It’s here, it’s here, it’s finally here! As of January 30, Instagram finally announced that they will allow third parties to directly schedule posts! This is great news and will make managing social accounts so much easier for businesses and bloggers.

Prior to this announcement, you could only use third party platforms to prep your posts for social. That meant you could edit photos and set up captions, but could not post directly to Instagram. At the scheduled time, you would receive a notification from the third party service, but you would still be required to manually push your post to Instagram.

Scheduling Instagram Posts through Hootsuite

I’ve been using Hootsuite for years, and I have enjoyed how easy it is to schedule posts for multiple social platforms in one place. Hootsuite is also one of Instagram’s first partners to implement their new API for publishing posts. (API features have been made available for all of Instagram’s and Facebook’s Partners. As of right now, the new scheduling feature is only available to Instagram Business accounts, but they’re working on support for non-business profiles. This is target for launch sometime in early 2019.

[pullquote width =”750″ float=”center”]“The scheduling and publishing of Instagram content has been the number one request for our 16 million customers,” said Hootsuite CEO Ryan Holmes, in a statement. “Now, they can manage large volumes of content, multiple team members and multiple Instagram accounts with ease and security. Hootsuite is excited to partner with Instagram to make this happen.”[/pullquote]

Upgrade to Instagram Business

Switching to a business account is pretty simple and quick. For detailed instructions on how to do this, watch Instagram’s video here.

How to Add Instagram to Hootsuite

If you don’t already have a Hootsuite account, it’s easy to set up. Go to Hootsuite.com and click “sign up”. You can use a free account or select one of their 4 paid plan options. Once you sign up for an account, follow these steps:

Adding Your Instagram Account to Hootsuite

Sign into your Instagram Account

Enable Direct Instagram Publishing

Once you connect your account, you can easily schedule posts and monitor your account, hashtags and competitors. Have any questions for me? Feel free to leave a comment below or contact me today! Oh and don’t forget to follow me on Instagram! 🙂