Whether you’re a small business owner trying to fit Facebook into your busy day or you’re a community manager with your hands full with multiple social accounts, Facebook has always been kind of a pain in the butt. Every update had to be done manually and there was no way to assign different roles to the people on your team. You either had to hand over full access to your brand’s page or give people none at all. It’s easy to see how problems and security risks could arise.
Well, it seems Facebook heard our cries. Business owners and community managers are both rejoicing after the news that Facebook has finally added the ability to schedule posts AND given us new roles for page admins.
It’s a brand new day on Facebook!
Assigning Roles
There’s a reason not everyone has a key to your master filing cabinet in your office. Or, sometimes, the office door. Quite simply, not everyone needs full access to your business. And the same applies to social media sites. Just because you have an intern who may be moderating Facebook comments, it doesn’t mean you necessarily want to give them access to your Facebook analytics. Or that you want them to be able to message fans on your behalf. Before last week, there was no way to differentiate between admin levels or to give someone some of the keys to your Facebook kingdom, without giving them all the keys.
Thankfully, this has changed.
The Help pages at Facebook do a great job breaking down the five different Page admin roles now available and the rights associated with each.
As the chart above shows, the five roles available to page admins are:
- Manager
- Content Creator
- Moderator
- Advertiser
- Insights Analyst
Through the use of Roles, page owners can take back some of the controls associated with their accounts. If you’re hiring someone to help you with your social media efforts, you can now also limit what they can and cannot see/do on your behalf.
Scheduling Updates
Page admins now also have the option to schedule updates to go live on their pages at a later date and time. Posts can be scheduled in 15 minute increments and (somewhat comically) up to six months in advance. That means you can start getting those end-of-year holiday posts ready! 😉
To schedule a post on Facebook:
- Go to your page’s timeline
- Select what type of post you want to add
- Select the clock icon in the lower-left hand side of the status box
- Choose the date and time you want the post to go live go to your page’s timeline.
- Click Schedule
It’s really that simple! One thing that will be interesting to see is whether these scheduled updates will get the same prominence as “live” or non-scheduled updates do. Historically, one of the problems with using third-party tools (like Hootsuite or Buffer) is that Facebook had a tendency to not give them as much attention in a user’s News feed. It will be interesting to see how these updates are treated.
What do you think? Are you relieved that Facebook is making your life a little easier and allowing you to schedule updates ahead of time? Or do you think this will result in more spam coming from brands?
Facebook Photo via Shutterstock
Martin Lindeskog
Lisa,
I think this could be usable features for community managers and small business owners with a busy schedule. The question is if schedule status updates will take away the authentic and social feel without the real-time activity?
I think more people will get involved with spreading great content and building communities, which is a good thing. I also think there will be more spam about. There will always be those people who choose to make a quick buck instead of build something great. Thanks for the post.
I think the added features are great but takes away a lot of the “social feel.”
I guess Wall St. wants them to start making some more cash. Of course, this has been being worked on for awhile. The whole idea of Facebook is becoming strange though – a place to keep up with family & friends, and also get targeted by ads. Feels like a family picnic with someone hawking stuff at you. Facebook isn’t right for all businesses.
This is a welcome change, but combined with the recent Google+ replacing Google Places thing it shows how quickly things are changing in the industry. SMBs that keep up will have a leg up. Those that don’t will fall even further behind.
The scheduling is a nice feature for busy professionals trying to manage more than a Facebook presence. I was disappointed to find that the scheduling feature is not available on the “Question” option that we use for simple polls on our FB page. Maybe this is in the works, too.
Leah
I like this concept a lot. Should make running a FB business page a lot easier. Great article!
LisaB
Well it would be great if I could find where the scheduled posts are to edit. Haven’t been able to find them on my biz page! Am I blind?
Lisa–
Why don’t I see the capability to schedule on my page? I have the clock but when I click it it says “add year.” Is this not fully rolled out yet??