With over 2.5 billion monthly active users, Facebook offers writers a great way to connect and communicate with their audiences—it’s why authors like Rainbow Rowell, Junot Diaz, and Neil Gaiman all have active Facebook author pages! By engaging with your followers and posting content that appeals to your visitors, you’ll build an audience that will help you boost readership and book sales. But keep in mind, it’s not a content free-for-all: Some types of posts are deemed unacceptable by Facebook. The experts at Web Design Relief can help you determine what’s okay for writers to post on Facebook—and what posts will get you banned or blacklisted.

Posts That Will Get A Writer Banned From Facebook

Asking for Engagement

According to Facebook’s Community Standards, users may not ask that an audience likes, shares, or comments on a post in exchange for content. For example, a writer may not promise a sneak peek of a chapter to anyone who likes a post. Although it may sound like a great idea, the risk of being banned by Facebook is too great. You don’t want to lose access to the audience you spent such a long time building!

Using Copyrighted Content

While it may be tempting to do something fun and creative like creating your own book trailer and then posting it for your Facebook followers to watch, be careful that any images you use or any accompanying background music isn’t copyrighted. Facebook takes copyright very seriously, and expressly does not allow users to post content that violates someone else’s intellectual property. Be sure to do your research and use only music and images that you hold the rights to post on social media.

Posting Inappropriate Images

Any posts depicting violence, nudity, or sexual activity are subject to default removal. For this reason, we would recommend that authors err on the side of caution when it comes to posting anything that could be deemed inappropriate. If in doubt, leave it out.

Inaccurately Tagging Content

Tags are a great way to get more people to see your posts, but be sure what you post is being tagged correctly. Facebook is vigilant about users “spam-tagging” and putting inaccurate tags on their images in order to reach a larger audience. It’s also against Facebook tagging rules to ask followers to tag a photo as part of a contest. Recently, Facebook changed their tagging rules about who you can and cannot tag in your posts, so be sure to keep up with the changes and stay within the latest guidelines.

Incentivizing an Audience

Offering an incentive to people to get them to like your page—aka “like-gating”—is a no-no. You can ask people to like your page; you just can’t require it in order to enter a contest or to receive other content from you. Facebook forbids posts that incentivize, and trying this tactic may get you and your followers banned.

It may be tempting to try to fly under the radar in hopes that Facebook won’t notice you breaking the rules. But if you try to outsmart Facebook’s algorithms, you’ll get caught and banned—and the consequences aren’t worth it. Your page could get deleted permanently, and there is little to no appeal process.

Remember, there are many ways to increase engagement on your Facebook page without breaking the rules.

Question: What do you do to increase engagement on your Facebook page?