Are you still noticing a decline in the engagement and reach of your Facebook posts? Don’t worry, you’re not alone.

With so much content being published on Facebook, getting your posts showing up in people’s newsfeeds is just one part of the battle.

Another is Facebook algorithm which deliberately shows people content Facebook thinks is most relevant to them.

And there is a third you might not be aware of.

Facebook can limit your access

With so many social networks and people posting to our social networks, we use Hootsuite to help manage our posts.

Recently we started receiving a “social network is limiting your access error”. This error was preventing us from posting and stopping scheduled posts going live.

A real pain.

But when we contacted Hootsuite about the issue they advised it is coming directly from “Facebook’s automated system, which will detect substantial amounts of posting and can limit a user’s posting ability for a period of time”.

Facebook can temporarily block you for these reasons

Essentially Facebook had temporarily blocked us from posting because we might have either “shared too much in a short amount of time or shared posts that were marked as unwelcome”.

And this can be quite serious.

Facebook warns to avoid being blocked again “you should avoid sharing many posts or messages in a short amount of time. Otherwise, your account could be permanently disabled.”

We aim at one post an hour and didn’t see any notification from Facebook on possibly posting something “unwelcome”.

So we are still in the dark as to how we came to be temporarily blocked but I did go through the steps of lodging an appeal to Facebook and haven’t had any issues since.

You may or may not have had this happen to you and you might never but it is just another thing to keep in mind when it comes to Facebook.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Alexia Purcell is the social media editor for News Corp Australia’s News Regional Media. She is an internationally recognised social media expert, journalist, university lecturer and speaker. You can connect with Alexia on Facebook at facebook.com/alexiajpurcell.