Spintax for Facebook posts, explained properly
One post, written once, that arrives as different wording in every group. Here is the syntax, a live example, and how to write it so it reads like a person rather than a thesaurus.
What spintax is
Spintax is a notation for text that varies. You write one version of a sentence and mark the parts that have alternatives, and each time the text is used one combination is picked. It has been the standard way to do this in copywriting for years, and the notation is simple enough that you can read it out loud.
This:
{Hey|Hi|Morning} everyone, the {new|latest} listing is up.produces one of six sentences, of which two are:
Hi everyone, the new listing is up. Morning everyone, the latest listing is up.
The syntax, in full
There are only four rules, and this is all of them.
| Written | Means | Example output |
|---|---|---|
| {a|b|c} | Pick one of a, b or c | b |
| {a|{b|c}} | Groups nest to any depth | c |
| {great |} | An empty option is legal, so the word is sometimes absent | (nothing) |
| \{ \} \| | A backslash escapes a literal brace or pipe | { |
Try it
This is a real listing post with six choice points. The count is computed by the same parser the extension posts with, so it is the number of distinct posts this one line can actually produce.
{Hey|Hi|Morning} {everyone|all}, {just listed|just put up} a {clean|tidy|well kept} 2 bed in {Riverside|the north end}. {DM me|Comment below} {if you want details|for the address}.Hey everyone, just listed a clean 2 bed in Riverside. DM me if you want details.
Six choice points, each with two or three options, and the campaign has more distinct posts than you have groups. That is the entire trick, and it took one line to write.
Why it matters for Facebook groups
Near identical text posted across many groups is the cheapest possible spam signal to compute. It requires no understanding of what you are selling, no human review, and no judgement about whether your offer is good. It is a string comparison, and it runs on everything.
When it fires, Facebook usually does not delete anything. Your posts stay up, look completely normal on your own screen, and get shown to a fraction of each group. That is the mechanism behind almost every report of group posting that "worked great for two weeks and then stopped", and it is covered properly in the shadowban guide.
Writing spintax that does not read strangely
The failure mode is text that is technically different and obviously machine made. Every version has to be a sentence you would have been happy to type yourself, and there are four habits that get you there.
- Vary structure, not synonyms. {Just listed|New on the market|Available from Friday} beats swapping "good" for "nice" and "pleasant", which is what makes a post read like it came out of a thesaurus.
- Put the choices at the start and end. The first line and the closing prompt do the most work in a feed, and they are the parts a reader compares if they happen to be in two of your groups.
- Three or four options is enough per spot. The number of combinations multiplies, so a handful of spots with a few options each already exceeds any realistic group list.
- Read every option out loud in place. Most bad spintax is a sentence that only works with one of the choices, usually because of an "a" that should have been "an".
Real details help more than clever wording. A post that names the street, the day or the price is inherently varied because those facts differ, and it also gets more replies than one that does not.
How many variants do you need
Options multiply, which people consistently underestimate. Four spots with three options each is 81 combinations. Six spots is over 700. You are almost certainly done sooner than you think.
| Spots with 3 options | Total variants | Enough for |
|---|---|---|
| 2 | 9 | A handful of groups |
| 3 | 27 | A small weekly list |
| 4 | 81 | Most campaigns |
| 5 | 243 | A large list, comfortably |
| 6 | 729 | More than you will ever send |
The number that matters is not the total, it is whether the posts you actually sent this week were different from each other. Past a few hundred, more combinations buy nothing.
Mistakes that make it obvious
- Spinning the nouns. Swapping the name of the thing you are selling reads as evasive, and it stops people searching the group for it later.
- Broken grammar across options. "a {apartment|flat}" produces "a apartment". Read each one in place.
- Spinning nothing but the greeting. If the remaining four lines are identical everywhere, the text comparison still matches.
- Leaving the same photo on every post. Images are fingerprinted separately from text, so a perfect spintax template attached to one file forty times has still grouped itself together.
- Treating it as the whole solution. Spintax fixes the wording. Timing, link placement and per group frequency are separate problems, and the poster page covers how they fit together.
Still stuck? Mail us and a person will answer.
Spintax questions
What is spintax?
Spintax is a way of writing one piece of text that can produce many versions of itself. Options are wrapped in braces and separated by pipes, so {Hey|Hi|Morning} renders as one of those three words each time the text is used. It comes from the copywriting world and it is the standard notation for text that has to vary.
How does the {a|b|c} syntax work?
Everything between the braces is a list of alternatives separated by the pipe character, and one is chosen at random. Groups can nest, so {a|{b|c}} is legal, and an empty option is allowed, so {great |} means the word great appears about half the time. A backslash escapes a literal brace or pipe.
Why use spintax for Facebook posts?
Because posting near identical text to many groups is the cheapest thing for Facebook to detect and one of the most common reasons a campaign quietly stops being shown. Spintax lets you write the post once and still send different wording to every group, which removes that signal without giving you forty posts to write.
How many variants should a post have?
Enough that no two groups in one campaign get the same text. For thirty groups, a few hundred possible combinations is plenty, and that is only four or five choice points with three options each. Chasing enormous numbers is wasted effort, because the variants that matter are the ones actually sent.
Is spintax detectable?
Well written spintax is not, because every version is a normal sentence a person could have typed. Badly written spintax is very detectable by humans, who notice a sentence that reads like a thesaurus exploded. Vary structure and detail rather than swapping single words for synonyms.
Do I need a spintax generator?
No, and generated spintax is usually the kind that reads strangely, because a machine swapping synonyms does not know which of them a person would actually say. Writing three real alternatives for each of five spots takes about ten minutes and produces better text.
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