As we’re sure you have noticed, Facebook has been updating just about every aspect of their platform, and along with it come a slew of bugs affecting users in so many different ways. Through our partnership and a lot of research and testing, we’ve identified a checklist of what you can do if your Group post fails to publish for one of many reasons. Yes, this is due to the most annoying bug of all, and we call it the Marketplace bug. This affects your Facebook Group posts whereby something triggers Facebook to publish your posts as a listing, from which they then say “in review” and often times then fail. When using our platform, the bug is evident with the same trigger from Facebook to classify your post as a listing post, then the post fails completely, and/or posts as an “empty post”. If you’re noticing your posts to your Facebook Group (no issue with the New Business Pages experience) are either failing or coming up as an empty post, this is most likely because your post is triggering Facebook.
If you’re scheduling out posts via our platform, you’ll receive a warning message reminding you about this bug when scheduling any Group posts. To see if any of your posts failed, visit the Content Calendar. If a post has failed, you’ll see a “Failed” button at the top of the post. When you click on the post to expand it, you’ll see the below error message notifying you the post failed due to the ongoing Marketplace bug.
Whether you’re posting via the platform or directly to Facebook we’ve put together a checklist to refer to when creating your Group posts, to ensure your posts don’t get flagged and potentially fail to publish.
1. Try posting to your Facebook Group as your Business Page Identity. ✓
Although it’s not 100% effective, this step has helped many ensure their posts do not get flagged. First, you want to link your Facebook Page to your Groups, and start posting as your Facebook Business Page Identity. If you don’t have a Facebook Business Page, it’s worth getting one as this will help you better promote your business on Facebook by allowing you to build up your brand, and prospect new customers. If you need help creating a Business Page please head to the Training section of our platform, and take the course titled All About Facebook Business Pages for step-by-step instructions on how to do so. Once you’ve created a Facebook Business Page, or if you already have one, you must ensure your Page is admin of your Groups in order to start posting as your Facebook Business Page identity. To make your Page admin of any of your Groups:
- Go to your Group on Facebook.
- Go to Group Settings.
- All your Settings will then pop-up on the right, scroll down to Manage Advanced Settings, and next to Linked Pages click the pencil icon to link the Page you want to start posting as. See image below.
Once you’ve made your Business Page admin of your Groups. You can then start interacting as your Business Page Identity in your Groups, and also schedule out posts via our platform as your Business Page Identity. In order to do so:
- Go to Settings in the platform.
- Under Connected Groups, you’ll be able to select the option to post to each Group via your Personal Profile, or one of your Business Pages. Be sure to select the Business Page you want to post as.
If you don’t have a Facebook Business Page, or are still experiencing issues. Refer to the next items on the checklist below.
2. Try editing your text/copy to remove marketing/advertising triggering words. ✓
When this issue occurs, Facebook’s algorithm puts your Group post under a “Marketplace Listing” due to the post sounding too ad like, although you did not create a Marketplace listing in the first place. Which then causes your post to fail. To avoid this from happening, you want to ensure the language you’re using in the captioning of your Group posts doesn’t use too much marketing language. Avoid using multiple emojis, dollar signs ($$$), as well as terminology such as “Buy this product now” , “For sale” , “Limited time only”, “Act now,” etc. Through testing, we’ve also determined it’s best to use 3 to 4 keywords in your captioning. Every user who’s tried this, has been successful in publishing their posts. Therefore, with all this being said, be sure to stick to short captions which don’t sound too much like advertising, and track closely to see what words can be causing your posts to fail.
3. Test posting bite-size content. ✓
To help with writing shorter captions mentioned above, post bite-size content! This means, publish posts covering only one topic. For example, instead of having one post covering multiple different topics, post multiple posts covering only one topic per post. This will help you avoid failing posts, increase your engagement, and also allow you to have more content to post. These type of posts also tend to perform best, and are more likely to catch people’s attention. People are so busy in their everyday lives, they are likely to skip over long posts and prefer multiple shorter posts. Therefore, take all the information you plan to cover and break it up into multiple posts using less descriptions. A great way to do this is by posting a variety of content types. For example, plan to post about a certain product each week. Then everyday post something different about that product. For example, post an image of the product one day, an animation of the product the next day, a story another day, etc. This is easy to do via our Content Library as we offer a variety of content types to choose from such as:
- Images
- Animations
- Customizable Templates
- Stories
- Shows you can make on your own!
We hope this checklist is useful in ensuring your Group posts no longer fail. Please reach out if you need any further assistance. 🙂
Source: “Facebook Algorithm Secret ⚡️ Bite-size Content.” CinchShare, https://www.cinchshare.com/facebook-algorithm-secret-bite-size-content/.