How to Fix Post Failures When Using Sprout Social

If your post fails to publish in Sprout Social, there are a few common things you can check before reaching out to Support. This article outlines general troubleshooting steps that apply across most social networks.

Before getting started, we recommend checking Sprout Social Status Page to see if there are any ongoing issues that could affect publishing.

Common Reasons for Post Failures

Media file is not under required or recommended specs

Sprout may not be able to publish posts that include images or videos in an unsupported format, resolution, or file size. These mismatches can lead to immediate upload errors or more generic publishing failures that appear unrelated at first glance. This is one of the most common causes of post issues across all social platforms.

How to fix it: Verify that the video file meets the file size, type and other specifications listed in our  Media Upload Types and Size Limits Help Center article.

Profile is disconnected or expired

Publishing can fail when your connected profile becomes expired, disconnected, or unauthorised. This can happen due to security token expiration, platform-side changes, or revoked access permissions. Sprout won’t be able to push posts to that network until the connection is restored.

How to fix it: Check for disconnections and reconnect the profile by following the steps listed in our How do I troubleshoot profile disconnections? article.

Profile lacks necessary permissions or is suspended

Even if a profile appears connected, posting may fail if the account has publishing restrictions. This includes limited page roles or suspended accounts.  In some cases, platform changes to role structures may affect actions on third-party apps. 

How to fix it: Confirm the account is in good standing natively. Look for warnings or notifications that may indicate a temporary suspension or actions pending. 

Temporary social network issue

Occasionally, issues outside of Sprout’s control, such as outages or slowdowns on the social networks end, can prevent publishing from completing. These errors are typically temporary and resolve without further action, but may result in failure messages.

How to fix it: Wait a few minutes and try reposting. If the issue persists, check the social network's status page for updates or known outages related to the issue, as well as a resolution timeline.

Still seeing an error?

If your post still won’t publish after checking these items, please contact our Customer Support for focused assistance.

When contacting us, it’s helpful to include:

• A screenshot of the failed post and any visible error message
  
  
• Whether the issue seems to affect more than one social network profile
  
  
• Whether the issue appears to affect a specific post type (e.g. Reels, Image)
  
  
• Whether the issue happens consistently, during a  specific period or only once

This information helps our team investigate and resolve your issue more quickly.

Additional Resources

• Failed post notifications
• How do I find missing Publishing Calendar posts?
• How do I use the Notifications Drawer?

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