It’s so important to maintain a regular and visible presence on social media.

However, if your social media is doing well and generating lots of business, then it might be the case that you’ve got orders to ship, appointments to attend or all sorts of other things that take up your valuable time.

Such a difference maker

This is where social media scheduling is such a difference maker. It frees you up so that you can focus on other areas, yet it maintains your online visibility.

There are plenty of third party social media scheduling tools: SproutSocial, Buffer, Hootsuite, SocialPilot…

But did you know that you can schedule content via Facebook directly? Here’s how to do so for a simple photo and caption post via Meta Business Suite desktop:

- Go to the Facebook page for your business and click on ‘Create Post’
- Select ‘In Meta Business Suite’
- Click on ‘Create Post’
- Enter your caption in the ‘Text’ box
- Click ‘Add Photo’ for your image
- Then, on the bottom right, click on the blue downward pointing arrow and select ‘Schedule Post’
- Select the date and time that you’d like your post to be published, then click Save
- Lastly, click on the blue ‘Schedule Post’ button on the bottom right

And that’s it, your post will be published on the date you’ve chosen at the time selected.

Current affairs

Scheduling means that you could think up an entire week’s worth of Facebook content, set it up to publish on specific days at specific times and be free to get on with whatever else demands your attention.

Just remember to keep up with current affairs. Sometimes, unpredictable events can happen and content that you might have scheduled months ago could suddenly be irrelevant or insensitive.

Be sure to regularly check on what you’ve got scheduled and delete anything that becomes inappropriate to avoid a potential backlash.