Reconnect a social account

Hootsuite uses access tokens to connect to your social accounts. Social networks provide these tokens. When tokens expire or become invalid, you must reconnect, or re-authenticate, your social accounts. When a social account is disconnected, scheduled posts will not publish, streams will not load, and analytics data will not be collected for that account. Find out why social accounts disconnect.

Before you begin

To reconnect a social account, make sure you have:

• Credentials (email and password) for the social account.
  A Facebook group can only be reconnected with the credentials that were originally used to add it to Hootsuite.
• Facebook admin permissions for the Page if reconnecting a Facebook Page.
  • Your profile needs an Admin or Editor Page role for the Facebook Page if it's a classic Page type or Facebook access with full control or partial control on a new Page type. See the Facebook help article See your Facebook Page role or access.
  • If the Page is an asset in Facebook Business Manager, you need Admin access to the Page in the Business Manager account as well. See the Facebook help article Add People to Your Business Manager.
• Message access turned ON for Instagram (if applicable for your organization). In your Instagram mobile app Settings, select Privacy, select Messages, and under Connected Tools, make sure Allow Access to Messages is toggled on.
• Permissions in Hootsuite to reconnect the social account:
  • Team, Business, and Enterprise plan members in a Hootsuite organization must have super admin, admin, or advanced social network permissions to reconnect a social account.
• Not exceeded the number of accounts allowed for your plan type. Each plan type lets you manage a certain number of social accounts - you must be under that number to reconnect an account.

If you don’t have permissions to reconnect a social account, you will see the last user who connected the account when you select Reconnect social accounts.

Pages, profiles, and groups added to Hootsuite with the same social account credentials can be reconnected at the same time (instead of one by one). So if a user has Hootsuite permissions to reconnect at least one Page, group, or profile associated with the same social account credentials, they will all reconnect.

Reconnect a social account

How to identify a disconnected account

When a social account is disconnected, you or your team members are alerted in the following ways:

Reconnect banner- A reconnect banner appears in Hootsuite. If you close the banner but the connection is not resolved, it will reappear after 24 hours.

Account alert- A yellow alert icon appears on your profile picture.

Email notification- An email notification is sent to the last user who successfully connected or reconnected the social account to Hootsuite, or to an org admin. Follow the instructions in the email to see the affected accounts and take action.

Planner alert- Posts scheduled to publish to a disconnected social account display a warning. Until the social account is reconnected, these posts will fail to publish. Open the scheduled post, and then select Reconnect.

Composer alert - If you select a disconnected social account when creating or editing a post, you'll be prompted to reconnect it before you can schedule or publish. If you don't have permissions to reconnect that account, you can save your post as a draft.

Stream interruption- Streams powered by disconnected social accounts are flagged.

Social networks and teams alert- Select My profile , and then select Manage accounts and teams. Disconnected social accounts are flagged with a red exclamation mark.

Proactively reconnect a social account

Reconnecting a social account proactively, before Hootsuite displays disconnection alerts, is a common troubleshooting step. Refreshing an account’s connection ensures that it’s up-to-date and has the newest permissions required to complete certain actions in Hootsuite.

Proactively reconnect a private account

1. Go to My profile, and then select Manage accounts and teams.
   
2. Under Private social accounts, select the disconnected account (or the account that is being problematic).
3. Select the Profile Settings tab, and then select Reconnect with [social network].
   
4. Enter your social account credentials, and then sign in.
   The social network may display some permission prompts. Approve the prompts to complete the reconnection.

Proactively reconnect an organization's account as a Team, Business, or Enterprise plan member

Team, Business, and Enterprise members of a Hootsuite organization can use the following steps to reconnect an organization's social account. Make sure you have all the permissions required to reconnect the account. See the section, Before you begin.

1. Go to My profile, and then select Manage accounts and teams.
   
2. Select Social Networks.
   
3. Select the disconnected account, select the Profile Settings tab, and then select Reconnect with [social network].
4. Enter your social account credentials, and sign in.
   The social network may request some permissions. Approve the requests to complete the reconnection.