Two years ago a friend who sells second-hand furniture had two Facebook pages and one Marketplace seller account. Page posts and Marketplace listings were two separate jobs, both piled on him.
He had done the arithmetic. Two page posts a day, two minutes each. About ten Marketplace listings a day, three or four minutes each. Together, forty-odd minutes a day.
Forty-odd minutes is bearable. The trouble is that those forty-odd minutes have to happen sitting down. Measuring a piece, or answering a customer, gets interrupted, and by the end of the day it is grating.
Both jobs live in the same app, and the rhythms are completely different. Talk about them as one pile and the amount of work is easy to underestimate.
Where the two flows differ
A page post has very few actions:
- Open Facebook, switch to the page
- Tap the post box
- Write the text
- Add a photo
- Tap publish
Five steps. The only one that needs thought is step 3.
A Marketplace listing is a different size of job:
- Open Facebook, go to Marketplace
- Tap Sell something
- Pick photos from the library, usually several
- Reorder the photos
- Enter the title
- Enter the price
- Choose a category
- Choose a condition
- Write the description
- Choose the pickup method
- Tap next
- Confirm and publish
Twelve steps to start, and about twenty taps in practice. Four or five of them need a decision: how to word the title, what to charge, which category, how to judge the condition.
Side by side, a page post is limited by how often it happens. A Marketplace listing is limited by the number of steps, and by how easy it is to miss one.
Do Marketplace first. A single listing takes long enough that the time you get back is real clock time. There are enough fields that after a person has filled ten in a row, by the eighth they are on autopilot, and missed fields and wrong fields show up in that stretch. Options such as category and condition stay correct when a template runs them a hundred times. A person filling them a hundred times will get some wrong.
Page posts sit lower. With one or two accounts and one or two posts a day, doing it by hand is faster. If several pages need updating on a schedule, configure that flow at the same time. It is simpler than listing, and setting up one template takes almost no time.
Put the items in a table, then push the photos into the library
Prepare the listing details on the computer first, as a table, one row per item:
| Column | Contents |
|---|---|
| Title | A short name for the item |
| Price | A number |
| Category | The category you chose |
| Condition | The grade you settled on |
| Description | Two or three sentences |
| Pickup method | Collection or shipping |
| Photo index | Which photo in the library |
Build the table, then configure the flow. While you configure it you no longer have to think about how to describe this item. You only map the columns of the table onto the parameters of the flow.
Next time you list new stock, edit the table. The flow stays as it is.
The library needs the photos first. Push them in bulk with the workstation’s file distribution. Two limits apply. Push in batches: sending too many at once fills the network and ends up slower. On iPhone, turn on photo library permission first. Without that, the files arrive and still cannot be saved into the library, and the flow finds nothing when it reaches the photo step.
Describe the two flows in two passes
On the conversation page, select the phone and describe the two flows in two separate sessions. The first time, use refinement mode for both. It will ask about details you did not think to mention.
The listing can start from this, edited to fit:
Open Facebook, go to Marketplace, tap sell something, choose the most recent photo in the library, then the next two as extra photos, set the title to the text I give you, the price to the number I give you, category furniture, condition good used, the description to the two lines I give you, pickup method collection, and stop in front of the publish button without submitting.
The page post is much shorter:
Open Facebook, switch to my page, tap the post box, put in the text I give you, attach the most recent photo, and stop in front of the publish button.
Both keep the line that says not to submit yet. Listing and posting cannot be undone. For the first few runs, having a person confirm is better than running it wrong and deleting it afterwards.
Once both run cleanly, save them as two separate workflows.
The listing parameters are title, price, description, and photo index. If a whole batch shares one category and one condition, hard-code those in the template. Leave only the fields that change.
The post parameters are only the caption and the photo index. Everything else is fixed. That flow takes less than ten minutes to set up, and it removes the few daily interruptions of having to go and post.
Keep a post from landing on the wrong account
Two pages and one seller account: bind one phone to each, and set the alias to the account name. Group by business line, for example one group called furniture pages and one called the second-hand account.
When you dispatch a task, choosing a device means choosing an account. That removes one decision in the middle, and one chance of posting in the wrong place. Aliases and groups are covered in the Devices documentation.
After each run, check Execution History line by line. When a listing task fails, it is usually one of these two:
- A required field did not get filled. Usually that field’s entry is somewhere other than where you assumed, so go back into the flow and change the step order.
- A button could not be recognised. Facebook has quite a few icon-only buttons. Add an image template.
When a page post fails, the wait is usually too short. The photo is still uploading, and the next step is tapped before the page has moved on.
The furniture seller did not move both flows at once. He got the Marketplace listing working first, which took about a week, then added the page posts. He said listing went from a stretch he had to sit down and do every day to filling the table in the morning and tapping once. The two page posts were added afterwards, in passing.
If all you do is page posts, one or two a day, doing them by hand is faster. If you are doing both, get the listing flow working first. That is where the time saved shows up most clearly. Installation is on the install selection page.
Frequently asked questions
- Is the gap between a page post and a Marketplace listing really that big?
- Bigger than it looks. A page post is write something, add a photo, tap publish. Five or six steps. A Marketplace listing needs a title, price, category, condition, description and pickup method, plus selecting and ordering photos. Twenty taps or more.
- Which one should be automated first?
- Marketplace. A single listing takes several minutes, so ten a day is most of an hour, and with that many fields mistakes creep in. A page post takes a minute or two, which only pays off if you are running several pages on a schedule.
- Where should the listing details be prepared?
- On the computer, as a table with one row per item: title, price, category, condition, description, pickup method. Preparing the table first makes configuring the flow far quicker and stops fields being missed.
- How do product photos get onto the phone?
- Push them in bulk from the workstation into the device library. On iPhone you must grant photo library permission first, or the files arrive and cannot be saved. For large batches, push in stages rather than all at once.
- How do I stop a listing landing on the wrong account?
- One phone per account, aliased with the account name, grouped by business line. Choosing a device then means choosing an account, which removes one decision and one chance of a mistake.
- Do condition and pickup method change much?
- Usually not within one batch of stock, in which case hard-code them into the template. Only title, price and description really change, so those are the parameters. More parameters is not better, only the ones that actually vary.
- Is a page post worth its own template?
- For one or two pages posting once a day, no, doing it by hand is faster. But if several pages need updating on a schedule, it costs almost nothing to configure, because that flow is so much simpler than listing.
- How do I debug a failed post?
- Check Execution History, which records the source, status, target device and error. Listing failures are usually a required field that did not get filled, or a button that could not be recognised, which an image template fixes.
Start with the heavier one
Hand the Marketplace listing flow over first
Software is completely free and runs on your own computer.