Why Scheduling Instagram Posts Is A Must For Your Social Media Marketing Strategy
With over 1 billion monthly active users, Instagram is continuing to grow and maintains a powerhouse for brands and individuals to share their stories and content.
Instagram offers a platform for creatives and creators to share their work, build a community and make money. Many small businesses and freelancers have started out on the app and grown a brand by posting great content and growing a following.
It’s therefore a great place for photographers to showcase their work, promote upcoming shows, and connect with our artists. Those aiming to promote their services, such as wedding photographers, can use Instagram to reach potential clients and build their personal brand.
However, with more than 100 million photos and videos being uploaded to Instagram every day, and updates to the algorithm changing the way our posts are seen, it’s difficult to grow an Instagram account and stand out. As well as this, photographers and business owners running their Instagram accounts professionally have large volumes of content to manage, which gets increasingly cumbersome on mobile.
The solution is to use an Instagram scheduling tool, to manage, plan and schedule posts in advance!
Benefits of Instagram Scheduling
Here are 5 reasons why Instagram scheduling is a must for your social media strategy:
1- Post To Instagram From PC
One of the best things about scheduling to Instagram in advance is that you can post straight from the desktop without having to transfer files to and from your mobile. This is not only a huge time saver and efficiency enhancer, but is also good to reduce screen time on the Instagram app — particularly helpful for people who do not want to be on their phones at work.
A great perk for photographers is that most Instagram scheduling tools offer upload from a number of cloud services such as DropBox and Google Drive, so no matter where you store your content, you can easily share it to Instagram without hassle.
2- Organisation & Time Saving
When trying to manage multiple social media channels, large volumes of content, and follow a marketing strategy, it can be difficult to feel on top of everything.
At Hopper HQ, we spoke to social media managers at brands and agencies, and 60% of them said they struggle with time constraints.
Managing and scheduling Instagram posts in advance reduces the amount of time spent switching between apps and folders. As well as this, you generally feel more organized as you have a visual way of seeing exactly what posts are going out when, for the weeks or months ahead.
3- Plan Your Feed
With the help of an Instagram scheduling tool, you can take your account to the next level by visually planning your feed.
An Instagram theme — or feed aesthetic — should be a crucial part of your social media marketing strategy, as it will contribute to the growth of your account.
When somebody lands on your Instagram profile, they see the grid as a whole, rather than individual images in isolation. It’s therefore important that your feed has a cohesive and aesthetically pleasing pattern, as people will be more likely to keep scrolling and follow.
Here are two great examples of brands maintaining a consistent color palette with their content, resulting in their feeds looking captivating and brilliant:
Scheduling tools offer you the ability to see what your Instagram feed will look like once your uploads have been published, and the effect they will have on your whole grid.
The grid planner on Hopper HQ for example, is drag and droppable, so you can see which images look best next to each other and avoid any clashes. Moving the posts around in your grid will automatically update the scheduled times, so you can ensure a beautiful and well-planned feed.
4- Post Consistently
One of the biggest spam triggers on Instagram is posting haphazardly. For example, if you publish 10 posts one day and then none for a week, your behavior is telling the Instagram algorithm that you’re an inconsistent user. This will mean your posts are likely to be de-prioritized in your followers’ feeds, and you run the risk of even getting shadowbanned.
An important factor in growing your Instagram account is therefore posting consistently, so both your audience and the algorithm because accustomed to seeing regular content from your account.
As already discussed, when posting to Instagram manually, this can be really hard to upkeep. Sending files between computer and mobile, writing captions on the spot, and simply forgetting to post are all factors that can affect the consistency of your Instagram activity.
Scheduling Instagram posts in advance prevents these factors. You can upload all your content for the weeks or months ahead, choose regular dates and times that you want them to be published, and take time crafting your captions and hashtags.
Calendar view enables you to visualize your content plan, and see if there are any posting gaps or too many posts going out on a certain day. You can easily drag and drop to move things around on the calendar and update the scheduled date or time.
5- Post When Your Audience Is Online
Our final benefit of scheduling Instagram posts is that you can make sure your posts are going out when your followers are online and active, even if you’re not!
This is so important for accounts with audiences in different timezones, and for businesses who don’t want to be on Instagram in the evenings and weekends posting manually.
Another big reason for posting at the right times is that it increases your engagement. Naturally, posts will get more likes if the people they are aimed towards are online, versus when they’re busy or asleep. The Instagram algorithm favours posts that get fast engagement, and so scheduling posts for the most engaged times of day will get you more likes and comments — great for photographers and business owners looking to grow their account.
The best times of day to post completely vary on industry and audience demographic, however, you can connect your business Instagram account here to find the best time to post on Instagram for you and your followers!
There are just a few benefits to Instagram scheduling and how it can support you in your social media marketing. Most tools offer a free trial to test out before you subscribe, so give it a go and let us know any additional benefits you find!
