!! (I'm probably paranoid anyway!)
I hope we get even more great features from Facebook as they continue to monetise the site. If they want us to pay for posts to our fans, we need more features to help us connect with them. Read the fascinating discussion about promoted posts on my blog post from a few weeks ago here - feel free to add to the debate - will you be connecting your paypal account to fb for the occasional boost in reach?!
My top 'want it' feature would be a history of interaction/activity with a fan or other fan pages so we can identify top fans and pages that we quite literally 'click' with, without having to resort to spammy third party apps that try and sell us bingo and email us every 10 minutes.
I'd love to hear what features you would like to see and what you think about scheduling fb posts and my slightly neurotic stance on it!? Post a comment below...