A crucial component of running a photography business is having a solid marketing game plan. In addition to Instagram, Facebook is a channel that continues to be very beneficial for photographers striving to make money. To ensure your Facebook presence is optimized, you may have to clean up old social media profiles or managing future posts. This is where backdating and scheduling on Facebook comes in handy. As a professional freelance photographer, I use the backdating feature frequently on my Facebook business page as I’m not always able to post live while shooting an event. If you’re in a similar situation and need to backdate your Facebook page, or have ever been curious about how to do this, read on to learn how. Also, note that the process for backdating differs between a personal Facebook profile and a Facebook page.
*This post was updated in December 2016
Personal Facebook Profile
1. Add a new backdated Facebook status
2. Add a new or old Life Event
3. Change the date of an already published Facebook status
Facebook Page
Why backdate Facebook posts?
Backdating Facebook posts might seem pointless, but it’s a feature that Facebook has been enhancing over the years. Here’s a scenario when backdating would come in handy: say you’re flipping through your smartphone and find an awesome photo you took last month that you forgot to post to Facebook. Or maybe you want to document the day your photography business was founded to tell your business story.
Thanks to backdating, you can still post that photo or status update on the date you meant it to post. The reasoning behind this is unclear, but my guess is that Facebook is serious about letting users have their time capsules and life events heavily documented via timelines, thus allowing you to post in the past.
Can I schedule Facebook posts?
On the other side of the spectrum, Facebook post scheduling allows you to create a status that is posted at a future date. This feature is not currently allowed on Facebook personal profiles. Facebook scheduling is only enabled on pages.
Backdating for Facebook Personal Profiles
Add a new backdated Facebook status
1) Start by going to your Facebook page and click on your Status box. Write your status and add any relevant information you want to include. Then click on the calendar icon to set the time and date of your post.
2) Choose the year of your backdated post.
3) Add any other past details you wish to include, such as the month, date, and even exact time. You can also include photos or tag a person or location.
4) After all relevant information has been added, click on the blue Post button to publish.
Add a new or old Life Event
1) Another way to backdate Facebook posts is to do so through Life Events. In the same Facebook status box described above, click on Life Event. A new drop-down menu will appear where you can further categorize the specific Life Event you want to add. In this example, we’ll select Travel & Experiences > Travel.
2) A new pop-up will appear where you can fill in as little or as many details about your past Life Event as you wish. When you’re done and ready to publish, click on the blue Save button.
Backdate or change the date of an already published Facebook status
After you publish a new status update on a Facebook page, you can then go back to the published status and edit the date to any time in the past. It doesn’t matter if it’s a status by itself or a status with an image or link. You can backdate that puppy to any date as far back as the year 1905. This might be cumbersome if you need to backdate a ton of posts, but for the average page manager who missed a posting time the day before, it could potentially be a life saver.
This is easy to do by simply clicking on the gray arrow in the status’ upper right corner. From the drop-down menu, click on Change Date.
Backdating and Scheduling for Facebook Pages
If you have a business or organization, it’s wise to create a Facebook page for it. A reason to use a Facebook page is the ability to Schedule a post, which is not currently enabled for Facebook personal profiles. The process for backdating and scheduling for Facebook pages is similar to the steps above but slightly different.
1) Navigate to your Facebook page and click on the status area. Click on the blue arrow button next to the Publish button, and a drop-down menu appears. Select Backdate or Schedule.
Backdate Page Status
2) To backdate, simply choose the historical date the post will be published on.
Schedule Page Status
3) To schedule a post, select the date and time the future post will be published.
Change the Date of an Already Published Facebook Page Post
The method for changing the date of a Facebook page post is the exact same as described above for a Facebook personal page. Simply click on the grey upper-right arrow of a status and select Change Date from the drop-down menu.
In Conclusion
Keep in mind that social media and Facebook are a vital part of your photography business marketing plan. Always monitor the content on your social media channels and make all the edits necessary to maintain a professional appearance.
Facebook changes their layout very frequently, so please let me know if this method ever ceases to work. As of December 2016, this is the current method to backdate and schedule posts for Facebook profiles and pages.
fact is that I can only see the drop downs to backdate, no functionality to schedule a post to be published in the future.
It’s not necessary to do this. Just changed the launch date of your Page to a date as far back as you want to backdate updates to and you’ll be able to select any year back to the one you set in the drop down when you use the backdate option. To backdate any update you just click the schedule clock and then click “Schedule Post” and select “Backdate Post”. The farthest back we can go is 1905 but that should be far enough for most companies.
I an not sure you are correct about the backdating not being available on Facebook Pages and that instead you use your loophole by editing the timestamp after posting. On my Facebook Community Page I can use the round clock option, and click on where it says “Schedule Post”, which reveals another option “Backdate Post”. I can then choose a year, month and day. To backdate before the Page was created I would probably have to follow the tip in Hugh’s comment. When backdating using the method I describe I cannot choose a tome of day. Perhaps Facebook consider that we do not need that degree of granularity when backdating.
Thanks for the comment, Jim. I actually noticed that Facebook recently added the functionality to backdate for pages. I’ll have to update this post to reflect that!
You’re welcome. It’s a very odd facility. I found your blog because I Googled ‘Backdated Facebook Posts”. I did so after another FB page copied one of my page’s posts (something I had written) and posted it on their own page a few hours before I had posted mine, so that it looks like they got there first and that I was the intellectual property thief! No Share button was harmed in the posting of my material 🙂 I decided that they probably do not have a time machine so went about trying to figure out how they had done it and discovered the backdating facility.
Thanks for sharing the story of how you found me, Jim. That’s incredibly sad, actually. I’m lucky to not have experienced this myself (to my knowledge, anyway!), but it sucks that others would do something like this. Personally, I only use the backdating feature when I want to correct my personal timeline on Facebook for memory’s sake. I hope this doesn’t happen to you again!
Still don’t understand the point of backdating… seems disingenuous.
Amanda,
I agree that for most business purposes, there isn’t an outstandingly positive reason to backdate posts. I think the main reason why Facebook allows it is because they’re encouraging personal profiles and business pages to be treated like timelines, and backdating helps with documenting and commemorating notable achievements that occurred in the past (ie. founding of the company, a marriage or engagement that happened before Facebook existed, etc). Personally and professionally, I try to use backdating as sparingly as possible, but I think there are times when it is acceptable to backdate.