How to Schedule a Facebook Post

Another Facebook platform change? Actually there are a lot of recent changes Facebook has implemented. If you’re a Community Manager, Page owner, Brand or Business on Facebook, then you no doubt have noticed some of these changes. Below is the first article in a series that reviews recent Facebook changes along with information on how to use the new features.

Finally –The Ability to Schedule Facebook Posts

One of the biggest frustrations with the Facebook platform for Community Managers was the inability to schedule posts directly from Facebook. To get around this, many used tools like HootSuite, Social Oomph or BuddyMedia –all of which allow you to pre-schedule Facebook content (though some charge fees) and its been reported that using a third party tool to schedule Facebook content can have a negative impact on your Facebook Edgerank (the likelihood of your post showing up in your Fan’s news stream).

Recently, Facebook added the ability to pre or post schedule posts…and it’s free!

How to Schedule a Facebook Post:

Scheduling posts is easy, once you know where to go.

1.  On your Page (or Profile), click in the content area to enter a post.

2. You will see a small clock appear just below the post area  in the lower left hand corner.

3.  Click on the clock. Select the year, month, date and time for your post to publish.

4.  Click schedule.

You can schedule a post up to 6 months in advance in 15-minute intervals according toFacebook.

You can even go back in time: If you choose a date in the past, the post will appear immediately at the appropriate place on your Page’s timeline. All times correspond to the current time zone you’re in.

How to View or Manage your Scheduled Facebook Posts:

You can view any scheduled posts by clicking on the Admin Panel.

1. Click on Edit Page in the Admin Panel.

2.  Select “Use Activity Log” from the drop down menu.

3.  Your scheduled posts will appear at the top. From there you can change the time, publish now, reschedule your post or delete it. Unfortunately you cannot edit the post; you will have to delete it and start over.

Is this a useful feature to you? Have you scheduled any content back in time?

Facebook Testing 'Post-From-Any-Page' Button

Facebook is testing a new button on the top of its homepage that allows users to post directly to Timeline regardless of what page they're on.

The button was first spotted by Mashable reporter Alex Fitzpatrick Friday morning. After clicking the button — which resides at the top right-hand side of any Facebook page, next to home button and the small icon of a user's profile picture — a prompt pops up that looks very similar to the one we're used to seeing for posting a Facebook status.

Because it lives on the top bar, you can access it even when you're visiting another profile or brand page.

In the picture below, you can see he is on my Facebook page yet he can still post directly to his. Typically, you have to be on the homepage or your own page to post a status update.

The new feature was spotted on a page that has yet to be switched to the new Facebook news feed or be given access to Graph Search, its smarter search engine. We haven't seen any other pages with the feature just yet.

Smartphone Users Check Facebook 14 Times a Day

Think you use your phone to look at Facebook a lot? Unless you're doing it at least 14 times a day, you're actually below average.

That's just one of the surprising revelations in a research report by IDC released Wednesday. The study tapped 7,446 iPhone and Android users in the U.S. between 18 and 44 — representative of the 50% of the population that uses smartphones — and asked them questions about their phone usage across one week in March.

Depending on your perspective, many of the results are either depressing or confirm what you knew all along. For example, it seems that 79% of smartphone users reach for their devices within 15 minutes of waking up. A clear majority — 62% — don't even wait 15 minutes, and grab their phones immediately. (Among 18-24 year olds, the numbers rise to 89% and 74%.)

Given that the survey was sponsored by Facebook, most of the questions focus on the social network. Which is, it seems, only the third most popular app on your smartphone, after email and the browser. Still, 70% of smartphone users are frequent Facebook visitors, with more than half of them checking it every day.
Peak Facebook time is during the evening, just before bed. But any time's good: on average, we visit the Facebook app or the site 13.8 times during the day, for two minutes and 22 seconds each time. Our average total daily mobile time on the site — and remember, this is just via our smartphones — is half an hour.

That's roughly a fifth of all the time we spend communicating; it's only slightly less time than we spend texting. On weekends, we check Facebook more than we text.

Any place seems to be good to check Facebook, too. Some 46% of us check it when we're shopping or running errands; 48% use it at the gym. Even preparing a meal gives 47% of us no respite from the social network. (Well, what else are you going to do while you're waiting for the microwave to ping?)
Perhaps the most unpardonable sin: 50% of smartphone users admit to checking Facebook while at a movie. We hope they mean only during the ads.

So what are we spending all that time doing? Well, for about half of that daily half-hour on the social network, we're simply browsing our News Feed. The rest of the time is divided fairly evenly between Facebook messaging and posting updates. Half of Facebook users play games via the service on their phone a few times a day.

Does the smartphone survey ring true to you? Share your thoughts in the comments.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, franckreporter

Call Friends for Free With Facebook's Messenger App

Now you can call your Facebook friends for free — if you’re an iPhone user, that is. The company has rolled out a new feature in the U.S. that allows Facebook Messenger app users to place voice calls with friends over the social network using their data connection or Wi-Fi.

The feature started rolling out in the United States Wednesday, and comes as a simple “free calling” button in the existing app. Users don’t have to update the existing Messenger app in order to take advantage of the feature.

Free calls are placed by tapping the "i" icon on the top right side of chat, and then selecting "Free Call" from your friend's contact card. Your friends will need to have Facebook's stand-alone Messenger app installed on their phone in order for the feature to work (otherwise the "Free Call" icon will appear grey and marked out).
Calls have a similar look and feel as traditional voice calls you might make on your iPhone.

Facebook started testing the feature in Canada earlier this month. The functionality was announced alongside an update to the company’s iOS and Android apps that allows Facebook users to send short voice messages to each other.

Vonage launched an app in 2010 that allowed Facebook users to call friends for free, however, the app required that both parties have the Vonage for Facebook app installed on their devices in order to do so.
Messenger is one of several stand-alone apps developed by Facebook. The company often uses the apps to test new features with power users before deciding which features to include in the traditional Facebook app for the social network's general audience.

Will you use Messenger to call your Facebook friends? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, akinbostanci
Article Source: http://mashable.com/2013/01/16/facebooks-messenger-free-calls/

Facebook Replace Menlo Park Like Sign With Poke

Facebook have replaced the ‘Like’ sign in front of their Menlo Park headquarters with a ‘Poke’ sign.

Poke is Facebook’s most recent standalone app, taking its inspiration from self-deleting messenger app Snapchat.

The new ‘Poke’ sign displays the same poking finger symbol as their old Poke function, which allowed users to instantly connect with their friends without the need for messages.

The new Poke app is a complete rebranding of the original Poke, only retaining the name and symbol. With it, users can send messages that delete themselves from the sender’s phone, the recipients phone and all servers after a few seconds.




“To celebrate the launch of our new Poke app, designers Sharon Hwang, Tim Belonax, Ben Barry and Mike Matas—together with the team at New Bohemia Signs—had a little fun changing the sign in front of our Menlo Park HQ,” says Facebook on its Design page.

The sign is an obvious publicity stunt from the Facebook team, who are marketing Poke as a way to “share fun moments” with your friends “or just say hello”.

It is unlikely that the Poke app will ever have a place in the business world, where all correspondence needs to be documented.

Do you think Poke will become popular?

Leave your comments below.

All Facebook Apps to Soon Have Notification Capability

There could be a lot more notifications from Facebook on the way. The company’s rolled out a beta version of a new notifications API, a tool for developers that lets all Facebook apps send notifications to users.

This could open the floodgates to a plethora of notes under Facebook’s “notification jewel,” where that little red number will start counting itself higher than ever, especially if the user has signed up for lots of apps.

Of course, you can always get rid of an app’s notifications — you simply click on the X in the upper right of a notification box, and the messages will stop. For example, here’s how the box will look for the Tester app:

It’s a good thing this routine is so easy, especially since as soon as this developer tool becomes ubiquitous, any Facebook app you’ve subscribed to will be able to send you notifications without first asking for your permission.

Along with this capability, Facebook is instructing those developers who might abuse it to attempt to build “high-quality notifications.” Facebook software engineer Bo Zhang urges app developers, “Don’t make it look like spam — we all know the words on the DO NOT CLICK list — i.e. ‘Click Here!’ ‘Check this out!’ ‘You have to see this…’ or ‘Here’s something free!’”

Let us know in the comments if you think this new tool will result in more convenience for you, or just more noise.

Now You Can Tag Facebook Friends From Other Apps

Facebook on Tuesday added the ability for people to mention friends on the service via Open Graph apps.

“With this frequently requested feature, companies like Foursquare can implement user mentions that work like they do in posts on Facebook,” a Facebook representative said in a blog post announcing the addition.

“When people mention a friend in an Open Graph app, the story on Facebook links the person’s name to their timeline, and their friend will receive a notification. The story will also be added to the friend’s timeline or, if enabled, to timeline review. There are no privacy changes associated with this new feature.”

Different than Action Tagging (tagging someone you are physically with), Mention Tagging is designed to be used when someone wants to reference a person in a particular post. For instance, tag the friends in a photo or suggest that a friend check out a restaurant where you’re eating dinner.

Developers who want to implement mention tagging will have to provide users with a tokenizer or some other way that they can reference their friends. Developers are also not allowed to prefill messages. Everything in a message needs to be written by the user with the intention specifically of sharing that message on Facebook.

Developers will also need to resubmit their actions and requests approval to Facebook for user messages and tags.

What apps would you like to see use Mention Tagging? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.