How to schedule Facebook posts

It’s fair to say content is still king on Facebook. In fact, without continuously engaging your Facebook audience, you may lose credibility, authority and brand loyalty. If the concept of maintaining a steady stream of content seems daunting, don’t worry—we’ll explain how to schedule Facebook posts in advance and automate the publishing process.

Automating your Facebook posts will create a streamlined process for you to focus on your overall Facebook marketing strategy. Your audience never sleeps and neither should your Facebook content stream.

Want to get started right now? Easily schedule your Facebook posts with a free 30-day trial from Sprout Social.

Why you should schedule Facebook posts

Even if you have time to manually publish Facebook posts, here are three compelling reasons to use scheduled posts:

• Life happens. If your internet is down or you just can’t get to your computer, a scheduled Facebook post will still publish at the right time.
• You can be more methodical. When you’re scheduling social media posts for a full month (or longer), you can make sure they support the narrative you want to convey. For example, if you’re running a limited-time offer, you could craft and schedule each Facebook post to build a sense of urgency throughout the month.
• You can accelerate approvals. If a stakeholder or client needs to review posts before publication, you might find approvals happen faster when you present a large batch of posts for review.
• Easier time-tracking. If your job requires time-tracking, you may find that setting aside a block of time for scheduling Facebook posts is easier than tracking your time for each individual post.

How to schedule Facebook posts

You can schedule posts for your Facebook page using either the Meta Business Suite or a third-party scheduling platform (like Sprout Social).

Schedule posts with Meta Business Suite

1. Log into your Facebook account, select Pages in the left menu then click on Meta Business Suite.
2. Click Create post, then write the copy for the Facebook post and attach any images or video. Click on the icons in the upper right corner to preview your post for desktop and mobile.
3. Scroll down to Scheduling and click Schedule. Then choose the publication date and time.

That’s it! You now have a scheduled post. Repeat the steps above to schedule additional posts.

How to schedule Facebook posts with Sprout Social

Here’s how to create scheduled Facebook posts with Sprout:

1. Click the Compose icon to open the Compose window.
2. Click the Profile Picker to select the Facebook pages for your post.
3. Create your post.
4. Select Specific Days & Times from the When to post dropdown, then choose.
5. The date and times for your post.
6. Optionally add more scheduled times.
7. Click Schedule.

Schedule Facebook posts with the Sprout Queue

What do you do when you have meaningful Facebook content, but don’t need to publish at any specific date or time? Use the Sprout Queue.

You can build your Sprout Queue to fill engagement gaps throughout the day with content around product tips, links to thought leadership articles or industry news.

Choose the number of posts per day, your date and times and Sprout will do the rest. To set up your Sprout Queue setup, follow these steps:

1. Navigate to the Publishing tab.
2. Click Sprout Queue.
3. Click Compose and create your post.
4. Choose Auto-schedule with Sprout Queue from the When to post dropdown.
5. Select Queue Next at the first possible time slot or Queue Last to move the post to the end of the queue.
6. Click Queue or Submit for Approval to schedule your content.

Configuring your queue timeline

Sprout’s suite of social media publishing tools places the content in the Queue Timeline for you to choose a specific time or date. There you can identify your publishing time gaps and plan your content.

You can configure this feature to run during specific times or dates. This makes it simple for social media managers to post during the best times to post on Facebook. Select various post times for each Facebook Page.

Sprout’s Queue even makes it simple to see your daily post times throughout all your different social media profiles.

Take advantage of ViralPost

ViralPost is Sprout’s tool for publishing at the most optimal times. Configure ViralPost in your Sprout Queue to publish your queued content at optimal times for audience engagement (only available in Standard Plans and above).

When you use ViralPost, it analyzes your audience’s usage and engagement patterns to determine the optimal times to publish content on your Facebook page.

To configure your ViralPost settings, follow these steps:

1. Navigate to your Publishing settings.
2. Click Sprout Queue.
3. Click Edit for the profile you want to configure ViralPost for. The Configure Queue Settings popup opens.
4. Select ViralPost for the Scheduling Method.
5. Choose whether you want to set your schedule by Individual Day or Weekdays/Weekends.
6. Select the number of times you want to post for each day of the week.
7. Select the time range for your post.
8. Click Save.

Adding Facebook content to the Sprout Queue

It’s always best practice to queue content when it’s top of mind. Draft a message directly from Compose, share content you found on the web with Sprout’s Chrome Extension or add content to the queue directly from the RSS Reader. Whichever type of content you wish to publish on your Facebook page, our tools will suit your needs.

Pro Tip: Add content anytime, from anywhere by queueing content from Sprout Social’s web, mobile or browser extension apps.

Share your calendar

Last but not least, once you have your content in order, easily view, share and collaborate on your content calendar. Sprout’s Publishing Calendar gives you insight into your publishing schedule and more.

Here’s how to view and share your calendar as a PDF:

1. Navigate to the Publishing tab.
2. Click Calendar.
3. Choose List, Week or Month.
4. Select your Date Range, Profiles and Content Types.
5. Click Share.
6. Click Download PDF.

Simplify your Facebook management

Scheduling your Facebook posts makes it simple to manage your content and simplifies the overall Facebook management process.

It allows you to stay one step ahead of the game, reach your target audience at the right times, and reduce the amount of time and effort that goes into manually scheduling content.

Want to improve your organic Facebook reach? Sprout Social’s Publishing features make it easy to schedule posts for Facebook. Sign up for a free 30-day trial and get started!