Can You Block a Competitor’s Links From Appearing on Facebook?

A while back, I set up a Facebook page for my blog. At the moment, there are 177 “followers” of Elliot’s Blog on Facebook, all of whom opted in to be a “follower.” Although I do have a bit of dialog on the Facebook wall, I prefer to discuss articles on my blog since the readership is far greater and it would be more information for others to read.

I often post links to articles from my blog on this Facebook page’s wall to let people know that a new post has gone up. I don’t post links to my articles on my personal Facebook page because I can assure you that none of my friends care about what I am posting on my business blog. Therefore, the only people who should see these links are those who have opted in to my Facebook page or perhaps others if someone else posted a link on their own wall.

Yesterday afternoon, I tried to post a link to a new article and received an error message when I tried: “This message contains blocked content that has previously been flagged as abusive or spammy.  Let us know if you think this is an error.”

I assume this means someone reported a link to my blog as spam. I don’t believe a “competitor” actually reported the link, but having this happen leads me to believe a competitor could easily do this to another company (or ask someone unrelated to do it) and have the other company’s links blocked. This can be problematic for a company that is spending a considerable amount of money sending users to its Facebook page.

It shouldn’t be too difficult for a company to prove to Facebook that its links aren’t “abusive or spammy,” but if a company is spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on a well-timed marketing campaign, losing the ability to post links for a few hours or possibly days can be damaging.

I reported this issue to Facebook, and hopefully someone will look into it to see that my posting links to articles on my blog directly on my blog’s opt-in Facebook wall is not spammy nor is it abusive.

Elliot Silver
Elliot Silver
About The Author: Elliot Silver is an Internet entrepreneur and publisher of DomainInvesting.com. Elliot is also the founder and President of Top Notch Domains, LLC, a company that has closed eight figures in deals. Please read the DomainInvesting.com Terms of Use page for additional information about the publisher, website comment policy, disclosures, and conflicts of interest. Reach out to Elliot: Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn

5 COMMENTS

  1. There are link shortening services that cause the problem. The FB system seems to think they are all spam after a few have been reported.

    Good luck getting a reply from FB, they have been slow to react and do not be surprised if your ability to post just magically gets turned back on.

    Have you certified your account (phone number, address, and email verification) having all three seems to help.

  2. Need any more evidence that revolving a Company, Business, Project, Enterprise etc. around a social media account, rather than your own domain is crazy ? A no-control recipe for disaster.

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