PSA: Do not schedule posts during a big platform outage, learned this the hard way in Chicago

Last Tuesday I had this whole content calendar lined up, 5 posts spaced out perfectly for peak times. Then Instagram goes down for like 3 hours nationwide (you know, that big blue screen of nothing). My scheduled posts all fired at once when it came back, so the algorithm flagged my account for spammy behavior. Engagement tanked, reach dropped to almost zero for a week. Now I always check downdetector before queuing anything. Has anyone else had their batch scheduling backfire like this? What do you check before you schedule?

2 comments

2 Comments

the_vera16d ago

Spacing them 30 minutes apart saved my account. Same thing happened in May.

margaretf4016d ago

Three weeks ago I lost two months of posts doing it ten minutes apart, so I'm curious what made you land on 30. Was it just trial and error, or did you see some pattern in the notifications? Also, did you run into any issues with the app flagging you anyway, even with the longer gap? I'm paranoid about getting locked out again, so I'd like to know if 30 minutes is the magic number or if it's more about the total amount you post in a day.