Schedule Instagram posts and reels from Google Sheets with PostWire

Quick Overview

This workflow uses Google Sheets as a content calendar to schedule Instagram posts and Reels via PostWire, updates each row with scheduling and publishing results, and sends Gmail alerts when scheduling or publishing fails.

How it works

1. Runs every 15 minutes on a schedule.
2. Reads Google Sheets rows where the status column is set to ready.
3. Filters out rows missing a valid https media URL, a publish time, or a caption.
4. Schedules each valid item in PostWire for the row’s publish_at timestamp and target platforms from the networks column (defaulting to Instagram).
5. Updates the Google Sheets row as scheduled with the PostWire schedule ID, or marks it as error and emails the fix details via Gmail.
6. Listens for PostWire events when a post is published or fails on a social platform.
7. Writes back to Google Sheets with published and the live post URL, or marks the row failed and emails the failure reason via Gmail.

Setup

1. Install and configure the PostWire community nodes, create a PostWire account, connect your social networks, and add a PostWire API credential in n8n.
2. Add Google Sheets credentials and select the target spreadsheet and sheet in all Google Sheets nodes.
3. Create a sheet with the required columns (at minimum publish_at, caption, media_url, status, and a unique row_number, plus networks, schedule_id, post_url, and note for write-backs).
4. Add a Gmail credential and set the notification email address in the Settings node and the “Email me what failed” node.
5. Ensure media_url values are publicly accessible https file URLs (not a Google Drive share page) and set rows to ready to be picked up.