How to Automate Your Instagram Posts

How to Automate Your Instagram Posts

Published on 24th of September 2024

Consistency is the key to growing an active social media following. However, managing content creation and consistent posting can be challenging. Time management is crucial to ensuring that you stay on top of posts without burning out or negatively impacting other areas of your life.

Not dedicating some time and energy to your social media can cause your branding to take a severe hit. However, it’s impractical to stop everything to make posts at inconvenient times. You and your social media team, if you use one, also have lives and other obligations.

So what do you do if you need to post your engaging content but can’t be on your phone to hit the post button at the right time? Fortunately, there are multiple ways to automate your Instagram posts with content you have already created. Let’s take a deeper dive into how you can automate your Instagram posts and how this simple technique can take some stress out of content management.

Why You Should Automate Your Instagram Posts

There are so many benefits to automating your Instagram posts, including:

  • Huge time savings
  • Develop and maintain consistency
  • Post from anywhere
  • Curate your brand
  • Power up your post captions

Whether you have a digital marketing team or a one-person show, automation can be a lifesaver. Now, let’s take a look at how to make it happen.

What Can Instagram Post Automation Do?

Unfortunately, Instagram does not offer post automation, so users will need to find a third-party app. Many types of social media marketing software programs and apps can help users batch their work. Many offer a basic, free service for you to try out and payment tiers for additional services and tools. These apps and programs work seamlessly with Instagram and allow you to edit posts, tag other users, and schedule by date and time.

You can prepare multiple posts this way, each with its own date and time schedule. Some programs may also allow you to target specific audiences and demographics for more effective outreach.

How To Automate Instagram Posts

First, you’ll need to decide which third-party app or program will best suit your needs and goals. A few of the most popular are:

There are many more, so it’s essential to take a little time to explore the features that each offers. Doing so ensures that you’re connecting with the app that will grow your social media presence most effectively.

Steps To Automating Your Instagram Posts

  • 1. Choose your third-party app

    Compare features, then sign up and create your account.

  • 2. Decide whether your Instagram account will be a Personal, Creator, or Business account

    Once you have chosen your third-party app or program, it’s time to connect your Instagram account. You may need to convert your account to Instagram Business or Creator to take advantage of all of the features available with your chosen third-party scheduler.

  • 3. Make sure that you have administrative access to your Facebook Business page

    Also, make sure that your Instagram Business account is connected.

  • 4. Start uploading your content

    Some scheduler apps are mobile, while others are easier to use on a desktop or laptop. Upload the content you want to prepare for posting to the app or program. Some allow you to drag and drop content to speed up this part of the process.

  • 5. Select the content you want to schedule

    From your media folder, pick out the content you want to start scheduling. For many, the visual of placing posts within a calendar helps to create a more organized and cohesive content schedule.

  • 6. Optimization

    The Likes are often in the details. Many third-party apps let you optimize your scheduled content so you can craft engaging captions, insert the right emojis, and find the most relevant hashtags for greater searchability and visibility.

  • 7. Edit your images

    Your third-party scheduler may also offer photo editing tools, allowing you to optimize and crop your photos for stunning, memorable visuals.

  • 8. Finalize your date and time

    Once you’ve made all the tweaks and adjustments, it’s time to settle on a date and time.

You can repeat these steps and prepare dozens of posts depending on your target frequency, and then sit back knowing that your posts are appearing at the optimal times for reaching your audience.

The Best Times for Scheduling Instagram Posts

Automating your Instagram posts is an important way to manage your time and drive growth, but if you automate content without any thought to the best times and days for posting, you may be wasting your work. According to some experts, the best time to post on Instagram to get optimum exposure is Wednesdays at 11 AM EST. In fact, mid-morning posts may do well on most days, except for Friday and Sunday.

Here’s a cheat sheet of the best times for each day of the week to post on Instagram:

  • Monday: Around noon
  • Tuesday: 9 AM
  • Wednesday: 11 AM (best time of the entire week)
  • Thursday: 11 AM
  • Friday: 2 PM
  • Saturday: 9 AM
  • Sunday: 7 PM

Of course, you’ll want to watch your Instagram analytics to see how your content engagement stacks up against these average best times. But if you’re not sure when to schedule posts or hoping to boost engagement, then aligning content posting with these peak times could place your content in front of the right eyes at the right time.

Keep in mind that other factors may influence when your best post times are locally. Additionally, if your audience is international, you may want to stagger your automated posts based on multiple time zones.

Work Smart, Not Hard, With Automation

Combining automation, optimization, and target times could take your Instagram exposure from nonexistent to on fire. Setting aside time to craft and set up several posts and content releases can help you prepare professional content without losing all of your free time. A little investment in automation could pay huge dividends and expose more people to the brand you’ve worked so hard to cultivate.

Published by Stormlikes.com

Stormlikes is the ultimate solution to your Instagram growth. We're the pioneers of viral Instagram marketing so make sure to explore our products or venture down the rabbit hole that is our blog. You'll find hours of learning materials related to Instagram marketing and other social media.

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