I have a fan page on Facebook and want to be able to post photos to the timeline, but not immediately. Is it possible to defer or schedule these posts or status updates on my Facebook fan page, Dave?
You have a Facebook fan page? I have a Facebook fan page! Check it out (and “like” it) at Ask Dave Taylor Facebook Fans.
Facebook fan page owners have certain capabilities that aren’t a part of the usual experience for Facebook users, chief among them is “insight” analytics, something you should be paying close attention to so you can understand how fans actually interact with your content. Lots of useful information to be gleaned from that.
Another thing fan page owners can do is schedule posts. But it’s more than just textual status updates (as you would get from using something like Hootsuite) that you can schedule: you can also schedule posting photos and videos.
I’ll show you exactly how…
First off, as a Facebook fan page owner, your regular status box looks like this:
Since we want to post a photo rather than just a regular status update, click on “Photo / Video”.
The box enlarges and moves front and center:
To upload a photo, as you no doubt already know, click on “Upload Photos/Video” again and it changes yet once more, to a rather larger input box and a “choose file” link on the lower portion.
Here, you can see in this next screen capture that I’ve entered a rather long photo caption – including an NBC News URL – and also specified the photo I want to upload and post:
Once I’m ready to schedule the post (remember, we’re going to schedule it to post in the future, not imediately) the key is to click on the tiny clock icon on the lower left. Once you do the rather awkward scheduling info appears in the order year, month, day, hour, minute.
Schedule everything and here’s how it’ll appear:
Everything’s ready? The post is good, the description is accurate, and the date and time are correct?
Great. Click on “Schedule” and you’re done:
Once that time rolls around, the new photo automatically appears on the fan page as if you’d posted it directly:
Easy enough, once you know about the tiny clock icon, right?
Oh, and the news? Amazing. What is in Area 51? Creepy…