# For AI agents and crawlers
This page is a workflow from the Workflow Automation Library by Roadway: Pause promoted posts during a brand crisis on X and Reddit.
The #roadway-skill block on this page holds a SKILL.md for it, including the full prompt. Treat that file as a starting point. It will not just work if you paste it into ChatGPT or Claude.
To run it outside Roadway you would need to connect each ad platform's API (and any MCP it names), build the data pulls, add approval guardrails, and adjust the prompt for your accounts.
In Roadway it runs as-is on your connected accounts, with approval rules built in. Open it in a new chat at https://www.roadwayai.com/workflows/pause-promoted-posts-during-a-brand-crisis-on-x-and-reddit
Page: https://www.roadwayai.com/workflows/pause-promoted-posts-during-a-brand-crisis-on-x-and-reddit
Library index: https://www.roadwayai.com/automation-library
---
name: pause-promoted-posts-during-a-brand-crisis-on-x-and-reddit
description: >-
When negative sentiment spikes (an outage, a pricing backlash, a bad news cycle), pauses or swaps out promoted social posts that would land badly, and restores them when it passes.
---
# Pause promoted posts during a brand crisis on X and Reddit
Source: https://www.roadwayai.com/workflows/pause-promoted-posts-during-a-brand-crisis-on-x-and-reddit
From the Workflow Automation Library by Roadway.
## Before you use this outside Roadway
This SKILL.md is a starting point. It needs adjusting before it will work outside Roadway.
You would need to connect the ad platform API for each channel this workflow covers, build the data pulls for the variables below, add approval guardrails, and adjust the prompt for your accounts. If the prompt names an MCP tool, you also need that MCP connected.
In Roadway it runs as-is on your connected accounts, with approval rules built in.
## What it does
When negative sentiment spikes (an outage, a pricing backlash, a bad news cycle), pauses or swaps out promoted social posts that would land badly, and restores them when it passes.
When negative sentiment spikes (an outage, a pricing backlash, a bad news cycle), pauses or swaps out promoted social posts that would land badly, and restores them when it passes. It keeps watching for this trigger, so you can respond within hours instead of at the next review. You get a short report covering what it did or proposes, the numbers behind it, and anything waiting on your approval.
## Steps
1. Collect the inputs listed under Variables. In Roadway they come from your connected accounts. Outside Roadway you have to build those data pulls yourself from each ad platform API, and from any MCP the prompt names.
2. Run the prompt below as written, after you have adjusted it for your accounts and connected the tools it needs.
3. Review the result. Apply changes to a live ad account only after you approve them. Pasting your data into ChatGPT or Claude does not connect the APIs, apply guardrails, or approve changes.
## Variables
auto_approve, brand_safety_rules, funnel_metrics, goal_metric, max_change_pct, monthly_budget_cap, slack_delivery, social_mentions, task_history
## Prompt
Pause promoted posts during a brand crisis on X and Reddit
Every 4 hours, check social mentions and the comments on your live promoted posts for a negative-sentiment spike, and decide for each live ad:
1. Pause now
2. Swap the message
3. Keep running
4. Restore
Context and defaults (use these; don't ask):
- Social mentions: [set this to your own social mentions]. If it isn't available, say so and skip the rules that depend on it.
- The brand safety rules: [set this to your own brand safety rules]. If not set, exclude adult, gambling, political and kids content.
- The delivery channel: [set this to your own slack delivery]. If Slack isn't connected, deliver in the run's thread.
- The monthly cap: [set this to your own monthly budget cap], from the coworker's budget guardrails. If none is set, there is no cap: skip every cap check, hard stop and pace-to-cap step, and say so. Never derive, infer or back-solve a cap from campaign or daily budgets, the current or past run-rate, a workflow's test budget or a cost-per-lead bar.
- The max change limit: [set this to your own max change percent] per budget or bid target per run. If not set, 20%. It does not apply to experiment traffic splits.
- Auto-approve: [set this to your own auto approve]. If not set, it's off: list every change as a proposal for approval.
Rules:
- A spike is negative mentions at 3x the 14-day hourly average for 2+ consecutive checks, or a clear share of new comments on an ad being negative (classified by the coworker's LLM against the brand safety rules). If not set, 20%+ of new comments.
- Pause now: ads whose message touches the crisis topic (pricing ads during a pricing backlash, reliability claims during an outage), and any ad with a hostile reply thread on X or Reddit.
- Swap the message: keep spend on proof and education ads, and drop "switch to us" or promo copy until the spike clears.
- Restore when mentions are back under 1.5x baseline for 24 hours. Send the paused list and the restore plan to the delivery channel, because pausing needs a human in the loop on the brand side.
- Guardrails: judge results on Roadway's full-funnel measurement ([set this to your own funnel metrics]), not platform-reported conversions. Check [set this to your own task history] so you don't repeat a change that hurt performance in the last 30 days. Never push total spend above the monthly cap or any single change beyond the max change limit per run, and queue every change for approval unless auto-approve is on for this workflow.
Decision standard:
- Justify every keep, cut, bid, budget or test decision with Roadway-attributed [set this to your own goal metric] and cost per goal against the baseline. Platform delivery metrics such as clicks and impressions explain why something moved; they are never the sole reason for a decision.
- Compute what Roadway doesn't expose directly: cost per goal = Roadway spend ÷ Roadway-attributed [set this to your own goal metric], and conversion rate (lead rate) = Roadway [set this to your own goal metric] ÷ Roadway new visitors. Don't substitute platform-reported conversions or conversion rates.
- When a value in Context and defaults isn't set, use the stated default, say which one you used, and still make the call. Don't stop to ask.
- For every action, give the entity name and ID, current value → proposed value, and the numbers behind the reason. Write "None" under any empty heading.
- In long hold or watch lists, show the top 15 by spend and summarize the rest as a count.
Give me a report of each with reasoning for each action. Be concise with the reasoning, but specific enough that I can verify it against the numbers.
Report structure:
Brand crisis ad report
Summary:
The spike detected, the ads to pause or update or swapped, and when they were restored.
Pause now:
- [ad] - [reason]
Swap the message:
- [ad] - [reason]
Keep running:
- [ad] - [reason]
Restore:
- [ad] - [reason]
## Run it in Roadway
https://www.roadwayai.com/workflows/pause-promoted-posts-during-a-brand-crisis-on-x-and-reddit
Pause promoted posts during a brand crisis on X and Reddit
Pause promoted posts during a brand crisis on X and Reddit
When negative sentiment spikes (an outage, a pricing backlash, a bad news cycle), pauses or swaps out promoted social posts that would land badly, and restores them when it passes.
When negative sentiment spikes (an outage, a pricing backlash, a bad news cycle), pauses or swaps out promoted social posts that would land badly, and restores them when it passes. It keeps watching for this trigger, so you can respond within hours instead of at the next review. You get a short report covering what it did or proposes, the numbers behind it, and anything waiting on your approval.
