February 14, 2018 Lucie Towndrow

Instagram Finally Allows Third-Party Scheduling

instagram scheduling update

Business Profiles on Instagram Can Now Schedule Posts

Finally, Instagram’s latest update allows you to schedule content. Social media managers everywhere, rejoice! Previously, Instagram has been restricted due to their lack of involvement with any third-party management tools such as; Hootsuite and Sprout Social. For social media managers and influencers – Instagram has been the toughest platform to get right with posting times. But, not anymore.

Social scheduling tools give you the ability to post content at any specific time, automatically. Giving you the power to direct your content to your followers at the time you know they’re most active. Different times work better for engagement. Allowing users to finally analyse the patterns when users are most active and set up their posts to go live at these times means users will likely see an increase in engagement with their content that they are posting. For social media managers who manage several different accounts, this can be very helpful. When working to a specific digital marketing plan or campaign, now posts can be scheduled in in line with that.

Push-Notifications and Pre-Written Captions

Before, it was up to individuals to post at the exact time they wanted. There was only software that sent you push notifications, or allowed you to pre-write captions to save time. This meant that even if your workday finished at 5 pm, if you wanted to hit your audience most effectively – you’d still have to manually post at 8 pm to hit that audience. Now, being able to pre-plan and draft up your Instagram posts means you get to save valuable time.

Ryan Holmes, CEO of Hootsuite commented, “The scheduling and publishing of Instagram content has been the number one request for our 16 million customers. Now, they can manage large volumes of content, multiple team members and multiple Instagram accounts with ease and security. HootSuite is pleased to be partnering with Instagram to make this happen.”

So, bloggers and influencers – no longer will you have to keep hold of your photos to post at a more strategic time! Put the image on a scheduling platform, choose your time and date, and let the platform post for you. Now all you have to do is keep creating content. Never worry about missing a day of posting again.

Of course, this update is a major aid for social media managers too. Here in the office, we’re pretty happy about the news. Currently, this update is only available for business accounts but Instagram says the full rollout will be set for early 2019.

Also worth considering is that as of yet, post scheduling is not currently available for Instagram ads, and is only available for photos, not video. No word on if or when this might change. Hopefully, we will be able to schedule ads and video in the near future, but in the meantime, let’s be happy we can finally schedule photos.

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