n8n Workflow: Schedule Instagram Posts & Reels from Google Sheets

Schedule Instagram posts & Reels from Google Sheets—automatically

Turn your Google Sheets content calendar into a reliable Instagram scheduler. This n8n workflow checks for ready rows, schedules posts and Reels in PostWire, writes results back to your sheet, and sends Gmail alerts when anything fails.

What this workflow does

• Runs every 15 minutes to keep your publishing pipeline up to date.
• Reads rows from Google Sheets where the status column is set to ready.
• Validates required fields and filters out incomplete rows missing a valid media_url (https media URL), a publish_at timestamp, or a caption.
• Schedules content in PostWire for the row’s publish_at time and targets platforms from the networks column (defaulting to Instagram).
• Updates Google Sheets per row:
  • Marks as scheduled and stores the PostWire schedule_id when scheduling succeeds.
  • Marks as error and emails fix details via Gmail when scheduling fails.
• Listens for PostWire events to detect when a post is published or fails.
• Writes back final results to Google Sheets: sets published and saves the live post_url, or marks failed and emails the failure reason via Gmail.

Use cases

• Social media teams planning campaigns in Google Sheets and delegating Instagram scheduling to n8n.
• SaaS operators managing consistent publishing workflows without manually posting to Instagram.
• Automation engineers building a calendar-driven approval-to-publish process with clear status tracking.

Technical details

• PostWire community nodes (install/configure PostWire account, connect networks, and add PostWire API credentials in n8n).
• Google Sheets integration to read and write columns including publish_at, caption, media_url, status, row_number, networks, schedule_id, post_url, and note.
• Gmail integration for notification emails on scheduling and publishing failures.
• Nodes used include if, set, filter, sticky note, and Google Sheets to implement validation, routing, and write-backs.