Author: Sami Reed

I started this blog about a month ago and have been working to get things set up nice. I haven’t really used WordPress in ages, and I am new to the JetPack plugin.

In JetPack, I saw that it had nice site stats and analytics. I have been looking at those and comparing them to my Google Analytics. It’s funny how they don’t match, but I think they are telling the same big story.

Essentially, I am nobody. I know… I know…

Anyhow, Jetpack also has some nice social features—particularly social media auto-sharing. My son told me that I have to post to social if I want to grow my blog. I heard that somewhere else as well.

I wanted my Instagram account to basically be a business account. It’s for this blog. And I have dreams of making a dollar or two on this blog. But I didn’t really know what a “business account” means in Instagram speak.

BTW, I should mention that many years ago my wife and I started a website from scratch and did all the programming. Yes. I said programming.

It was a lot of work. We sold it for enough to pay off my student loans and put down enough to buy our first home. It transformed our finances but that was a long time ago.

Suffice to say—I once had some ability to put up a website and make it at least a little bit successful. Like I said, that was a long time ago.

Back to this blog—it wasn’t easy to get an Instagram username that matched my blog name. I had to improvise. In fact, I found the whole process kind of painful. But I got there.

Yay. Now I can start auto-posting my blog posts to Instagram right?

Wrong.

I went to:
Jetpack > My Jetpack > Social > View > Connect an Account > Instagram Business

Up popped a Facebook login prompt. Whaaaaat? I wanted to login to my shiny new Instagram account. Why was it asking me to log into Facebook.

It turns out that in order to connect to Instagram you must tie your Instagram account to a Facebook account.

So I painstakingly created a Facebook account. And this time, it was really hard.

I don’t know why, but my Facebook account got robo-deactivated immediately. I think it might have something to do with using the legal Gmail address thingsitried.com@gmail.com.

Yes. There are two “.com”s in there. It is the way I was able to set up a free gmail account for this blog. Someone else has thingsitried@gmail.com, and Google would charge me money for thingsitried.com

I was very confused by what the hell was going on with my Facebook account.

After a few days I tried again with a new email address thingsitriedblogger@gmail.com

Eventually I got past that.

So now I can connect Jetpack to Instagram right?

Nope.

I had a hard time connecting my Facebook account alone to Jetpack, but was eventually able to make that happen. But whenever I tried to connect to Instagram, I would get a cryptic seemingly incorrect error about no account found.

I noticed that the Instagram account had to be a “Business” account. I carefully changed my Instagram into a business account. It was actually set up as a personal, because I am stupid and don’t really know the difference.

Still no luck.

Turns out that professional accounts on Instagram are actually split between Business Accounts and Creator Accounts.

BTW, I largely used ChatGPT to figure this out. Here’s what it says:

So I tried switching to an Instagram Creator Account. This switch was actually easy, and as a blogger, that one seems more geared toward me anyhow.

But it didn’t help with connecting to Jetpack.

My wife suggested giving up on Jetpack and finding a new plugin. I searched. Not an easy thing to switch.

Eventually I read something a little more carefully and realized that you need to link your Instagram Business account to a Facebook Page—not an account!

Oh wait. I guess a Facebook Page is different than a Facebook Account—I am not good with social media.

So I figured out how to create a Facebook Page. It turns out the Facebook page needs to be linked to a Facebook Account. Ok.

I finally got there!

Then I wrote a post. I think there may have been some more tweaks but soon I saw something actually show up on Facebook. Wow. It auto-posted to Facebook.

But what about Instagram?

Nope?

I figured out that you need to set a Featured Image for your post, or it will not post on Instagram

Ok. Now we’re cooking with gas. Too bad nobody follows me on FB or IG.

So I managed to post for a couple of days, and everything was working. I even went into Insta and added a couple of hashtags.

Then yesterday I posted about making goulash. It got robo-removed as soon as I posted. I have no idea why.

This is the post:

Old Fashioned Goulash Recipe – Things I Tried

The FB notification was cryptic, and implied that I was trying to be misleading to spam people. I don’t get it. It was auto-posted by Jetpack to my FB business page.

Is that spammy?

I linked to the website where I got my recipe. Is there something wrong with where I got my recipe?

I have no clue.

FB just seems to be all over my shit.

I appealed, and that was kind of worse. There were two weird questions I had to answer that seem more for people posting indecent stuff.

I had to mark a box with the best choice being “It isn’t indecent in my location.” Weird.

They haven’t restored my post yet, but I did post again today, and that one has had no problems.

Let’s see how this one goes.