📹 How To Create & Manage Categories

Changes to Facebook Groups Publishing

Facebook unexpectedly decided to remove Groups API access, preventing any third-party tools, including SmarterQueue, from interacting with your Facebook Groups. After April 22nd, 2024, SmarterQueue will no longer be able to publish directly to groups you manage. You can still schedule posts for these groups, but will receive email notifications for easy manual posting instead. You may also wish to consider transitioning to a Facebook Page for better engagement.

Everything you need to know about Categories in SmarterQueue!


In This Article


Video Walkthrough


How To Create Categories

🎥 skip to 00:46 for a video walkthrough!

To create a new Category, navigate to the Categories page in your SmarterQueue dashboard.

  • Select 'Add a New Category'.

  • Enter the Category name, select a color you'd like, and which profiles you’d like the Category to post to. This is then saved automatically.

Now, just head to your Posting Plan to create some Timeslots for your new Category! 😊

Note: For more information on how your Categories and Posting Plan are used to automate scheduling, check out How Does SmarterQueue Publish Your Content?


How To Edit A Category

🎥 skip to 1:07 for a video walkthrough!

On your Categories page, select any of your existing Categories on the left side. In this example we’ve selected “Own Blog Posts”:

Here you can edit the Category name, its color, and which profiles the Category will post to. This data is all saved automatically.


What If I Want To Delete A Category?

🎥 skip to 1:14 for a video walkthrough!

On the Categories page, select the Category you’d like to delete. Then, click the Trash icon to delete that Category.

Note: If you delete a Category that contains queued or past posts, you will be prompted to select another Category to transfer your queued posts to when deleting the Category in question. In the case of past posts, this retains the analytics for them. Deleted Categories cannot be restored.


How To Bulk-Edit Which Profiles Post To Which Category

🎥 skip to 1:31 for a video walkthrough!

  • On your Categories page, select "Bulk Edit Profiles" on the left.

Now you can click to enable or disable which Categories post to which of your social profiles.


How To Combine Categories

To dispose of a Category and combine its posts with another 

  • On the Categories page, select, then click the 'Trash' icon to delete the Category you wish to combine. 
  • In the window that pops up, you’ll be prompted to transfer the posts in that Category to an existing one. 
  • Click "Delete Category" to complete the combining process. Now, your two Categories are merged into one.


Common Questions

  1. What happens to my posts when I delete a Category?

If you delete a Category that contains queued posts or past posts, those posts won’t be deleted. Instead, you will be given the option to move those current and past posts to another Category.  

  1. How can I delete a Category AND delete its posts?

If you do want to delete all posts in a Category, you can click on the Category name in the left column, which will filter your Queue to view just the posts in that Category. You can then use the Bulk Trash button to delete all posts in that Category. You can then delete the Category. 

NoteIf you have already published some posts in that Category, they will still have to be moved to a new Category, to keep your analytics intact.

  1. How can I delete all of the posts in a Category except for one social profile?

If you’ve accidentally bulk imported posts to more social profiles than you intended, here’s a helpful tip to fix this, as long as all posts are in the same Category, and you don’t have older posts that you want to keep. 

  • When viewing your Queue, click on the Category in the left, to filter the Queue to only show posts in that Category. 
  • Click the link at the top to bulk-trash all posts
  • Now click on the Trash link in the left column, to view Trashed posts in that Category. 
  • Click on the social profile in the left column that is the social profile you wanted the posts to remain in. Bulk-restore all these posts.

In this way, you’ll be able to delete all posts in a Category except for posts in that single social profile.

  1. Do Inactive Or Paused Seasonal Categories Count Towards My Daily Posting Limit? 
Yes, both paused Categories and inactive Seasonal Categories count toward your Daily Posting Limit. For more information, please read this helpful article section:  What Are Seasonal Categories & How Can I Use Them?
  1. Why am I seeing an error that "There are currently no Timeslots for this Category in your Posting Plan, which will prevent you from queueing Posts to it. Add Timeslots"?
When viewing a Category, if you see this notice: 

This simply means that you have not yet created any times during the week to publish for this specific Category. To solve this notice, simply click the link to head over to the Posting Plan and start scheduling some Timeslots for your Category 💪