Even with the best tools at your disposal, scheduling and publishing content issues still come up. There’s nothing worse than realizing your post contains typos or incorrect links four days after posting. Or even more annoyingly, sometimes, a post meant to go out simply doesn’t. Instead of panicking when that moment comes, consider the best ways to understand and solve the problem. While some issues can be platform-dependent, most posting problems are universal.
Is the Platform down?
If you scheduled a Facebook post that failed to post properly, the first thing to ask is, “Is Facebook down?” If the failed post is for a different platform, check to see if there have been reported outages for that site. Even the most well-oiled, popular platforms have problems. We all remember the infamous Meta outage of March 2024.
How to Spot a Missed Post
There are a few clear signs that a planned post failed to go live. For example, something may be amiss if you notice a lack of notifications about the post. Complete lack of engagement is rare for an established account, so no interaction from your audience can indicate that the post simply didn’t get published.
Check your post scheduler app queue and live feed if something seems off. If a post fails to go live, it’s important to understand where the potential issue is coming from to find the solution faster. Some publishing apps have settings that vary posting times — up to ten minutes before or ten minutes after the scheduled time — making publishing schedules seem more human. Is it possible that your post is simply delayed for that reason?
If delayed scheduling is not turned on or more than one hour has passed since the scheduled time, the post has likely failed to publish. Platform errors (like outages or bugs), broken APIs, expired tokens, or limitations could be causing the failure.
How to Recover a Failed Scheduled Post
A post failing to go live is not a cause for panic. It happens. Still, to avoid disrupting your audience’s expectations for when content is published or missing out on the ideal posting-time window, it’s best to act as quickly as possible when you discover an issue with your content going live at the scheduled time. Following specific recovery steps can help you locate and re-publish your post in a way that doesn’t lead to messy, duplicate content:
- Wait 5–10 minutes to confirm that the delay is not caused by the “publish like a human” settings.
- Retry once if the post never appears and the platform is stable.
- If an error occurs repeatedly, pause retry attempts. Repeated attempts to publish could lead to duplicate posts*.
- Review publishing settings and specifications in your scheduling tool or platform. Make sure no settings are interfering with successful publishing. For example, do image sizes fit the specified limitations? Have you exceeded the character count?
- Document what happened for troubleshooting.
*Duplicate posting: When a post fails to publish, it may be tempting to keep trying until you see it is finally live. But this can lead to accidentally publishing the same post multiple times. Instead of blindly attempting to repost, always recheck your live feed before further attempts. If you still don’t see your post, wait a few minutes in case the scheduler is catching up.
Aftercare and Prevention
Once you’ve discovered why your post didn’t go live and successfully recovered or reposted your content, your troubleshooting journey is not over yet. It’s important to log the incident for your records. Depending on the cause of the issue, you should also reach out to your post-scheduling service or the social platform to report the problem. Be sure to track any engagement loss or shifts due to the error.
If you don’t have monitoring features already enabled, consider this your sign to take advantage of alerts or status notifications that can update you about the post directly. You may need Super Admin or full account permissions to adjust publishing settings, so check in with your team to receive necessary access.
Running regular sweeps for expired tokens, revoked permissions, or abnormal posting activity can prevent posting issues ahead of time. Incorporate these practices into your daily or weekly list of admin or maintenance tasks. Technology is not infallible, and it’s best to keep on top of possible pain points so you can prevent issues or know how to solve them quickly and without stress should they arise.