How to schedule a blog post in Blogger

Scheduling my posts to a future date is something I've not found necessary as yet but it's good to know that Blogger has this lovely feature for its millions of blogging fans! Since I've already spent precious time googling and testing on how to use this scheduling tool recently for a dear friend who encountered a slight snag, thought it best to record the steps here lest I forget them when my own need arises in future. Also, it may benefit other bloggers too who are new or unaware of this useful blogging feature that's included in the Post Editor page.

Scheduled post publishing is setting your post's date and time to be published into the future and Blogger will automatically publish it on your blog at the specified time, and not before.

The benefits of scheduling a blog post are many, such as :

• having the convenience of publishing a post on a specific date
  
• able to keep posting regularly even on vacation where there's no time to write
• having the flexibility to write several posts in a day and have them published on different days or times
• able to make an announcement, notification or greeting on a certain date, especially when it's impossible in normal circumstances due to time constraint or inability to access a computer

Follow these very simple steps
to schedule a blog post in Blogger :

1. Sign into your Blogger account.
2. At Dashboard, click on New Post and type your blog post as you'd normally do. Then click on Preview to be sure that your post is exactly as you'd want it to be presented.
3. If all's well, click on Post Options toggle, located at the bottom left of the editing window and a drop-down menu with various options will appear.
   
   
   
   
4. Under Post date and time on the right side, you'd notice 2 options, that is, Automatic which is the default setting that will post at the date and time you click Publish Post, while the other Scheduled At option is the one where you set your preferred date and time. So, select Scheduled at and fill in the date and time you want the new post to be published. (Take note that the date format is M/D/YY, and the time is HH:MM AM/PM. The time zone is whatever your settings are at Settings --> Formatting --> Time Zone).
5. Then, click on Publish Post to enable Blogger to automatically publish it at the specified time. If you just click on Save Now, the post will be saved as Draft and will not be published. So, remember to click Publish Post after setting your scheduled date and time.
6. The moment you click on Publish Post, the Edit Posts page will instantly appear to show you the status of your scheduled post, which is, a highlighted confirmation at the top to inform that the post will be published as specified and under the list of posts, the word 'scheduled' will appear beside the post's date to indicate its status. Check that the details are correct and you're all done! Easy, right?
   
   

Other tips :

• You can make any changes to the post before the scheduled date. Edit your post as usual, but ensure that you click on Publish Post again when you're done to maintain its status as scheduled. Otherwise, if you click Save As Draft, it will do just that and your post which becomes unscheduled will not be published.
• If you change your mind about scheduling the post and prefer to publish it right-away, just revert the post option to the default 'Automatic' and click on Publish Post to go live.
• Or, if you're undecided on when to publish your scheduled post as yet, set the post option back to Automatic and click on Save as Draft and it'll be switched to the usual draft status.

Happy blogging!

Keep learning~~keep smiling~~keep sharing!