Friday, March 30, 2018

You’re temporarily restricted from joining and posting to groups

Ok so here is something that I have been having problems with recently...

Promotion!

Specifically promotion on Facebook. With all of the hot water Facebook has been in recently it is making things difficult for people who want to utilize Facebook for promotion purposes without paying Facebook to do it for them.

Here is what I have learned.

Your first ban is usually just a day or two. They progressively get longer, though my last 3 bans have all been the same length: 7 days. Hopefully they at least see that this kind of promotion isn't technically against their rules, as outlined in the terms of service.

Facebook will ban you from posting to groups for these reasons:
~Too frequent postings.
~Flagged posts (i.e. offensive content, posts that break the FB content rules, etc.)
~Malicious script (really if you are posting any script you're likely to be banned)
~Harassment

Numbers one, two, and three are all self-explanatory I feel. But it's that first one is tricky.

I have been banned from group postings a few times at this point, for trying to promote my YouTube Channel/Podcast, and being too poor to pay for ads. So what did I do? I did what made sense to me, I joined some large groups in the vein of the content that I cover on my podcast. I created a post on the page I made for my podcast, and then shared it in all the groups I joined.

At first everything went swimmingly. As time went on, and I joined more groups, I ran headlong into the ban arm of the almighty Facebook.

After I did some digging, I found a policy deep in the annals of the black hole that is the Facebook help section, that said something along the lines of, "We at Facebook try to flag things that would be considered annoying or obnoxious." Which to me means they let an algorithm deem what is annoying based on how frequently I share, versus taking into consideration the rules of the groups and the fact that I am posting to different places that likely have mostly different members.
("Annoying" is such a subjective word...)

So I spaced out the posts some. Meaning I went from about 3-5 seconds between posts to about 30 seconds between posts.

That lasted about 3 days before I was banned again.

So this time I went looking for external sources of help. Many of them suggested doing what I had already done, by spacing out the time between posts to at least 30 seconds. So, I spaced it out even more. Now we are up to about 2 minutes between posts. Also, I started adding more text in the share.

This lasted about a week, before I got banned yet again.

After that I decided that I was going to severely limit the amount of groups I was joining, which had already tapered off fairly significantly. Also, my postings in the groups I was currently a part of would both A) take most of the day to complete and B) not be all encompassing (meaning I wouldn't post to every associated group everyday). I was also going to be more mindful of actually being active in the groups to which I was posting. Which I was doing a bit before, but it was occasional. Now I was going to be a slightly lower than average active member. (I do have other things to do in the day besides promoting the podcast... like editing, filming, and researching for the damn thing.)

This has been my most successful method.

Until today...

Today I tried to post to a group that I CREATED and got banned from posting to groups.

Herein lies the rub though. When such a ban is enacted on your account, you are banned "from joining or posting in groups that you are not an admin for." Which I hadn't even started doing yet.

Now I am going to share with you what I have learned to help you from making the same mistake.

When promoting a YouTube video or podcast episode on Facebook:

1. Create a page on Facebook that corresponds to the channel/podcast you are trying to promote. (specifically for Generally Nerdy I have a Soundcloud account, YouTube account, website, Instagram account, AND a Facebook page... and now also a group, but we will get to that) (This step should be fairly obvious. Though you could just share the links to the episode directly from your personal account. That just seems a bit unprofessional to me.)

2. Create a post for your episode EVERY TIME you upload one. You don't have to promote every episode in groups (though why wouldn't you) but it is good practice to actively post so that your followers/fans will always have content to digest. Included in this post NEEDS to be a link of some kind to the actual episode. Soundcloud used to allow people to embed a mini player into your post, but now you can only link to the Soundcloud page on which your episode exists. Youtube kind of embeds for you already if you use their link, which is nice. Other platforms are unknown to me.

3. Join a handful of groups that are related thematically to the topic of your channel/podcast. Do so over time though. Joining more than 24 groups in a single day will get you banned from joining or posting. AND 24 groups is probably too much anyway. Also, know the groups posting rules. Nothing will get you flagged/banned faster than breaking a group's rules.

4. Space out your promotional posts by at LEAST 5 minutes. (Especially if you are going to be posting in more than 5 groups in that day)

5. Add some additional information into the share. This information can either be a real brief summary of the information in the post, or a quick talking point that is relevant to the post. Just add something. (You may also want to try adding DIFFERENT text to the shares depending on which group you are posting to. i.e. if you do a comic books podcast and you talk about all the major publishers generally, don't say things about Marvel books in your share to a DC group.)

6. Be engaged in the groups to which you share. The share does NOT count as being active. Neither do simple reactions. You have to actively respond to some other members' posts with text. Try to engage conversation on posts that aren't yours. (that being said you don't have to go overboard. A few bits of "activity" a day is sufficient.)

7. Nothing is fail safe aside from paying Facebook money to do the promotion for you.

8. (OPTIONAL) Create a group of your own and do what you can to increase members. Or become an admin in a group you frequent. Remember when you get banned for over promoting, they only ban you from joining new groups and from posting to groups you are NOT an admin for.

9. (NOT OPTIONAL) Don't be a dick! Be mindful of the group's rules, and Facebook's Terms of Service. Stay in those lines and in an ideal world you won't be banned... the key there is "ideal."

I hope this helps. :)

15 comments:

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  3. I have been subjected to this treatment by Facebook almost constantly for the last month. The last time was last Sunday, and now I can't even post links on my own profile. The restriction ended today at 4:20 p.m., and by 7:15 p.m. I received a new restriction. I had just shared 4 links on my profile, and posted 3 of them on a single group I own.

    What the hell is happening with Facebook?

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