How to schedule posts in Facebook groups

Why scheduling in groups is limited

For business pages, Facebook offers proper scheduling. Groups are different. At the time of writing, scheduling in groups is available mainly to group admins, and a regular member posting from a personal profile gets a limited option, or none at all. Facebook changes this from time to time, so check what you see in the group itself.

And even where scheduling exists, it is one group at a time. Someone posting in twenty groups has to schedule twenty times, and remember not to schedule them all for the same minute.

How outside tools schedule, and the difference

Scheduling tools for groups broadly work in one of two ways, and each has a cost:

• From the cloud: the tool logs into your account from its own server, usually after you hand over your password. The upside: it runs even when your computer is off. The downside: Facebook sees a login from a place and device it does not know, which is exactly the pattern of a hacked account.
• From your own browser: an extension that runs in Chrome and uses the session you already have. The upside: posts go out from your computer and your account, without handing over a password. The downside: the browser has to be open while posting runs.

Which hours to post

There is no official hour, and Facebook does not publish such data. From practical experience with groups in Israel, three slots work well for most businesses:

• Morning, before work - roughly 7:00 to 9:00. People scroll on their phones on the way.
• Midday - roughly 12:00 to 14:00. Lunch break.
• Evening - roughly 19:00 to 22:00. The time when the most people are free to read and reply.

The best hour is your group's hour

The slots above are a starting point, not a rule. A parents' group is active at different hours from a students' group, and a business group at different hours from a neighbourhood group.

The way to check: post the same message at different hours for two weeks, and note when comments and enquiries came in. After two weeks you will know more than any guide can tell you.

One more thing: even once you find a good hour, do not post to all your groups at that moment. Spread posts across the day, with varying gaps between groups. A burst of dozens of posts within minutes is exactly the pattern Facebook detects.

A recurring campaign that does not turn into spam

For a business offering a regular service, a recurring campaign is the most useful thing there is: write once, and the post comes back every week. But it has three traps:

• The same wording again and again. Regular readers recognise a post they saw last week and skip it. And Facebook detects identical text. Change the opening, the order and the image each round.
• A frequency the group does not allow. Many groups limit business posts to once a week or to a fixed day. Read each group's rules and fit the series to them.
• Forgetting about it. A recurring campaign that runs for months without you looking at it may promote a sale that has already ended. Check the calendar once a week.

Shabbat, holidays and nights

A post that goes up on Saturday morning in a group of Shabbat-observant readers is not just wasted. It can hurt your reputation and get you removed. And a post that goes up at three in the morning is buried before anyone wakes up.

So decide in advance when you never post, rather than relying on memory every time you schedule. On the eve of a holiday, when everything was scheduled a week ahead, this is exactly the detail people forget.

Also watch Friday afternoon and Saturday night. In many Israeli groups these are dead hours, and after Shabbat ends there is sometimes a wave of posts that buries whatever goes up. Special days such as memorial days are not the time for a sales post either. Better to block them in advance than to apologise afterwards.

How scheduling works in POSTEMA

In POSTEMA you schedule a post for a specific time or as a fixed series, every day or every week, and see everything in one calendar. Posts go out at a spaced pace, with varying delays between groups, and within a daily quota based on the age of the account.

In the posting settings you define Shabbat, holidays, nights and hours when posting is not allowed, and the system simply will not post then, even if you scheduled something by mistake.

Two things to know. Posting goes out from your browser, so Chrome has to be open while a campaign runs. If you close it, the campaign waits and continues from the group where it stopped, without posting twice to the same group. The simplest approach: schedule for hours when your computer is on anyway. And in a recurring campaign, at least 3 hours are kept between two identical posts to the same group.

Frequently asked questions

Keep reading

• How many Facebook group posts per day is safe
• Chrome extension for Facebook posting - why an extension
• Manual vs automatic posting: how much time you save