Instagram opens post scheduling to brand managers

Social media pros, rejoice: Now you can schedule branded Instagram posts.

On Tuesday, the platform announced that businesses on Instagram can now schedule posts, view other organizations’ profiles, and view posts in which they’re tagged.

Post scheduling works for all organic content, but brand managers won’t be able to schedule ads.

TechCrunch reported:

The closest Instagram got was the added support for Drafts, which allowed social media managers and other users to prep a post and save it for later publication.

Unfortunately, the official support for post scheduling doesn’t extend to ads, nor is it directly available with the product itself.

Instead, the support is being added to Instagram’s API – meaning that social media software applications like Hootsuite, Sprout Social or SocialFlow now have access to the functionality, which they can then add to their own products. Instagram says the API is available to all of Facebook’s Marketing Partners and Instagram Partners.

Here’s what the feature looks like:

[RELATED: Learn how to boost buzz, build brand recognition and engage employees on the hottest social media platforms .]

In a blog post, Instagram wrote:

This adds to the previously introduced Instagram Graph API features like view organic insights and comment moderation. These added features allow for better content planning and secure account management, removing the need for employees to share login credentials to gain account access to insights or create a post.

Instagram shared the following quote from Ryan Holmes, Hootsuite’s chief executive:

The scheduling and publishing of Instagram content has been the number one request for our 16 million customers. 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.

Instagram previously gave brand managers insights and metrics on their Instagram posts, so Tuesday’s announcement is another step toward persuading PR and marketing pros to spend more time and money to reach coveted younger consumers.

Adweek reported:

Instagram announced last November that 25 million businesses were using its platform, up from 15 million last July and 8 million last March.

The Facebook-owned photo- and video-sharing network began testing business profiles in mid-2016 before launching them in the U.S. that June and making them available globally later that year.

What do you think of the new feature, PR Daily users? How will this affect your Instagram strategy?

(Image via)

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