The publish log: checking that a scheduled post went out

What a publish log records

Of the five parts of social media scheduling tools, the publish log is the least glamorous and the one people miss most when it is absent. A calendar says what was meant to happen. A log says what did. At its simplest it is a list, one line per attempt, that a person can read in under a minute. Each line should carry five things.

• The post, identified by its first words or a thumbnail.
• Each platform it was sent to, listed separately.
• The time it was actually published.
• The outcome on each platform: published or failed.
• For a failure, a reason a person can act on.

Why scheduled posts fail

Scheduled posts usually publish. When one does not, the cause is rarely mysterious. In general it falls into one of four groups.

• The connection lapsed. Access to a social account typically has to be renewed from time to time, and a password change can end it early.
• The platform refused the media. A video too long, a file too large, or a shape the platform does not take.
• The platform was unavailable. Outages are uncommon and outside anyone's control.
• Something changed underneath. The account was renamed, a page was removed, or the post was edited while it was going out.

A two-minute check

Do not wait for a follower to tell you a post is missing. Tie a short check to your publishing times. A few minutes after a post is due, open the log and read across the row. If every platform says published, you are done. If one says failed, you have learned it while the post is still timely. For an important post, such as a launch, also open one platform and look at the live version.

What to do with a failed post

A failure on one platform out of several leaves you with a choice: fix and resend to that one platform, or let it go. Resend when the post is still timely and the fix is small, such as reconnecting an account. Let it go when the moment has passed. Avoid resending to every platform, which hands the others a duplicate. Ask any vendor how a single-platform retry works before you need one.

A weekly read

Once a week, read the whole log. You are looking for patterns, not incidents: the same account failing twice, videos failing where images pass, posts going out later than planned. A pattern points at a cause you can remove, such as a location manager who keeps changing a password.

What Link AI shows at publish time

Our editorial choice for this part is Link AI by Linkme, on the strength of what its example makes visible at the moment of publishing. In the Post to All panel the one post has five rows, for Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, YouTube and LinkedIn, and when the last row is done the panel reads 'Published to all'. That is the confirmation a publisher needs in the moment.

History is a different matter. How past posts are listed, how a failure on one platform is reported and whether anyone is alerted are all undescribed. Book a demo to try Link AI, send out one real post, then ask for last week's history and an example of a failure. See also post statuses.

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