Instagram: common issues and their solutions

Find a quick solution for the most common Instagram issues

Sarah Nünlist avatar
Written by Sarah Nünlist
Updated over a week ago

You can't connect a new hashtag

Possible issue: The Hashtag has not been used on Instagram before.
You can't connect a hashtag to contentfry that has not been used on Instagram before.
Solution:
Simply publish a dummy post on Instagram prior to creating a Connection for a brand new hashtag.

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After adding a new hashtag, no contents are coming in

Possible issue: The contents are older than 24 hours
When you add a new Instagram Hashtag Connection to your social wall, contentfry will only be able to get the Instagram posts published with this hashtag in the past 24 hours.
Solution:
Make sure you set up your Social Wall before your campaign starts.

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You can't connect a public Instagram Account («Public Content») 

Possible issue: It's not an Instagram Business Account
The Account you're trying to add may not be an Instagram Business Account. Instagram only allows to collect content from public Business Accounts.
Solution: Make sure the Instagram Profile you want to add is an Instagram Business Account. You best reach out to the owner of the account.

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Possible Issue: Missing Permissions
You may not have given us all the necessary permissions when connecting contentfry to your Instagram Business Account.
Solution:
1. Log out of Facebook 2. Go to contentfry 3. In «Connections», click on the Instagram Business Icon to open the Dialog Box 4. Click on «new Profile» to renew your Token 5. Make sure you give contentfry all permissions.


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Certain Instagram posts are missing in your contentfry feed

Possible Issue: You may have exceeded the rate limitations of Instagram
Instagram only allows 200 requests an hour per token. Due to this rate limitation, some Connections may not receive all updates. You might be affected if

  • you have set up a large number of Instagram Connections 

  • you have a single token associated with a large number of Connections

  • you have connected high volume hashtags (for e.g. #cats)

Solution: 1. You might have more than one token available (e.g. from different accounts you manage). Make sure you distribute your Instagram connections evenly among all available tokens. 2. If you’ve connected any high volume hashtags like e.g. #cats we recommend you to disconnect them and replace it with a hashtag that is more relevant to your brand.

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Possible Issue: You may have exceeded the hashtag limitation of Instagram.
Each separate Business Account (Token) can search the Instagram API for up to 30 hashtags. Instagram limits the searches to 30 over any 7 day period. 

Let's say you already use 30 searches and remove a #hashtag Connection, it will take up to 7 days before you can add a new #hashtag with that Account. 

The 30 hashtag searches are per Business Account (Token), not per application using that Account. In practice, connecting a hashtag on a service like Hootsuite will count against the 30 even on contentfry. 


Solution: 1. You might have more than one token available (e.g. from different accounts you manage). Make sure you distribute your Instagram hashtag connections evenly among all available tokens not exceeding 30 hashtags per token. 2. Check all connected hashtags and delete the ones you are not actively using at the moment. 

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Possible Issue: the post was accidentally labeled as deleted.

It can happen that a short time unavailability of a post (e.g. caused by a downtime of a Social Network) results in the post being labeled as deleted. If a post is falsely shown as deleted and has therefore been deactivated, you can easily activate it again. Learn here how to do so.

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Possible Issue: The post text was edited and the user added the hashtag after he first published the post.
If a user edits his post text after he first published it on Instagram and only adds your hashtag later, we will not be able to collect this post. 

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