For this reason, it’s a good idea to figure out when your followers are most active and post on those days and times. (Need a tool for this? Try Iconosquare or Squarelovin.)
While having this information is useful, you do have to wait — poised over your phone or computer — for the specific hour to strike. I don’t know about you, but I prefer the “set it and forget it” approach.
Luckily, Instagram’s latest update makes that a reality. The company announced a change to its API that will let third-party tools enable post scheduling. In other words, if you use an app like Hootsuite, you can upload your content and choose when it will go live on Instagram.
Post scheduling isn’t available for Ads, nor will you be able to use it within Instagram itself (meaning that unless you’ve got a tool hooked up to your personal account, you’ll still have to time that picture from brunch strategically).
How to schedule a post on Instagram
- Step 1: Connect your business Instagram profile to a third-party tool like Hootsuite.
- Step 2: Go to your tool’s dashboard.
- Step 3: Compose a new post with the visual assets, captions, and/or hashtags as you want them to appear on Instagram.
- Step 4: Preview your post to make sure it looks right.
- Step 5: Use the scheduling feature to select the date and time you’d like the post to go live.