What is the difference between recycling and recurring posts?

Recycling and recurring posts allow you to repost or share content on social media that has been previously posted, often with the goal of reaching a broader audience, boosting engagement, or repurposing valuable information.

Both these features are available in the Business plan, but you can try it for free a couple of times with some limitations.
You cannot recycle/recur posts for YouTube, TikTok and WordPress due to limitations of their API and the way these accounts are designed.
You can recycle/recur posts for Twitter, Pinterest and Google Business Profiles as long as you create 10+ variations per post using the Spintax Generator tool. Learn more about that here.

While they're a little similar, recurring posts are useful when you need to post something at the exact time repeatedly (i.e. weekly sale events). On the other hand, recyclable posts are being recycled based on a posting schedule and may not even be recycled at all. Learn more about that below.

What are recycling posts?

Recycling relies on a posting schedule, thus it's very flexible and very recommended if the dates are not sensitive and you simply want your queue active.

For example:

You want to share a post about meditation 1 time per week (Thursday) at 9 AM. Create a time slot named i.e "weekly post".

Start creating a post with the photo attached and follow this route:

Go to Create.
Click the social account’s icon you have created a time slot for and want to share this photo.
Design your post and attach the photo.
Click Recycle from the dropdown menu.
Select the label named "weekly post".
Choose Recycle every 1 week and recycle the post accordingly.

Frequency

You can choose to recycle your posts every week, month and year. However, if you recycle a post for every week/month and have more scheduled posts in between, the next occurrence may be more than a week/month.

Keep in mind you can't recycle posts every day, unlike recurring posts which can be set to repeat daily.

Editing Recycling posts

Unlike Recurring posts, you can't edit Recycling posts on the Calendar view, since they are just recycling predictions, not scheduled posts.



You can only edit the main "parent" post and all the other iterations will be affected too. You can go to Posts > Recycling to find the parent post easier.



You can also edit the recycled post's settings. Moreover, recycling posts can be paused (on the Settings), unlike recurring. These posts that are still under Posts > Recycling but on Pause, not in the queue.

Learn how to pause recycling posts here.

Start and End Date

Recycling predictions don't require a Start or an End date, however you can specify it on the settings by toggling these on and choosing a date (optional).

You can also choose to expire the post after being published X times.



You will be able to see the recycled post on the calendar, the day after. Publer will take each recycled post at 12 at midnight, check the first available time-slot, and then add it to the calendar.

Recycling will always happen at midnight every day (UTC Time), which means it happens around the timezone you have chosen on Publer. You can only create recycling posts for the day after today, not for the current day. Learn more about it here.

If there are other scheduled posts, you need to choose between postponing them or just skipping that time/date.

To do that, simply toggle on the "Recycle only if there are no scheduled posts for the day". This is ideal if you want to post only once a day.

Bulk scheduling

Unlike the Recurring feature, you can use the Recycling feature even when you are creating many posts at the same time, by selecting the respective time-slots for each social account. Learn more about posting in bulk here.




Learn more about recycling posts here

What are recurring posts?

A recurring post is a social media post that is repeated on a specific platform. These can be scheduled posts, set to reoccur daily, weekly, monthly or yearly. They might also just be one-time repetitions.

Recurring unlike recycling posts, are very strict. They do not rely on a posting schedule and it's recommended if the dates are sensitive, i.e. Christmas day, sales campaigns, events etc. Occurrences of a recurring post will be published regardless of what other content you may have.

If you want a post to recur more often than once a week, then it needs to have at least 10 other posts in between. Learn more about the anti-spam efforts here.


For example:

You own a bakery and you have a weekly sale every week on Friday at 12 PM.

Start creating a post with the photo attached and follow this route:

Go to Create.
Design your post and attach the photo.
Click Recurring from the dropdown menu.
Choose Recurring every 1 week on Friday at 12 PM and recur the post accordingly.

Frequency

You can choose to recycle your posts every day, week, month and year.

Unlike recycling posts, you can set up recurring posts every day, however you have to make sure that there are at least 10 posts in between.

Editing Recurring posts

Unlike Recycling posts, you can edit the recurring posts individually without affecting the other recurring posts, or the parent post.



You can also edit the parent post on the Posts tab > Recurring, which will affect all the other occurrences.



Moreover, you can't pause recurring posts, but you can pause recycling.

Start and End Date

Recurring, contrary to Recycling posts, need to have a Start and End Date.

Bulk scheduling

Recurring posts, unlike Recycling, can't be scheduled in bulk to prevent spam.




Learn more about recurring posts here.


Written by: Brikena Cani

Updated on: 19/02/2024