How To Schedule Posts For Specific Times And Dates
Changes to Facebook Groups Publishing
Facebook unexpectedly decided to remove Groups API access, preventing any third-party tools, including SmarterQueue, from interacting with your Facebook Groups. After April 22nd, 2024, SmarterQueue will no longer be able to publish directly to groups you manage. You can still schedule posts for these groups, but will receive email notifications for easy manual posting instead. You may also wish to consider transitioning to a Facebook Page for better engagement.
In This Article
How To Set A Post Time & Date
Setting a post time and date has never been easier. It only takes a few easy steps to make sure that your content goes out exactly when you want it to.
1. Head over to " Create a Post".
2. Create your post in the Post Editor: choose a Category, select the Social Profile(s) you want to post to, add your text, and media components.
3. Select "Schedule" under the "Post Timing" option.
You can also select a different timezone than the one in your account settings, in case you're planning posts for a specific event that's outside of your regular audience's timezone. This is also useful if you're working with a virtual assistant, or colleague who's supporting you from a different timezone.
💡Manually-scheduled posts with a specific timezone (either the default one in place at the time the post was created, or a manually-selected timezone set in the Post Editor) won’t be updated if you change your default timezone.
4. Use the options available to select the time and date for your post.
5. Select your "Evergreen Post Recycling" options.
This will allow you to choose if you want the post to just go out once (by selecting "Don't Recycle"), or have it sent back to the Queue after being published.
By selecting "Recycle after posting", the post will be sent back to the bottom of the Queue and will be published again in the future, using the schedule you built in your Posting Plan.
This is a great way to set a start date for an Evergreen post.
💡 Keep in mind that scheduled posts are prioritized over content being published based on the Timeslots in your Posting Plan. I f you have a Timeslot added in your Posting Plan for the same Category and social profile, and for the same date and time as the scheduled post, the Timeslot will be skipped and only the scheduled post will be published.
How To Schedule A Post For Multiple Times & Dates
Sometimes when scheduling content we want certain posts to go out on specific times and dates multiple times. For example, you may want to run a mini-campaign for a new announcement, or in the run-up to an event. This can be easily achieved.
💡 By combining multiple scheduled times with Variations, you can create a campaign of related posts, published over a period of time - all in one go!
1. Once you've performed the steps above, you can simply select additional times and dates for the post to be published. Click the "Add another date" option.
2. You can select this option as many times as you want and enter different times and dates for your post to go out.
💡 By selecting multiple dates and times, you can ensure that this post goes out exactly when you want it to, multiple times, without having to adjust your existing Posting Plan for this Category and Social Profile(s).
💡 And no worries, if you happen to have Timeslots for the same Category and social profile added to your Posting Plan on the same dates and times, they will be skipped and only the scheduled post will be published.
You can add any number of scheduled times & dates, as there is no limit.
You will see that each newly added time & date will be, by default, the following day at the same time as the previous one.
💡 Twitter doesn't allow duplicate or substantially similar posts to be sent within the same profile, or to multiple Twitter profiles within one SmarterQueue account. As such, your scheduled post will be published as original once, and then we will retweet it on the following times & dates, instead of sending out a new Tweet. You can read more about Twitter's duplicate guidelines.
3. Don't forget to select your "Evergreen Post Recycling" options.
Recycling absolutely works with posts scheduled for multiple times & dates.
The post will be published based on all the specific times & dates you selected, and then recycling will start, sending your post to the Queue to use the schedule you built in your Posting Plan moving forward.
Note: Selecting to have the post expire after a specific number of posts or on a specific date must not contradict the number and times/dates of the entries you've already added manually.
In the example above, we can see that we can't set the post to expire after being published 3 times, as we've entered 5 different times & dates.
💡 If you've set 5 specific dates and times, and then you want the post to automatically recycle 3 more times, you'd have to set the post to expire after it has been published a total of 8 times.
We can see a similar issue when selecting an expiration date that is before the last time & date we manually entered.
4. And if you're not yet ready to send the post to the Queue, you can save it as a Draft.
No worries, the Draft will keep all the dates you've already selected, so you won't lose any of your scheduling work.
