Hey everyone,
I'm building a fully automated publishing workflow for my podcast using n8n, self-hosted on a Mac Mini locally. The idea is simple: I finish editing a video, upload it to Google Drive, fill in a row in Google Sheets (title, upload date/time, video link), and from there everything runs automatically.
For YouTube this already works perfectly — the video gets uploaded and scheduled to go live at the exact time I specify.
The problem is TikTok and Instagram. I'm currently using a paid subscription to Upload-Post, a third-party service that acts as a unified API layer for social media platforms. The scheduled_date parameter consistently throws an ISO 8601 format error even when the format is correct. I've tested it via curl, with fixed strings, different formats — same error every time. My current workaround is an n8n trigger that fires daily at 4pm and checks whether today's date matches the upload date in my sheet. It works, but it's not flexible — I can't set different times per video.
What I'm ultimately trying to build:
The core idea is that after uploading the finished podcast episode, the workflow should automatically generate a full transcript. Based on that transcript, an AI then plans the entire short-form content strategy — identifying the most interesting moments, writing hooks, captions, and titles for TikTok and Instagram Reels. I then use that output to actually cut the short-form clips. Once cut, those clips get uploaded and scheduled automatically across all platforms.
In short:
- Upload podcast → automatic transcript → AI suggests short-form moments, hooks, captions, titles → I cut the clips → clips get auto-published on schedule
- Weekly long-form podcast episode → YouTube (automated, working)
- Daily short-form clips → TikTok, Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts (upload works, scheduling is the problem)
- Ideally: reading back post stats from TikTok and Instagram to analyze performance over time
My current stack:
- n8n (self-hosted, Docker, Mac Mini)
- Google Drive + Google Sheets as control layer
- YouTube Data API v3
- Upload-Post (paid subscription) for TikTok + Instagram
- Claude API for AI analysis
- Open to suggestions for transcription tools
My questions:
- Has anyone successfully scheduled posts to TikTok and Instagram via n8n? What did you use?
- Is Upload-Post reliable for this use case or is there a better alternative?
- What transcription tool would you recommend for this kind of workflow?
- Any experience with AI-based content analysis and planning inside n8n?
- How are you pulling post stats from TikTok/Instagram back into a workflow?
Would love to hear from anyone who has built something similar. Thanks!