Facebook Unveils Team Roles and Post Scheduling

Table: Facebook

Sometimes, to best manage a brand Facebook page, it takes a village. That, and a time machine.

In an effort to help page admins better serve their fans—and organize their efforts—Facebook released new features on May 31 that enable brands to delegate team roles and schedule posts. As first reported by Mashable, a new help center page from Facebook outlines how brand pages can assign duties to multiple page admins, each with varying degrees of permissions. 

Page admins can have five different roles. The accompanying table outlines the five admin roles (across) and what they're able to do (down).

Managers (and the newly created content creators) can now prepare a post and schedule it to appear at a future date. Post can be scheduled up to six months in advance, and can appear in 15-minute intervals. Posts can be added retroactively to your Timeline—if you choose a date in the past, the post will appear immediately at the appropriate place, an added treat for organizations looking to chart their history. 

This new scheduling feature can remove some of the hurdles in managing a brand page while outside of the office. And while it's hardly recommended to set updates very far in advance (consider how your scheduled lighthearted, fun Friday post might look when it gets published on a day your brand is in crisis mode or is forced to address critical questions), scheduling posts can prevent a page from going stagnant overnight and over the weekend. 

HootSuite already offers scheduling functionality, but the new in-Facebook option allows managers to tag people (something HootSuite does not allow) and avoid the stench of obviously pre-scheduled posts. Here's to the future of page management—and, for those inclined, to the past. 

Follow Bill Miltenberg: @bmiltenberg