Timing Is Everything: Facebook Tutorial

I discovered something interesting by accident last week. How many times have you said to yourself Damn, I wish I could schedule my Facebook updates so that they’d post at a later time?  Well, guess what? Now you can – at least from your “page” anyway. (I’ve not seen a way to do it from my personal profile.)

Facebook Fan Page

So, go to your page, and start typing in an update to all your fans. You can even upload a photo – anything you want to schedule to post at a later date. The strange thing about this (if you haven’t already “set it up”) is that once you click the little clock in the bottom left-hand corner of your posting window, you go to another screen, and moving forward will blow away what you’ve written. Make sure to copy it before you do anything else. NOW, click on the little clock.

Of course, nothing is quite that simple. If you haven’t already, you’ll need to enter the date either YOU or your business began. That’s your call. Use the drop-down arrow next to “start type” and select which one you want. Then, in the date area, select which year, month, etc.

Schedule a Facebook postThis will make a bunch of updates and erase whatever you had written/uploaded into your post window. So now you need to paste (if you copied as I suggested) or you can just start over. You may have to navigate away from your page and come back to it for the new changes to take effect.  Once you’ve entered the information you want to share, then click on the little clock and voila! You will get a little screen asking you for year, month, etc. When you’re done, click on schedule!

Schedule that Facebook Post

Confirmation!Your status update will disappear and you’ll get a confirmation message complete with instructions of what to do if you want to change the timing.

This is a super handy tool if you’re going to be traveling. Before you leave, you can  sit for a bit and schedule as many status updates as you like (as far as I know), and not have to worry about keeping people entertained while you’re away. Now spiffy up your fan page – because tomorrow we’re having a Facebook Like-fest.

Author: K.S. Brooks

K.S. Brooks is an award-winning novelist, photographer, and photo-journalist, author of over 30 titles, and executive director and administrator of Indies Unlimited. Brooks is currently a photo-journalist and chief copy editor for two NE Washington newspapers.  She teaches self-publishing and writing topics for the Community Colleges of Spokane, and served on the Indie Author Day advisory board. For more about K.S. Brooks, visit her website and her Amazon author page.

24 thoughts on “Timing Is Everything: Facebook Tutorial”

    1. I’ll tell you a secret, Yvonne – I discovered it completely by accident. It was a matter of “what the heck is that round thing” and clicking on it. LOL

  2. Oh wow! I really needed this info Kat – thank you very much indeed. I shall now be able to splat my status at any time of the day or night and not stay up all the time to catch the traffic form the US. Brilliant!

    1. THat’s a one-time thing, Jim. Once you’re set up, you can schedule as many as you want whenever you want without having to go through that process again. 🙂

      1. I guess because of my rather “liberal” farming schedule, I can do posts when I want. So I was trying to find the reasoning for the date/timed post thing. If I’m doing a book launch, I just schedule an event and invite folks. Other than an occasional reminder, I leave it at that.

        1. Time differences. Travel. You name it. If you’re trying to reach a UK audience, and you want some posts to go live their time (which also spur tweets) – then setting up timed posts is the way to go – for me anyway – since I’m 8 hours behind the UK.

  8. I’ve noticed that icon, but never attempted to figure out what it was. I probably would have gone the rest of my life not knowing about it out of pure laziness if nothing else :). Thanks!

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