Social media managers rejoice  Facebook has announced the addition of some new features for its Business Suite management platform, including Stories scheduling for both Facebook and Instagram.

It’s felt like a long time coming, but Facebook is finally launching a new option in Business Suite, its newest business management platform, which will enable users to compose and schedule Facebook and IG Stories within the planning element.

As you can see in these screengrabs, the new option will enable you to compose Stories within the app, then schedule them to go live on both Facebook and Instagram. Your scheduled posts will then be displayed on your content calendar within the Business Suite app.

This is the first time that Facebook has offered Stories scheduling – in one of its other management tools, Creator Studio, you can schedule feed and video (IGTV) posts across the two apps, but Stories scheduling is still not an option, which has long been a frustration for social managers. Some third-party tools offer workarounds for this, but native scheduling could be a significant process upgrade, enabling you to better map out your full content strategy, using a single calendar tool across Facebook and IG.

Facebook will also now enable Business Suite users to save their Facebook and Instagram posts as drafts, adding even more planning flexibility for your Stories approach.

Given the rising usage of the Stories format, more brands are logically looking to incorporate the more mobile-native, vertical format into their outreach strategy, and as such, it makes sense for Facebook to provide more planning to tools to better enable brands to maximise their Stories approach.

Though that has also been a point of contention. The ethos of Stories is that they’re less polished, facilitating real, in-the-moment type updates, and it does make some sense for all usage, even by brands, to better align with that off-the-cuff approach, as opposed to building more glossy, polished promotions.

But flexibility is key, and as the Stories format has evolved, improving digital creation tools have inevitably made them look more professional either way.

As such, stories scheduling now seems like a more logical fit. And it’ll certainly be a more beneficial one for marketers.

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