Perhaps the most stressful notification in a marketer’s (or business owner’s) career is that error screen you see when your Instagram account gets shut down for one too many plant posts, or perhaps your selfie was a bit too spicy or you have a hater reporting you for your activism…
Well, I spat out a few topic ideas for this newsletter on LinkedIn in a poll, and the people have spoken: how the heck do we keep our Instagram alive?! For those who aren’t in the plant medicine 🌱 or similar “adult” industries, legality on a local level doesn’t mean certain companies can market themselves on a global platform. Activists and educators are increasingly struggling to be heard and dealing with content suppression and shadowbans on many platforms as well.
The dreaded “account disabled” screen. (Sorry to trigger you!)
Keeping your social media accounts in good working order starts long before you publish your first post, with your brand strategy. Start by considering your brand name, and if it has some potential “naughty words” in it, consider using a variation or abbreviation (preferably one that still uses the first part of your business name so it’s easy to search for) as your social media handle & account name, especially on Meta platforms and TikTok. Ideally your handles match your domain name, so it’s best to avoid trigger words and find something unique and available.
Knowing the rules and how the algorithm works for each platform you’re on is another important step. Read the regulations and compliance guidelines for marketing for your state if you’re in a regulated market, and keep links to each platform’s Community Standards handy so you can stay up to date. And yeah, it helps to actually read them. I know, it sucks. AI can help summarize!
Your marketing strategy should be built with the “rules” as your guidelines, and keep in mind the possibility of having your social platforms shut down when building your systems and tech stack. Prioritize OWNED platforms (like your website with your own host and domain name, and your email list) over platforms that own your content (pretty much all social media platforms), and back up EVERYTHING.
For lots more on building a marketing strategy that’s resilient to the whims of algorithms and platform censorship, check out my blog post sharing my lessons learned marketing in a very regulated industry.
Make Instagram fun again, and less stressful, with strategy.
A Plan to Avoid the Ban on Instagram (But Applicable Elsewhere Too)
Track and back up your content in a spreadsheet or project management system, with dates & times posted, topic, caption copy, links, images or video (linked to the original files), platforms, hashtags and performance data. Back up everything (twice), and be sure to download any content that you create & edit in the app.
Plan for a variety of content types and content pillars, emphasizing educational and lifestyle content that shows people, mood, brand story and ethos more than potential problem product close-ups, showing plant medicine use, or sales / overly promotional language.
Avoid using “trigger” words and banned hashtags. To get an idea of what terms may be problematic, search for hashtags on Instagram (use the Tags filter) and if they don’t come up exactly as spelled, don’t use them. Sometimes Instagram will show a “Hidden” warning about hashtags when you search. Avoid any “adult” terms or if you’re in a legal gray area, avoid using sales language (avoid: deals, specials, for sale, shop, order etc. combined with regulated products). Some hot-button social issues lead to suppression of related words as well. You may even need to censor certain words in images!
Tighten up your account settings. In your Instagram settings, look for “Creator Tools and Controls” or “Business Tools and Controls” (depending on your account type), then look for Minimum Age. If your account features adult content, set your Minimum Age to 21 or 18. Setting this to 21+ for all my regulated industry clients in the last year has kept all the accounts in good standing. You can check out all the various privacy settings to better control your audience and who can tag or mention your account as well.
Become friends with Account Status and check it often. In Settings, scroll to Account Status, and hopefully you see all green check marks. If not, tap into each category to see any issues, or content that has been flagged or removed. If you find flagged content, carefully analyze it to figure out what rules were broken, edit the content and then submit an appeal if it was removed, or just delete it, and take notes to avoid sharing similar content again.
Only post original content that you create, or use media that you are authorized to use or share. Platforms use AI to scan for copyright violations or spam posts. Using only high quality media you create, licensed stock photos, and unique content helps you remain authentic and avoid infringement issues. Same goes for music - if you are a business, use only royalty-free music in your videos, or secure the rights to use them in advertising.
Avoid spammy and problematic behaviors that the platforms prohibit like buying followers (this is such a massive NO, just don’t), using unauthorized third party software like auto-comment bots, following too many people too quickly or making posts or comments too fast so that you appear to be a bot. You want REAL people to connect with your business that will actually convert, so be authentic and don’t act like a bot or a spammer, and you hopefully won’t get mistaken for one.
Get your account Verified if you have the extra $, so that you can better access Meta support and avoid shutdowns. It’s a way to protect your brand, but personally I don’t want to give them any more of my money after the stress of multiple account shutdowns that I’ve dealt with.
Shadowbans are sneakier, but if you have any issues in Account Status, it’s likely your content is being suppressed. How can you tell? Try searching for your account from a different account, preferably one that doesn’t follow the one you’re testing. If you can start typing the first few letters and your account pops right up, great! If you have to type the whole dang handle to see the account pop up, you’re shadowbanned. Time to clean up your content!
The ban hammer: it falls for us all (eventually) if we’re loud enough.
What to Do if the Ban Hammer Falls on You
First, don’t beat yourself up. This can happen to anyone, sometimes it’s totally random, and it’s obviously a very AI driven monitoring system. Take a deep breath.
Check out the Community Standards and make sure your account was in compliance, especially if the notification you receive about the account shut down mentions that you violated Community Standards and which ones.
Appeal the ban (usually there’s an appeal link listed on the notification or you can go to Instagram Help Center), and mention your compliance with all Community Standards and that your account was shut down by mistake. Don’t spam the appeal link, wait at least 24 hours between appeals.
If your account was verified, you may have access to Meta Support and can often find contact info to escalate your appeal to a human who can review it. If not, you can try starting a new account with a different email address, getting that one Verified, and then contacting support for help with your disabled account and pleading your case.
For those in regulated markets or legal gray areas, having a backup account can be a helpful way to not have to start completely over. Name it very similarly to your main account, mention the accounts in each other’s bios, and post to it occasionally so it’s not blank in the event you need to switch it to your main account.
If you do have to start over from scratch, at least you backed up ALL your content, right? Losing that following really sucks though.
I think we've had the Doobie Nights account shut down 4 or 5 times. The first time it happened I was onsite working at Lucidity Festival with a shitty connection. So that was fun. But all the shutdowns and shadowbans were years ago, and I slowly stopped investing much energy in platforms that didn’t want us, and focused instead on owned channels and the platforms we could advertise on. That’s worked out pretty well and our account has been “in the green” for years now. I’ve SO been there, and eventually I learned some things!
If you have any tips to share, reply to let me know! Feel free to drop a comment on my related blog post with your ban hammer avoidance strategies. The algorithms (and community standards) are constantly changing, so it can be daunting to keep up. But with a solid strategy and careful content curation, you can stay in the green and keep making that green!
🍃 Marketing 101: Top Ten Tips Based on a Decade+ in the California Industry - the post that inspired this one, with LOTS more useful tips specific to regulated or challenging industries.
Digital Marketing Services - if this is all overwhelming and you need some help building a strategy and resilient marketing systems, maybe I’m your gal?
My LinkedIn Posts - I’m often sharing tidbits of info, battle scar stories, and industry insights on LinkedIn, which surprisingly seems to have less censorship on certain topics than Meta platforms.