Last Updated on by Michael Brockbank
WordPress has a lot of great features built into the platform, including the ability to schedule posts. Sure, there are plenty of plugins that can help with this as well. However, the default method works great for me.
It’s perhaps the easiest method to make sure your content gets out when you intend for it to reach your audience. This is especially useful if you have push notifications enabled.
Why Set a Schedule for Posts in WordPress?
There’s nothing wrong with publishing your content whenever you feel like. On the other hand, having a specific schedule in mind can help you in a variety of ways, most of which help drive traffic.
In fact, I notice a significant boost in immediate views when I publish a post according to when people are most active on my website. You can find that information on the homepage of Google analytics.
Having a schedule for your WordPress posts will help by:
- Keeping the website active. People and search engines love a consistently updated site or blog.
- Increasing Google’s bot crawls. Google learns how often and when you publish content so it can optimize when it indexes your posts.
- Letting subscribers and followers know there is new content. You can easily get a quick boost of traffic from your audience.
- Giving subscribers and followers a timeframe of when to expect new material. It’s kind of like how TV shows used to have set timeslots.
- Giving you plenty of time to write the next post. That way, you don’t have to stress about getting it done right now.
Perhaps the most vital to all of these is consistency, especially when it comes to Google. In the past, I’ve seen sites increase as a whole in terms of impression rates because of a consistent publishing schedule.
And because of how push notifications work, subscribers know the moment WordPress publishes posts that you schedule. That is as long as you have notifications or some other method set up.
Even automated email lists for published content can be of great benefit.
How to Schedule Your Posts from the WordPress Editor
Scheduling content is relatively straightforward and easy to do. Thanks to the scheduling tool built into WordPress, it just takes a couple of clicks of the mouse. That is unless you have a few other plugins installed, which I’ll mention in a moment.
The first thing you need is to finish writing a piece of content. Of course, you can always make changes at any time to an article before it actually goes live.
Step 1: Click the Publish Button
Once your article is ready, click the “Publish” button on the top right.
From here, you can choose the visibility, adjust tags, add categories, and other pre-publish tasks. In my case, I have Jetpack’s Publicize running. This lets me share on social media as soon as the post goes live.
It’s a useful feature that saves time from sharing the post on sites like Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn.
Step 2: Expand the Publish Data Options
Click on the “Publish: Immediately” option to expand its window.
This will open a drop-down window that has the date and time available.
Step 3: Choose Date and Time for Your Scheduled Post
From here, you can select any day and time you want the post to automatically publish. This means you can go so far as to create holiday content now and schedule it five years in the future.
Well, if you wanted to, anyway.
Set the day and time you want the post to automatically publish.
In my case, I’m setting the post for tonight at 6:30 pm. I plan on being at a bowling alley at that point, so the post will go live as I’m on the lanes.
Some good examples of when to schedule posts in WordPress include:
- If you plan on being on vacation
- If you’re in the process of traveling
- Future posts that are relevant to seasons, such as holidays
- When you plan to be out but want a post to go live at a specific time
In fact, I’ll have the blogs publish articles most often when I am on vacation with family during the holidays. I spend a lot of time on the road and don’t have to worry about writing while I’m home.
Step 4: Make Final Publishing Adjustments
Some plugins will come with features that show on this window. For instance, the Publicize function includes the social sites I’m publishing to and the text I want WordPress to use to update those accounts.
Depending on the plugins you have installed, there may be some functions here you’ll want to adjust.
In any case, go over the features on this screen one last time to make sure everything is correct.
Step 5: Click “Schedule”
When you set publish dates of posts into the future, the button in WordPress will change to “Schedule.” If it didn’t change, then you either set the date and time wrong or the date and time set in WordPress is incorrect.
Click the “Schedule” button and WordPress will do the rest.
Can You Schedule Posts in Bulk in WordPress?
By default, WordPress doesn’t have the ability to schedule posts in bulk. For this, you’ll have to use a plugin such as Auto Post Scheduler.
It’s a semi-popular tool with over 100,000 active installs and is quite easy to set up. In fact, you can do quite a bit with the plugin such as reviving your older content.
You can set recycling and republishing times, limit what types of content are scheduled, set specific days of the week to publish, and more.
This type of tool works great if you plan on having a lot of content on your blog or if you have writers helping you. That way, your site can maintain a specific schedule while keeping the content fresh.
Do You Have a Publishing Routine?
I’ve seen firsthand how beneficial publishing routines can be. Not only for myself, but my clients also have a higher engagement rate from those who follow their blogs.
Not to mention the impact it makes for the site as a whole on search engines.
WordPress makes it easy with a few clicks of the mouse to schedule the posts anytime in the future. Whether it’s tomorrow or next century, it’s all up to you.
How often do you publish content? Does a set schedule help you with immediate views once a post goes live?
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