Campaigns – The When To Publish tab

Introduction

Setting a publication date for your post is the next step after you’ve finished writing it and decided where to post it. And you carry out this action by using the campaign’s When To Publish tab.

Only Standard and Volume Campaigns have access to the When To Publish tab, which regulates the campaign’s overall behavior. As for the Scheduled campaign, you need to add a separate publishing timer for each post, hence this tab is not available there.

Using the When to Publish tab

Knowing the ideal time to publish your content is crucial for maximizing reach and improving target audience engagement. Go to your Campaign > When To Publish tab once you’ve chosen the time you want the campaign to start publishing your content.

When To Publish – Settings

We will examine the settings available on a Standard Campaign for this guide. Keep in mind that most of these settings function similarly in Volume campaigns. You can alter the publishing behavior of the campaign using a variety of available options. However, the Settings menu’s first option has the most power.

Number of posts to publish each day

• Here, you can specify how many posts the campaign will publish each day during the x-y hours you’ve designated.
• There is a publishing timer created for each quantity of posts you specify. (For instance, if you selected to publish 5 posts, you will see 5 publishing timers.)
• Each publishing timer is chosen at random from the range of x to y hours.
• You can either set a specific time for each publishing timer or make it completely automatic by letting  SU Social decide when to publish each post.

Secondary Options

1. Specify posting interval

A publishing timer is established, as was already mentioned, for each number of posts that the campaign is set to publish. Additionally, these timers are chosen at random from X to Y. However, you can enable the option to specify a posting interval for each timer if you want each timer to be chosen within a certain window of time.

You will see additional timers after selecting the aforementioned option where you can specify the Start and End of the intervals (boxed in red).

2. Randomize publishing timers each day

We already mentioned that each publishing timer is chosen at random from the range of x to y hours. You can opt to have these timers be as they are (same timers to be used every day) or you can decide to randomize the publishing timers if you want to post at various times throughout the day. Every day, a random time will be chosen between X and Y to serve as the day’s publishing timer. You may also check that the timers are indeed randomly changing by toggling this option.

📌 Please be aware that it is not possible to enable the options to Specify posting interval for each timer and Randomize publishing timers simultaneously because they serve different purposes.

3. Randomize number of posts each day

The campaign will always use the number you specify when you set it to publish NP (number of posts) each day for the duration of the campaign. However, you can select Randomize the number of posts each day if you prefer to have varying NP.

If your campaign had this option enabled, it would choose one value between A or B at random and use that as the NP (number of posts) for that particular day.

4. Publish a Posts List item on all selected destinations

• If this option is checked, the campaign will publish the same Post List item for each of the publishing timers on all destinations that have been chosen. Refer to the table below on how the posts will be distributed.

✅ Example: There are 4 destinations and 4 publishing timers, and on each timer, the same post list item will be published on all those 4 destinations.  With this, you only need at least 4 items on the Posts Lists tab. By the end of the day, a total of 16 posts (4 destinations * 4 timers) would have been published by the campaign with 4 of those items being the same. 

• However, you can uncheck this option and specify the number of destinations that will receive and publish a particular post if you want to restrict the campaign to posting on a specific number of destinations per publishing timer. Refer to the table below on how the 16 posts will be distributed.

💡 This option is quite handy if you want to publish a unique/random post to a specific number of destination/s per publishing timer. For example, if you have 4 destinations and 4 publishing timers and each destination should get 1 unique post to publish, you need to make sure that there are at least 16 unique items on the Posts List tab (4 destinations * 4 timers * 1 unique post to publish = 16 posts per day). By the end of the day, a total of 16 unique posts would be published by the campaign.

5. Wait around N seconds before publishing the same Post List item on a new destination

• You can control how long the campaign will wait (in seconds) before publishing the same post on a different destination.

6. Apply the delay independently for each account

• If this option is left unchecked, all destinations will experience the N-second delay that you specified.

✅ Example: If you have selected two Facebook accounts each with 4 FB groups to publish to, the campaign will publish to one destination at a time, and wait 450 seconds before it starts to publish to the next destination.

• However, once this is enabled, the accounts will publish in parallel and the delay will be applied at the account level.

✅ Example: If you have selected two Facebook accounts each with 4 FB groups to publish to, the campaign can publish the posts to those two FB accounts at the same time. Once the two accounts finished publishing on one FB group, the 450 seconds wait time will start before it publishes to the next group, and so on.

7. Days of the week when to operate

• This lets you decide the days of the week when the campaign will run.
• To mimic more natural behavior, you can choose to randomize the days or rotate them each week. Please be aware that you cannot enable both of them at the same time because they serve different purposes.

💡 SU Social would choose the same number of days you initially chose on rotating days. You can choose to exclude weekends from the variation if you don’t want to post on Saturdays and Sundays. The selection is random.

💡 For the randomize days option, you can select between C and D selected days. The days that will be chosen will change each week, and if you don’t want to post on Saturdays and Sundays, you can choose to have weekends excluded from the variation.

Advanced Settings

8. Add random sleep time while publishing

• If you want the campaign to pause for x–y minutes after publishing in between a predetermined number of posts, enable this option.
• In order to make the posting actions seem more natural, this will give the campaign time to recover before beginning a new operation.

9. Campaign has a start/end date

• With this option, you can specify the precise day and time that your campaign will launch and end.

10. Force random timers to sync with Like Exchange sessions

• You can use this option to maximize the performance of the Like Exchange tool if the accounts listed in the campaign’s destination list are accounts that will receive likes. You can force the campaign to publish right before a new session or sessions begin and begin receiving likes.

Pro-tip for using the When to Publish tab

💡 Make sure the checkbox for When publishing, send one post for each destination is unchecked under the Campaign Overview tab > Advanced Settings > General tab to guarantee that your settings here will be fully respected.

Conclusion

The When to Publish tab is where you can set the behavior of your campaign—controlling when your posts will be published. The customizable features available make it easier for you to reach your target audience and get better engagement, making your campaigns more effective.