If you’re a hemp CBD business owner and you’re looking to step up your CBD marketing on Instagram, the new updates to the platform’s account disable policy is good news for anyone trying to market CBD on the world’s most popular photo-sharing app. Here’s exactly how the updates help you!
CBD Marketing on Instagram vs Instagram’s Account Disable Policy
Does a recent update in Instagram’s policy enforcement processes – i.e. it’s account disable policy – signal a positive change for CBD brands who currently use the platform to market and promote CBD products?
It looks like the answer is yes!
This recent update with Instagram’s account disable policy wasn’t meant to help CBD marketers to advertise on the platform, but the good news is that the recent changes inadvertently ended up helping anyone marketing CBD on Instagram.
The main reason for the change in account disable policy, according to Instagram, is to ensure Instagram is a supportive place for everyone. They say the changes will help us quickly detect and remove accounts that repeatedly violate our policies.
So how does this mean its good news for CBD marketing on Instagram?
Basically, you’re going to get a warning instead of waking up to find your account has been shadowbanned, temporarily blocked, or completely removed and banned.
But there is more. Below we’ll outline why CBD companies with active Instagram profiles may not have to worry about being randomly shut down.
How Your Profile Gets a Second Chance
In order to understand how CBD marketing on Instagram has just been given a break, it’s important to note that Instagram and parent company Facebook has been actively trying to eliminate anti-social and concerning behaviour on each platform for some time.
They’ve introduced new tools and even started removing post like counts in more regions, all in hopes of improving the well-being of its users while on its platforms.
While this may not sound relevant to CBD marketing on Instagram, it actually is if you look under the hood to see what else this really means.
What Instagram is doing is updating it’s policy enforcement process to now include time-based accruals of policy violations, which will also enable the implementation of new warnings for accounts that are close to being banned.
Here’s their official statement:
“Under our existing policy, we disable accounts that have a certain percentage of violating content. We are now rolling out a new policy where, in addition to removing accounts with a certain percentage of violating content, we will also remove accounts with a certain number of violations within a window of time.”
This means that while you still can’t advertise CBD on Instagram, (although you may be able to advertise hemp on Facebook and on Google), if your CBD social media marketing team posts content that violates Instagram’s policy, you’ll now be warned, instead of being flat out shut down and banned!
Instagram Now Provides an Appeal Process For Content That Was Removed
See the news just gets better!
I’m telling you, while this may not seem relevant to CBD marketers, if you’re doing any CBD marketing on Instagram, you’ll really appreciate this part of the update.
Instagram is now giving users the opportunity to appeal content that was removed from your account for “violating community guidelines”.
The good news is that if there was some error in them removing the content and your post didn’t actually violate Insta’s polices, Instagram will restore the post and remove any records of the violation.
This is what these new Instagram notifications of policy violation will look like:
If you’ve done any CBD marketing on Instagram or know of someone who has, you know that in the past, Instagram didn’t provide profile owners with any warning before deleting an account.
I’ve talked to CBD business owners who have lost tens, if not hundreds of thousands of Insta followers after being shut down and banned with no warning.
Having said that, some of these same CBD business owners were repeated offenders and Instagram only disables accounts after repeated violations. So if a user had multiple pieces of content removed they could reasonably assume some further action might be taken.
So now your Instagram CBD marketing team, or you yourself, will get a notification that looks like the image above, which will give you the heads up you need if there’s an immediate risk of having your Insta account disabled.
What CBD Companies Should Do When Marketing Products on Instagram
While this is news is a good thing for CBD companies, it by no means gives CBD accounts free rein to post anything and everything in an effort to sell more CBD products from Instagram.
Health Canada rules, as well as Facebook’s advertising policies, as ‘grey’ as they both may be, still apply to everyone including your CBD business.
If you do receive one of the warning notifications from Instagram, I’d highly and strongly suggest you review your Instagram content strategy immediately and make any necessary changes to the content types you’re posting on both Instagram and Facebook.
Remember that Instagram’s new policy will remove accounts with a certain number of violations within a period of time. So try to get as few as possible, and don’t double-violate.
There are some definite benefits of this new policy update but the bottom line is that this change will allow Instagram to enforce policies more consistently, and hopefully more fairly while holding people and brands accountable for what they post on Instagram.
We Can Help You With Your Social Media Marketing Strategy
If you’re in need of experienced cannabis and CBD social media marketers, our team at ColaDigital.ca is ready to help you take your social media content and CBD marketing strategy to the next level.
We offer complete social media management services which include content creation and daily posts on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube.
If you have a retail dispensary we also offer complete management, optimization, and regular posts on your Google My Business Page.
This helps your CBD dispensary show up in the “local map pack” for local searches for CBD and cannabis products.
Please reach out for a free 30-minute phone consult or contact us to request a quote.
We’re Ready To Help You Grow!
