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  Article updated: June 20, 2024

Troubleshoot a post failure

If an error occurs when you try to send a post from Hootsuite, you’ll see it right away, with information about what to do next.

If a post or scheduled post fails to publish and you’re not sure why, use the following checklist to narrow down the cause of the problem.

Have you tried to publish more than once? Sometimes a momentary glitch can occur between Hootsuite and social accounts. In such a case, your post might succeed if you try again in a few minutes.

Is the social account you’re trying to publish to connected to Hootsuite? Even if it seems to be connected, we recommend reconnecting anyway, because this fixes most publishing issues. See Proactively reconnect a social account for instructions.

Are you publishing to an Instagram Personal profile? Instagram requires you to publish via mobile notification for all posts and stories. This is a manual publishing process using your mobile device. You’ll need to take action on a mobile notification. Learn how to use the Instagram mobile notification workflow.

If you’re publishing to an Instagram Business profile, are you set up for direct publishing? To access direct publishing to Instagram, your Business profile must be connected to a Facebook Page. If not, you must publish via mobile notification, which is a manual process using your mobile device. See Connect an Instagram account to a Facebook Page for setup instructions.

Do the images in your post meet the social network’s requirements? Sometimes the file format, file size, or aspect ratio can cause post failures. See Image file requirements to make sure any attached files meet the requirements of the social network you’re publishing to.

Is your post potentially being flagged by the social network? Social networks have strict rules to protect users from spam and inappropriate content. See The post is a duplicate, The social network is temporarily limiting your access, and The post contains abusive content to learn more about these rules.

Did you attach a GIF to a LinkedIn personal profile? Images and videos can be attached to personal LinkedIn profiles, but GIFs can only be attached to LinkedIn Pages.

A scheduled post won’t encounter any errors until its scheduled publish time. If a scheduled post fails to publish, you’ll receive an email notification that it failed, and you can view the reason for failure in your content calendar.

  1. Go to Plan.
  2. Locate the failed post in its scheduled time slot. Failed posts appear with a red border.
    A failed scheduled post in Planner, shown with a red bar.
  3. Select the failed post to view the publishing error and recommendations.
  4. To make changes to the post, select Edit, and then either reschedule or publish the post.

Common failure reasons

Many post failures have specific reasons, which will link out to information in the following articles:

You can also review the following most common publishing issues across all social networks, and try the solutions offered.

There is a problem with the permissions on this account

This error means Hootsuite doesn’t have the required permissions to complete the requested action.

  1. If you’re trying to publish to:
  2. Proactively reconnect your social account, and don’t change any of the permissions being granted to Hootsuite during that process. See Proactively reconnect a social account.

There is something wrong with the content of this post

This error indicates a problem with the content of the post. Adjust at least one of the post's elements before you try publishing again. Check that each element meets requirements:

  • Images - See Image file requirements.
  • Video - See Video file requirements.
  • Link and link preview - Confirm that the URL is formatted correctly and that the link works as expected in your browser. See also Work with link previews to confirm how your link preview is expected to work and whether you can customize it.
  • Targeting - Confirm that your audience restrictions are appropriate for the Page. LinkedIn Pages must have at least 300 followers who match all the selected targeting criteria.

Sorry! A temporary error occurred

This error can occur if there’s a brief lack of connection between Hootsuite and your social account. Sometimes, it can be such a minor glitch that the post does successfully publish. If you see this error, we recommend checking your account on the social network. If your post is not there, try publishing again in a few minutes.

Outages can also cause this error, which can be longer periods of time while Hootsuite or one of the social networks experiences publishing issues. Check Hootsuite’s status page to determine whether an outage is causing the issue.

In the case of TikTok accounts, this error can currently appear for several reasons, but reconnecting should fix most causes of the error. Follow the steps in this article to proactively reconnect your TikTok account. When you reconnect, be sure to authorize all permissions for Hootsuite without editing access.

If you try publishing again and see the error again, it could be because the TikTok post is a duplicate. Please retry publishing after 24 hours, but make changes to the post to make it unique.

The social account is disconnected

Social accounts can disconnect from Hootsuite because of updates made on social network platforms. A disconnected account won’t publish scheduled content.

Solution: Reconnect the social account to Hootsuite:

  1. Go to Account, and then select Disconnected social accounts to display your disconnected accounts.
  2. Select Reconnect to enter the social account credentials (username and password) and re-authorize the connection to Hootsuite.

See Reconnect a social account for more details.

The social network is temporarily limiting your access

Social networks protect their platforms from instability and their communities from abuse by placing limits on the number of actions users can take within certain time frames.

Limits differ depending on the action (such as publishing or commenting), the social network, and factors like speed and quantity if the same action is occurring repeatedly. The social networks do not make these limits public.

Once a limit is reached, you must wait for it to reset. We recommend waiting 24 hours for the limit to reset before trying to publish your post again. Save your post as a draft in the meantime.

The post is a duplicate

Social networks compare the text of any new post with your recent posts before publishing, to check for duplication. Repeatedly posting identical or nearly identical content can be flagged by the social networks for violating their policies.

For more details, see Twitter’s Platform manipulation and spam policy, Facebook’s Community standards, and LinkedIn’s Dos and Don’ts.

Solution:

  • Customize each post with its own unique content.
  • Don’t try to publish the same content repeatedly, and make sure duplicates are spaced well apart over time.
  • Publish to groups of no more than three to five social accounts at a time.

The post contains abusive content

Social networks can reject posts if they or their users flag content as abusive. If you're not sure why your content was rejected, read the social network terms of service. You can also test the post by publishing it directly in the social network and reviewing the social network's response.

Solution:

 

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