When it comes to your WordPress blog, there are very few things more important than your actual content.
After all, content is king right?
In fact, the success of your blog will largely depend on not only the quality of the content you publish but the relative quantity as well.
Readers expect you to publish valuable content on a regular basis. More so, they can come to expect this content to be readily available at the same time, every time. This is why scheduling your WordPress posts can be so beneficial.
Today we will look at why you might want to consider scheduling your WordPress blog posts and how to do this easily from the WordPress editor.
So, let’s get started!
Why Schedule Posts in WordPress?
Imagine you regularly post a new blog post every Wednesday and Friday morning at 08:00 AM. And, your loyal readers come to love these blog posts, religiously reading them on those days every week.
Sounds great right?
Well, what happens if you decide to take a tropical vacation and leave your work behind for a week? Or, what if you have a special work event to attend to that requires you to be away from your blog for a couple of days?
In cases such as these, drafting your regularly scheduled blog posts ahead of time and scheduling them to publish at specific intervals of time is the best solution. This way you can enjoy your vacation. Or, you can focus on a busy workweek, sans blog posts, without having to worry about disappointing loyal readers.
How to Schedule a WordPress Post
Scheduling a blog post to publish at a later date is relatively easy to do. Check it out.
Step 1: Draft Your Content
The first thing you will do before scheduling a blog post to publish at a later date is write up a final draft of the content you want to publish. This includes a proper heading, content body, and optimized images. Make sure you preview this content before scheduling it to post.
Step 2: Schedule Your Post
After you are done creating your blog post, look to the right of your WordPress editor and notice the Publish box. By default, this box will have every post set to Publish immediately should you click on the Publish button.
To change this, click on the Edit link located next to Publish immediately. After selecting Edit you will then choose the future date and time you would like to publish the post. If you want to change the month, simply click on the drop-down menu and select which month you are planning to publish this particular post. Similarly, you can change the date, year, and specific time you would like the post to publish.
Make sure you are aware that WordPress time works in the 24-hour format, even if your blog uses the 12-hour format.
When you have done this, click on OK.
You will notice once you are done scheduling your WordPress post, that the default Publish immediately option has now changed to the specific date and time you have scheduled for your blog to post.
From here, just click on Schedule and your blog post will be ready to post at a future date and time.
And that’s it. There are no further actions required on your part.
A Few Things About Scheduling WordPress Posts
Once you have scheduled your WordPress post to publish on a specific day and time, all you have to do is wait for the time to pass. And sure enough, once that time does pass, your content will be available for your readers to enjoy, even though you are away from your blog.
In addition, it is good to know that if you have special features set up on your website that perform specific actions every time a blog post goes live, scheduling them for later dates will not interfere with those actions. For example, if you have a plugin working for you that automatically publishes all of your website’s blog posts to certain social media accounts, this will still happen despite being a scheduled post.
Better yet, it will not happen when you select Schedule; rather it will occur when your post goes live. In essence, it will be as though you published the post yourself right then and there. And, your readers will be none the wiser.
If you notice that for some reason your scheduled WordPress posts are not publishing according to their scheduled times (which does happen occasionally) you will be given a “Missed Schedule” error in the WordPress editor. If that happens, there are some great guides out there to help you troubleshoot the missed schedule error in WordPress.
Final Thoughts
In the end, scheduling your WordPress posts is a very convenient way for bloggers to get ahead of their schedule or account for being away from their computer for an extended amount of time.
If used efficiently, this feature can even help you maintain a regular publishing schedule on your website which will help in a number of different ways – receive a higher rank status, gain new followers, and please loyal ones looking for more content, to name a few.
How do you feel about scheduling your WordPress posts ahead of time? Have you ever tried it? I would love to hear all about it in the comments below!