Using Facebook with Buffer
With Buffer, you can reach your community wherever they are online. Update your Facebook group by scheduling posts or share posts and reels with your Facebook Page followers. After publishing, you can analyze post performance and engage with post comments, all in one tool!
This article contains the following sections:
- Connecting and refreshing your Facebook accounts
- Scheduling Facebook posts, reels, and stories
- Image, video, and GIF specifications for Facebook
- Engaging with Facebook posts
- Facebook analytics
- Facebook error library
These features are available for Facebook
| Publishing | Analytics | Engagement |
✓ (Facebook Pages and Groups*) |
✓ (Facebook Pages) |
✓ (Facebook Pages) |
- Facebook Reels and Stories are not supported in our analytics or engagement dashboards. However, Reels metrics are available within Sent posts insights.
- Publishing to Facebook Groups is available via notification publishing.
Connecting and refreshing your Facebook accounts
You can connect multiple Facebook Pages and groups you manage to Buffer. To see a step-by-step guide and troubleshooting steps, checkout the following articles:
If your connected Facebook channel requires a refresh, check out the article Refreshing a channel in Buffer.
Having trouble connecting Facebook to Buffer? Check out our Troubleshooting Facebook and Instagram connections guide.
- Meta is shutting down its Facebook Groups API as of April 22, 2024 and Buffer will no longer be able to automatically post to Facebook Groups on your behalf. However, you can schedule your posts in Buffer and use notification publishing to post. Learn more about how this works here.
- While we support Facebook Pages, Buffer doesn't connect to Facebook professional profiles. You can read more about the differences between these two types of Facebook accounts here.
Scheduling Facebook posts, reels, and stories
The features available on Facebook Pages and groups vary due to API limitations, so check out the table below to find out which features you can use while scheduling posts.
The "best time to post" feature in Analyze does not support Facebook, but for advice on creating an optimal posting schedule, check out our blog post: The Best Time to Post on Facebook.
| Features & good-to-knows | Notes |
| Scheduling posts | Checkout our step-by-step guide to scheduling posts on any social channel or peruse Facebook-specific details below. |
Tagging / mentions (Facebook Pages) |
To tag / mention another Facebook Page, type in the exact handle in the caption of your post or reel. Once published to your Facebook Page, the account you mentioned will become hyperlinked. check out our full guide to adding tags (mentions) here. |
| Daily posting limit | 25 posts per 24 hours. Learn more about Daily posting limits here. |
| Character limit | 5,000 characters per post or reel. Learn more about character limits for each social network here. |
| Hashtags | In the composer, type the hashtags you'd like to use for your post or reel (hashtags are not available for stories at this time). When the post is published, the hashtags will hyperlink just as if they were sent from the native platform itself. Learn more about How hashtags work in Buffer. |
Scheduling Facebook posts, reels, and stories
- To get started, select your Facebook account on the left hand side of your dashboard.
- Open the composer at the top of your queue.
- Select Post, Reel, or Story.
To schedule Facebook posts: Type in the caption you’d like to use, add links or upload any images or video you'd like. Learn more about attaching images, videos, and other media to your posts here.
To schedule Facebook reels: Upload the video you'd like to include in your reel and then type in or copy and paste the caption you'd like to use.
To schedule Facebook stories: Upload the image or video you’d like to use in your story. (Captions and text overlays are not available for Facebook Stories at this time).
- Click Add to Queue or use one of our other scheduling options and you're done!
Scheduling Good to Knows
Sharing links
- When using the Buffer browser extension, we can't auto-fill the text update of the post due to Facebook rules, so you'll need to type your own caption instead. We're sorry for this limitation!
- If you're sharing a link from your website to your Facebook page, you can customize the thumbnail image only if you have set up Facebook Domain verification.
- If you're sharing the URL of a Facebook or Instagram post, we are unable to generate a link preview. Learn more about Sharing Facebook and Instagram links through Buffer.
- We are unable to add captions or text overlays to Facebook stories at this time.
Facebook Reels
- Due to API limitations, it is not possible to add trending music to Facebook reels. Therefore, we recommend adding music to your video file before uploading it to Buffer.
- The Facebook Reels API does not support locations, so you will not be able to add a location to your reel.
- When your Facebook reel is published, it will also appear on the feed.
Facebook Group posts
- We use notification publishing for Facebook Group posts. This means you can create a post in Buffer and then, when it's time to post, you'll receive a notification on your mobile device that you can tap to open and copy your post over to your Facebook Group to finish posting. Learn more about how this works here.
Multi-language posts
- It's not possible to create a Facebook post in multiple languages through Buffer at this time. You would need to create such posts within Facebook itself and you will need to be an admin on the Page.
Image, video, and GIF specifications for Facebook
Facebook supports images, videos, and GIFs. However, scheduling reels is only available on Facebook Pages.
| Videos | Images | GIFs | |
| Number allowed per post | 1 (upload or link) | 10 | 1 |
| Video length | Reels - 3 to 90 seconds Video - 4 hours Stories - 30 to 60 seconds |
N/A | N/A |
| File size | Posts - up to 1GB* Stories - up to 4MB |
Posts - up to 10MB Stories - recommended up to 1MB to avoid pixelation |
up to 3MB |
| Dimensions / Aspect Ratio | Video posts - 16:9 to 9:16 Reels - 9:16 Stories - 9:16 |
8192x8192 pixels (suggested) | TBD |
| File types supported |
Reels - MP4
Stories - MP4
Video posts - MP4, MOV, AVI, and M4V
|
Posts - JPG, PNG, WebP (images will be uploaded as WebP) Stories - .jpeg, .bmp, .png, .tiff |
.GIF |
| Custom thumbnail supported | Video posts - ✓ Reels - N/A |
N/A | N/A |
| Optimal number of frames | 24 to 60 frames per second | N/A | N/A |
| Audio bitrate |
128kbs+
|
N/A
|
N/A
|
| Autoplay | ✓ | N/A | ✓ |
| Giphy integration | N/A | N/A | ✓ |
| Alt text | N/A | ✓ | N/A |
Engaging with Facebook posts
If you’re on the Essentials, Team, or Agency plan, you have access to the engagement dashboard where you can respond to comments on your Facebook Page posts.
Learn how to start engaging with Instagram and Facebook comments within your engagement dashboard.
At this time, it is not possible to pull Facebook Reels comments into our engagement dashboard.
Facebook analytics
We can post all day, but the real excitement comes when seeing the reactions to our posts. If you’re on the Essentials, Team, or Agency plans, you’ll find all of your Facebook page stats within the analytics tab.
- Facebook Reels and Stories are not supported in our analytics dashboard. However, Reels metrics are available within the Sent tab of the Publish dashboard.
- Facebook Group analytics are not available at this time.
There are two places to look for analytics in your Buffer account:
To get a quick view of each of your Facebook post's and Reel's comments, likes, clicks, reach, and shares, head to the Publish tab and then the Sent tab.
To dive straight into advanced analytics for your Facebook Page, head to the Analyze tab and select Facebook on the left-hand side to peruse the tabs:
- Overview: gives insight into your overall engagement levels for your profile over time. Learn more about the Performance overview on your analytics dashboard.
- Posts: provides a history of all of your published posts and how they are performing. Learn more about Analyzing your posts within your analytics dashboard.
- Answers: shares answers to questions such as the best day, type, and frequency to post. Learn more about Answering questions about your social media strategy.
Feel free to also learn more about our Facebook metric descriptions.
📝 When you first connect a Facebook Page, we will be able to backfill up to six months of data.
Learn more about Why your data in Buffer might differ from your native analytics here.
Facebook error library
If you're (unfortunately) hitting Facebook errors in Buffer, the Facebook error library is the place to go for solutions.
📝Do you have a Facebook feature suggestion? We’d love for you to submit or upvote it here on our feature suggestions board.