For a long time, many publishers have been frustrated by the fact that they can’t schedule posts on Instagram. Starting today, this will not be an issue anymore, as the platform allows schedule your posts on Instagram for business profiles.
Until now, publishers have used different methods for scheduling posts, like using a reminder app to send push notifications when they should have published a post. Instagram though did not have any feature of this kind. A compromise they have made was to save a draft for a later publishing, but this did not come in hand every time.
Schedule Your Posts on Instagram for Businesses
The new and improved Instagram API allows third-party apps like Hootsuite, Social Flow or Sprout Social to access the new functionality and integrate it into their own products. The API is available to all the Facebook’s Marketing Partners and Instagram Partners as well.
Hootsuite’s CEO, Ryan Holmes, states that many of their customers have asked a long time if this functionality will ever be available for them and the answer is “Yes” now: they can manage large volumes of content, multiple accounts and add more than one member of the team for selected accounts with ease. HootSuite is one of the first partners to include the new Instagram API to their product.
The new functionality is available now for large businesses that also use third apps as the ones mentioned before. Small businesses work with an in-house social media manager and they might not have large pieces of content to share.
This update in the Instagram API also comes with other new functionalities, such as:
- Content Publishing Beta – post an image with or without a description;
- Business Discovery – discover and read other businesses info and media;
- Mentions – read public media that your business has been tagged in or mentioned and also respond to comments on your business’ behalf;
- Insights – helps businesses get valuable insights into their content and help them strategize the next steps for their campaigns;
- Comment Moderation – helps businesses keep in touch with their audiences through comments.
Still, this new feature we have developed in this article is available for businesses only, but they are working on a version for non-business profiles, that might be available in 2019.
What do you think of this new schedule your posts on Instagram functionality? Are you going to take advantage of it?
See also: How to share Instagram Live Videos on Instagram direct messages?
