How to schedule posts on Instagram - Best Ways

In the 2020s, Instagram has become an integral marketing channel for more than 5 million businesses worldwide. The reason behind its success is consistency, quality & high level of engagement.
Unfortunately, these things are easier to say than to achieve in today's busy world. That's why scheduling  Instagram posts came into the picture.
Before diving deep into the topic, let's take an overview of the topics we are about to cover here :

1. Schedule posts on Instagram - means what?
2. Benefits of it.
3. What do we need before schedule posts on Instagram?
4. How to schedule posts on Instagram?
5. Conclusion.

Schedule posts on Instagram - means what?

After working for the whole day, marketing managers or any business personnel don't have enough free time to share posts on Instagram regularly to interact with their audience. So to manage their business account with consistency & quality, they use Scheduling Instagram posts.
Scheduling posts on Instagram is a way to craft or queue our posts in advance that get posted automatically on the scheduled day at that exact time.

Benefits of Schedule posts on Instagram.

As of now, we know what do we mean by scheduling posts on Instagram, let us see the benefits that we get from it:

1. Create a bunch of posts with quality: Schedule posts on Instagram provide us with a sufficient amount of time to craft each & every post with a perfect caption along with the best Instagram hashtags.
2. Save time & allow us to upload contents directly from our computer: No doubt, that our smartphones have amazing features to create & edit images & videos for creating the contents of our post. But when it comes to creating high-quality images & videos, it is better to use a larger screen of the computer to edit our contents. Also, Scheduling Instagram posts allow us to upload posts directly from our PC, so it is no longer needed to send the contents first to our smartphones & then to upload on Instagram.
3. Help in cultivating stronger & more consistent brand: As schedule posts on Instagram, allow us to queue the number of posts altogether, it is easier for us to arrange the posts with creativity to attract a large audience.
4. Post at regular intervals to engage our followers: Schedule posts on Instagram with dates having the regular time interval between them, keep our followers engaged & keep Instagram's algorithm happy.

What do we need before schedule posts on Instagram?

Before we go through the steps of schedule posts on Instagram, we need to prepare the environment for it.

1. If your Instagram profile is not a business profile, then first convert it into a business profile. Here are the instructions from Facebook, how to switch your account to a business profile.

For switching your Instagram account to the business profile, you'll need to have a Facebook page. Here are the instructions from Facebook, to create Facebook Page.

 

2. Connect your business account with the Facebook page. Here is the complete guide for it.

How to schedule posts on Instagram?

There are two ways of schedule posts on Instagram:

1. By using Facebook's Creator Studio: This is the in-built tool of Facebook used for scheduling posts on Instagram. This new feature was first introduced at the International Broadcasting Convention in Amsterdam, by TechCrunch.

Steps for using Facebook's Creator Studio are as follow :

1. Connect your Instagram account to your Creator Studio tool.
2. Select all the contents you want to schedule from your PC or directly from your Facebook page.
3. Edit your posts, add amazing Instagram caption along with tags. You can also add your location if you want.
4. Select "Schedule" by clicking on the arrow right to the "Publish" button.
5. Select the best date & time for your post to on-board.

That's it. Your Instagram posts will get published in your account at the scheduled date & time.

2. By using Third-Party tools: Although there are lots of tools like Hootsuite, SocialFlow, Sprout Social, Later, Buffer, etc available for schedule posts on Instagram, I personally preferred to use Buffer tool. As Buffer is extremely versatile, it allows us to add three social media account & have up to 10 posts scheduled in the queue at a time. It also allows us to schedule posts on Instagram directly along with 5 other social networking sites -
   --Facebook
   --Twitter
   --Pinterest
   --LinkedIn
   --Google +

Steps for using Buffer (a third-party tool) are as follow :

1. After switching to a business account & getting connected with your Facebook page. You need to install the Buffer app. Here is the link for "Buffer - Social Media Manager".
   
   
   
2. After installing, open your Buffer app & start the process of connecting your Instagram account with it.
3. Login with your Instagram account into the Buffer app & grant access to it.
4. Buffer will now ask you to authenticate using Facebook. Click on Authenticate with Facebook to start the process of authentication. On the next screen, you can choose to enable reminders.

Now we are all set to start schedule posts on Instagram.

5. Open the Buffer app & click on the plus button on the bottom toolbar. Then add photos & videos with an appealing Instagram caption. You can also add your location if you want.
6. Click on Share & then select Schedule Post to specify date & time.
7. Finally, click on the Schedule button.

Now, Buffer will post the scheduled contents at the specified date & time.

 Conclusion:

Schedule posts on Instagram have lots of benefits. We can bundle the number of posts at a time & upload directly from our computer. Along with all this, it helps us to cultivate a consistent brand name for our businesses & keep our followers engaged with the posts created with interesting captions.
To schedule posts on Instagram :

• First, we need to switch from a personal Instagram profile to a business account, if you don't have a business account. And verify it by connecting your business profile with the Facebook page.
• Then schedule posts on Instagram either by using Facebook's Creator Studio. Or by using any third-party tools which best suits your needs, install it, sign up & link it to your Instagram account.
• Schedule posts to the time at which a large number of your followers are active, like lunchtime during the day & just before going to sleep at night. You can also find the peek time at which lots of followers are active using "Instagram Insights" analytics tools come up with Instagram business profiles only.
• Lastly, don't forget to interact with your followers. Reply to the comments on your post & also engage with other people on Instagram.

If schedule posts on Instagram help your business to grow in anyways, let us know in the comment below!