A beautiful short story on DMs:

Coach says: “Send more DMs Bro!”

You say: “Hell yeah brother”

FB Says: “You’re banned”

End Story

Have you been through this fairy tale before?

Sending 20 DMs and getting hit with the Ban Hammer from all the platforms.

It sucks, it’s frustrating and it can send your business down the drain.

We’ve worked with 1,500 clients over the last few years, and 99% of them have faced this problem.

So I’m going to walk you through how to fix it, step by step. Some may seem simple or obvious others might take a bit of time. Let’s get into it.

Verification

If you’re not verified on whatever platform you choose to send DMs, then you’re playing with fire. More then that you’re showing your lack of professionalism and care for your brand.

at $7-15/mo. Verification on any platform should be the bare minimum you do to your profile. Yes it’s not as cool as it used to be. Yes a majority of people have it.

But it helps for several reasons:

On X, your replies are hidden if you’re not verified. So you will not have comments or posts go viral

Also on X, you can’t even send DMs to anyone without being verified.

Your content is throttled if you’re not verified. So… just do it.

On FB and IG your content is shown less when you’re not verified, but it’s not a dramatic difference. The biggest reason we keep our verification around is the instant chat support when you do get a temporary ban. Even though the customer service people are mostly… idiots. They can still help. And at the very least they escalate your case so it gets resolved a lot quicker.

Platform Usage

This is something I’ve only recently discovered. And it makes complete sense when you think about it. The reason a majority of people get banned is because they’re participating in suspicious acitivty.

Suspicious activity is usually described as to much of a certain action. We used to log off FB when our Setter was on the platform, to avoid the ban. Now we actively stay logged in when they’re on the platform because it signals to FB that we’re “super-users” and we’re using the platforms features. Not just sticking to one.

So when you’re sending DMs be sure to be posting, commenting, engaging with content in between DMs. So it looks like you’re just a super-user not a spammer.

Upper Limits Testing

Last year our upper limit before we would get banned was around 50-70 reach outs a day. Which granted is still quite good, but not enough. Over the last few months we’ve pushed the limit every day and now we can send 170+ outbound DMs a day.

We did this by slowly increasing the volume day by day. Adding 1-5 more DMs a day.

The issue that any platform will pick up on is: irregular use, which signals spam. So if you go 100 DMs to 20 the next, then back to 100. The platform won’t like it.

So we stick to as much volume as possible but keep it as consistent as possible. Every day is above 170, so the platform knows we’re consistent.

Find your top number and stay consistent.

Copy and Paste is dead

You opt into to FB being able to track your keyboard strokes. So when you copy and paste what do you think is going to happen?

BAN HAMMER.

Yes it’s a huge pain in the ass, but you now have to type your messages manually OR… use a software like text expander, which has different keyboard shortcuts for you to use.

At minimum in your first message type out the leads name and then use an external app to fill the rest in.

Delete extensions and Add ons

I know I know. The guy who preaches CRMs says to get rid of them. Well at the very least get rid of ones that directly impact and touch the FB inbox. As soon as we did, all the bans stopped.

Every software will say “you won’t get banned”. Which is legally true, the ban won’t be attributed to the extension or app. But if happens 10x more every time we have an app pluged in. Why? It looks like spam, simple.

Engage first, then DM

Out of all the “hacks” this is the most important. Tell me what looks like a normal user:

User 1:

Logs on - sends 50 DMs - logs off

User 2:

Logs on - posts content - replies to some comments - likes some posts - sends 10 DMs - enages some more - sends another 20 DMs - engages - logs off for a bit - engagers - sends more DMs

Yeah kind obvious right?

Use the platform the way it’s intended to be used, you’ll have a lot more success that way.

Summary:

Getting banned is almost inevitable, it will happen, but it’s only temproary. Use this list to avoid it, and constantly try to push the envelope for more DMs. Eventually you’ll be able to send a lot more. It just takes time