Automated Instagram Reels posting from Airtable content calendar

A guide to understand, operate, and extend the workflow.

---

1) What this workflow does (and why it’s useful)

Goal: Turn a simple Airtable sheet into a content calendar that automatically publishes Instagram Reels via the Instagram Graph API, on a schedule you control in n8n.

Why this matters: - Your team plans everything in Airtable (user-friendly, collaborative). - n8n posts for you at the right time, every time. - You keep full control (no third-party SaaS lock-in, no manual uploads). - Later, you can reuse the same queue to post YouTube Shorts / TikTok (omnichannel).

Core flow (one row = one post): 1. Cron starts the workflow at a set time. 2. Airtable – Search grabs due rows: status = "To Post" AND scheduledat <= NOW() AND platform = "IG". 3. Split Out processes each row individually. 4. Set (Map fields) normalizes Airtable fields → videourl, caption, recordId. 5. IG: Create Media Container registers your video as REEL. 6. Wait 90s lets IG process the video. 7. IG: Publish Reel publishes the container. 8. Airtable – Update marks the row as Posted, stores igmediaid, and timestamp.

---

2) Architecture at a glance