Why Can't I Add My Personal Facebook Profile Or Group?

Changes to Facebook Groups Publishing

Facebook unexpectedly decided to remove Groups API access, preventing any third-party tools, including SmarterQueue, from interacting with your Facebook Groups. After April 22nd, 2024, SmarterQueue will no longer be able to publish directly to groups you manage. You can still schedule posts for these groups, but will receive email notifications for easy manual posting instead. You may also wish to consider transitioning to a Facebook Page for better engagement.

Facebook continues its efforts to enhance user privacy on the platform. 

As such, Facebook has released multiple changes to their APIs over time, which have limited the features available to third-party apps scheduling such as SmarterQueue. 

In This Article

Why Can't I Add My Personal Facebook Profile Or Group?

Facebook changed its policy to prevent users' personal information to be collected by third-party organizations and to prevent misuse of personal accounts for business purposes.

Due to these changes, Facebook's API no longer allows third-party apps, including SmarterQueue, to post to Personal Facebook Profiles. 
As of July 19th, 2018, you can no longer connect personal Facebook Profiles in SmarterQueue, and thus you can no longer schedule and publish content to Facebook Profiles.

This was later followed by the deprecation of the Facebook Groups API, on April 22nd, 2024.

You are, however, able to connect and publish to Facebook Pages 🎉 

Additionally, for users that continue to have connected Facebook Groups to SmarterQueue since before the API deprecation, we introduced an initial workaround that allows you to keep using SmarterQueue to deal with the time-consuming part of scheduling your Facebook Group posts - adding media and captions, and scheduling all your post times.

From now on, you'll receive a notification email containing your post content, allowing you to save any media to your device, and copy the caption to your clipboard, ready to create a post for your Facebook Group. Learn more about using email notifications for easy manual posting.

Can I View Analytics For Past Posts Published To A Connected Group?

If you connected a personal Facebook Group before April 2024 and still have it connected today, you will still be able to view your Past Posts' Analytics.

Navigate to "Analytics" then click Past Posts.

You can also re-queue your Past Posts. Click the vertical three-dot menu button on your post and then click "Re-Queue".

Note: When you "Re-Queue", the post can be directly published to any other connected social profile, or can be sent to to a Facebook Group via the email notification workflow.

Can I Publish Posts To A Connected Personal Profile/Group?

Due to Facebook's changes it is no longer possible to schedule posts to a Personal Facebook Profile. If you want to connect a Personal Facebook Profile to SmarterQueue, you may wish to consider converting it to a Facebook Page.

As for Facebook Groups, you are able to publish via email notifications for easy manual posting. Additionally, you might consider shifting from a group to a page for better engagement.

Common Questions

Will Facebook be reinstating access to Facebook Profiles or Groups?

With the amount of time that has passed since Facebook removed access to personal profiles, we feel that it's safe to assume there are no plans to revert the change.

As for Facebook Groups, this deprecation is still fresh. Facebook has announced the removal of Groups from their API once before, and while it appeared to be final, they later announced a new Groups API with support for publishing to Groups.

While this may turn out to be the case this time around too, so far there is no suggestion this is the case. If this changes we will inform our users immediately.

Can other third-party tools publish to Facebook Profiles or Groups?

No. The API deprecations affected all third-party tools.

Will this affect social login, or connecting Pages?

No, this only affects publishing to a personal profile/group.

Facebook has set up their business so that everything is managed via your personal Facebook account – social login, managing pages, and groups. You will still be able to log into SmarterQueue with your Facebook account, and you can only connect Pages via your (personal) Facebook account. You will still be asked for permission to connect your Facebook account to SmarterQueue as part of the initial Facebook connection, as we need that permission in order to get the list of Pages that you manage.

Why would I change my Facebook Profile or Group to a Page?

If you are using a Facebook Profile/Group to represent/promote a business, instead of for personal use, you may find it more appropriate to convert it to a Facebook Page. This will allow you to continue using SmarterQueue to schedule your posts, as well as get access to Facebook’s wider range of tools designed for business success.

Facebook Pages offer a cleaner, more curated space where you can control the narrative and content more effectively, ensuring that what your audience sees is exactly what you intend to share. This approach not only enhances the quality of engagement but also streamlines the communication process with your followers.

Will I still have access to my old group posts in SmarterQueue?

Yes, anything published to your connected groups will still be visible in your Past Posts, as well as accessible via Analytics and Reports for published posts.

Keep in mind that no new analytics data will be gathered after April 22nd, 2024.

If I convert my Personal Profile/Group to a Page, will SmarterQueue transfer my posts?

Once you have set up your new Facebook Page, get in touch with details about your profile/group, and new page, and we will transfer your posts across for you.

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