Unfortunately, we can’t prevent every channel disconnection, such as those due to network authentication limitations or service disruptions. However, you and your team can minimize some common reasons for disconnections by following a few best practices in Social Media Management.
In this article:
Refresh your channels regularly
If your channel has been connected for a long time, Social Media Management’s connection to your channel via the network API may become faulty. In such cases, your channel may not instantly become disconnected, though you may start experiencing minor issues in our platform such as post publishing errors or missing data. Eventually, your channel may become fully disconnected.
Since we regularly update our platforms to stay current with native network features and bug fixes, we recommend that you refresh your channel connections every 3-4 months to keep your channel authentications fresh and minimize connection issues. Refreshing channels is a quick process that a Social Media Management Administrator or Team Leader can do at any time.
Follow each network's authentication requirements
To protect your social accounts, networks have different requirements for authenticating and integrating your accounts with third-party tools like Brandwatch. Please visit our network-specific channel connection guides to get familiar with each network’s requirements before connecting your channel to Social Media Management.
Note:
In particular, Meta has strict guidelines for authenticating Facebook and Instagram accounts and maintaining channel connections with our platform. Visit our article on Resolving Facebook and Instagram Account Disconnection in Social Media Management to learn more about the potential disconnection issues you may encounter with Meta accounts.
Plan for Administrator transitions in your organization
Before an Administrator leaves your organization in Social Media Management, we recommend that you have a transition plan in case you need to transfer Administrator permissions or ownership of your social account(s) to another member of your team.
Add back-up Admins to your social accounts
In some cases, social networks will allow you to add multiple Administrators to a social account. For example, for Facebook Pages, you can grant multiple users Full Control access to your Page(s) via the Meta Business Suite. In this case, a back-up Administrator will still be able to manage the Page and refresh the channel connection in Social Media Management after the original Administrator leaves.
Refresh channels after an Admin leaves
Whenever you delete an Admin user from Social Media Management, we recommend that the new Admin who will be managing the channel refresh the connection to any channels the deleted user had previously connected. Visit our Managing Users article to learn more about the potential impacts of deleting users.
Any back-up users you designate to connect your channels will need to have the appropriate native access to the social account in addition to being an Admin or Team Leader for the channel in Social Media Management. Visit our network-specific channel connection guides to familiarize yourself with the user access required to connect a channel for each network.