When you connect Facebook, Instagram, Google Business, LinkedIn, TikTok, YouTube, or Pinterest, that platform gives SocialBizHub a secure access token — a key that lets us publish on your behalf without ever knowing your password. This article explains how we keep that key fresh, why platforms sometimes cancel it anyway, and what to do when that happens.
The good news: renewal is automatic
Access tokens come with expiration dates, and we renew them automatically behind the scenes. Under normal conditions you should never have to reconnect an account just because time passed.
Why an account can still disconnect
Social platforms cancel access tokens on their side as a security measure. It's normal, it happens with every publishing tool, and it is not something you did wrong in SocialBizHub. The most common triggers:
- You changed the account's password — the platform signs out every connected app, on purpose.
- A security checkpoint — for example Facebook or Instagram asking you to "confirm it's you," enabling two-factor authentication, or a suspicious login prompt.
- Permissions changed — someone edited the app's permissions on the platform, or your role on a Facebook Page / Business Manager changed.
- Platform-side changes — occasionally a platform revokes tokens when it updates its own systems or policies.
Facebook and Instagram do this more often than the other networks — their tokens are the most security-sensitive.
What SocialBizHub does automatically
When a platform reports a dead connection, we:
- Pause posting to that platform only. Posts going to your other connected platforms keep publishing normally — one broken connection never blocks the rest.
- Fail loudly, not silently. The platform's card on Connections switches to an amber Needs reconnecting badge with a one-click Reconnect button. A post whose only destination was the disconnected platform is marked Failed on the calendar — open it to see Why this failed and a Retry action for after you reconnect. A multi-platform post still goes out to your healthy platforms, and its details panel lists the skipped platform under Platform issues.
- Email you once with a link to fix it. We won't pile a reminder into your inbox every time a post is affected.
How to reconnect
- Open Content → Connections. The affected platform shows an amber Needs reconnecting badge instead of the green Connected check.
- Click the Reconnect button on that platform's card.
- Sign in to the platform when prompted, and accept all permissions it asks for — declining any of them is the most common cause of a connection that breaks again right away.
Reconnecting the same platform does not count as an extra connected account against your plan.
After reconnecting
- Scheduled posts are safe. Reconnecting never deletes your drafts or scheduled posts.
- Skipped posts don't re-send themselves. Use Retry on a Failed post, or Duplicate a post that already published to your other platforms and send the copy to the reconnected one.
Best practices
- Reconnect right after a password change on Facebook, Instagram, or Google — don't wait for the email. A quick disconnect/connect on the Connections page takes under a minute.
- Accept every permission during the connect flow.
- Keep your account email current (see Account Settings) so the disconnect alert reaches you.
- Reconnect inside SocialBizHub, not from the social platform's own settings — our connect flow is what re-links the account to your location correctly.
Frequently asked questions
Will I lose scheduled posts when an account disconnects or I reconnect? No. Your drafts and scheduled posts stay put. Posts that come due while the platform is disconnected simply skip that platform (the rest of your channels still publish), and you can retry them after reconnecting.
Does this affect my review imports too? No. Review imports on the Integrations page use your public listing links, not access tokens, so they can't expire this way. Google Business review replies use the same connection as posting, so a Google disconnect affects those until you reconnect.
Can SocialBizHub stop platforms from doing this? No tool can — the disconnect is the platform protecting your account after a sensitive change. What we do instead is renew tokens automatically so routine expiry never bothers you, and catch the rest quickly so reconnection is one click away.
My website analytics (GA4 / Search Console) stopped updating — is that the same thing? It's the same idea (a Google security change can revoke that access too), but those are reconnected from Website → Analytics, not the Connections page.