How and Why to use Facebook’s Biz Page Post Scheduler

It’s easy to forget that Facebook business pages have their own post schedulers. Facebook doesn’t promote its own native scheduling program much, even though Facebook discourages page administrators from scheduling posts using third-party applications like Hootsuite and Buffer. Facebook seems to want everyone to post live all the time, which is, frankly, ridiculous. If you’re going to encourage companies to buy ads and pay to promote posts, you’re going to have to accept other common business practices like, oh, let’s say, not waking up at 3am just to post something for customers in another time zone.

I recently switched from Hootsuite to Facebook’s native scheduler. I wanted to see if my posts would get more views, likes and comments, because I suspected that Facebook would show posts made with its own scheduler to more people than posts made with a third-party scheduler. Unfortunately, Facebook just cut everyone’s reach last week, so my experiment was a bust. Still, Facebook scheduler allows you to tag other pages in your scheduled posts, something you can’t do with third-party applications, so I’m sticking with it for now.

Here’s an illustrated Facebook biz page scheduler how-to. Click on any image to see a larger version in another browser window.

You can schedule as many posts as you like
with Facebook’s native scheduler.

 

It’s actually pretty annoying to have to manipulate each of these drop-down boxes every single time you schedule a post. Wait until you schedule several in a row, and you’ll see! Don’t forget that you can also backdate posts in order to create a history of your company on your Timeline.

 

This dialogue appears VERY briefly after you hit “schedule.”
If you’re quick, you can confirm the day and date.

 

To really confirm your post, you’ll have to view the Activity Log.

 

The Activity Log shows you exactly what your post will look like. You can also use the Activity Log to change the visibility of your posts and comments, and to move your posts around your Timeline to create a company history.

 

Another good reason to use Facebook’s native scheduler: Tagging

The only way to tag another page in your scheduled message is to use Facebook’s own scheduler. Tagging is very important! It’s the way you can give credit to another person or business, recommend them to your followers, ask them a question, or simply get their attention.

 

Have you been using Facebook’s post scheduler? What are your results? Does it seem more effective than using a third-party application? Let us know in the comments below!