There’s probably no need to throw around big numbers like 1.22 billion daily Instagram users, 200 million Instagram business profiles, or 44 percent of the population using Instagram for shopping every week to convince you that Instagram Marketing can quite possibly be your soon-to-come ultimate business breakthrough, as one half-hour visit to Instagram, that you already have under your belt, is all it takes to know how much buy and sell is being done on Instagram. But to jump on the lucrative bandwagon and make that cash cow moo loud and long for you, you need to get posting on Instagram right.
Sounds simple, but listening to the sad stories of those who have struggled with it tells us it can go all kinds of nowhere if you don’t know what you are doing and you don’t know the right techniques and tools.
One thing you need to know is how to schedule Instagram posts; tune in to find out why that can be such a deal-maker or deal-breaker below, and then read on some more vital tips on posting on Instagram your ticket to financial success.
4 Reasons Why You Should Schedule Instagram Posts in 2022 and Beyond
You might say, but why do I even need to schedule Instagram posts? I’ll make content and post it right after, it doesn’t have to be so complicated. What you need to know is that it WILL get complicated if you don’t have the option of scheduling a post, as it sounds easy and simple at first, but a lot can go wrong for you if you don’t plan ahead and schedule posts on Instagram in advance. Here’s a thorough list of why you need to have a tool to schedule Instagram posts in your toolbox.
When you need to do something on a semi-regular basis to see results, in every department of life, studying, personal relationships, social life, and especially your job, you can handle things on a one-time basis, take it one step at a time, and you can have a “batching attitude” towards it, you know when you do things in a batch far in advance, and you are well-prepared and relaxed when it comes to performing the ultimate result-getting performance.
Ample studies have shown that looking at things like they need to be done only once will result in confusion, irregularity, and chaos, but batching keeps you in control. And a big part of the batching attitude is to compose posts in batches and schedule them posted at exact dates and times.
There are several concepts batching and pre-scheduling Instagram posts will bring about that you need to sustain any successful enterprise, and keeping an Instagram business profile up and running is no exception. Here is the list:
1. Consistency
you need to stay consistent with how many and how far apart you post on Instagram are, for two reasons:
A. Your Followers Need Consistency To Stay Interested
Thinking of pretty much every single thing in your life that is a big contributor to your happiness, you’ll see that it needs to be consistent to keep you happy; friendship, housing, relationships, and income all mean nothing and will be a source of anxiety if they are there one day and not another.
We all have our favorite Instagram pages that we know we can expect a certain type and quality of content in predictable intervals. So we look forward to our daily or weekly dose of comedy reels, Reddit debate posts, or cooking videos, and the disappointment when we don’t get it on the expected time might get us thinking we want to follow other pages with similar content. And that’s how you lose to the competition if you don’t keep consistent with providing content, and that requires you to work on your content far ahead of the posting time and schedule Instagram posts in advance.
B. Instagram Requires Consistency To Keep You Visible.
Instagram algorithms act a lot like any other search engine, they have a certain set of criteria to decide your page has the kind of content users like to see. One of those criteria is consistency. Whether you post twice every day, every two days, or two weeks, you need to establish a regular pattern, which the Instagram algorithm picks up on, and if you don’t keep that consistency, Instagram people decide you are not dependable and they don’t show your content on your followers feeds, or in explore, and you get lost in the sea of Instagram posts, and lose your relevancy.
2. Time Efficiency
Experience has shown all of us that if you have plenty of time to prepare for something, it will take you a lot less to get it done than when you are rushed because, ironically, time pressure and anxiety chew out on your focus and you end up killing a lot of time being flustered and stressed out. So to be time-efficient, you need to plan ahead and schedule Instagram posts.
3. Organization
I cannot stress how key staying organized on your content calendar is; you need to know the topic and subtopics you want to cover, you need to establish meaningful relevance and cohesion between posts, and you need to decide on the interval you want to leave between posts so you can keep the content creation-posing balance, and not end up not having nothing to post.
You also need to ensure the quality of your content doesn’t suffer, as that’s your make or break in today’s neck-and-neck competition on Instagram marketing; the latter we will break down below. For all of that organization to happen regularly, you need to be ahead of schedule and be able to schedule Instagram posts.
4. Quality
One of the most important aspects of your Instagram marketing that can get tragically sacrificed if you don’t have plenty of time and organization backed up by post-scheduling technology is the quality. What constitutes quality, and how many aspects does it have? Let’s find out:
A. Content
The quality of your content is how you get yourself known among the followers of your niche, regardless of the quality of the product or service you are promoting. Here are what guarantees good quality Instagram post content.
- An Entertainment Factor
No matter how serious your followers’ need for the information, merchandise, or service is, to stay tuned long enough to get converted into a paying customer, you need to provide a level of entertainment in your posts and that takes creativity, research, effort, and time.
- An Intrigue Factor
you need to make your audience WANT TO keep watching or reading what you have to say before you are given a chance to say it, so creating an ‘intrigue’ factor is kind of the first step that you need to achieve in the first three seconds of your post, and that is one of the elements f your quality.
- A Unique Factor
Among all the ups and downs and inconsistencies of modern life, what seems to be a constant and consistent part of our everyday lives seems to be “posts” on Twitter, Snapchat, TikTok, Reddit, Facebook, and Instagram. We are exposed to and even somewhat bombarded by a variety of posts, most of them from the same genre, on a single day, so trying to make your post have a feel and vibe of originality, at least in one aspect, maybe all that sets you apart from the crowd and earn you the attention and engagement that can lead to your ultimate cash-in.
- Visual Appeal
Instagram is the most image-based social platform after Pinterest, although it did use to be quite solely dependent upon the picture you posted, and the text went into the captions, and now we see a lot more text-based posts, still, you think Instagram, you picture some sort and level of imagery involved. Making picture posts, videos, and reels is a time and effort-consuming enterprise, and you need planning and organization to stay on top of it, hence the handiness of a scheduling, post organization feature, and tool.
- ‘Put-Togetherness’
We see some Instagram posts on bloggers or other types of business or semi-business profiles that have a causal feel of someone like ourselves posting something on Instagram that happens to be informative and has a revenue ‘earning curve’ too. But then we have pages like vloggers, skincare, and interior design blogger that post videos or slides of pics that are so neat and “put-together.”
They have special effects, camera work, and infographics, and you can tell the admin has put time, effort, and some skill into making them. You can’t help but feel obliged, cared about, and made time for, and it makes you respect them as a legitimate business a lot more. That is the kind of thing you need to plan for and cannot afford to rush into, and knowing you have a post-scheduling tool or feature can greatly help with that.
- Avoid Subject Overlap And Repetitiousness
If you don’t have a pre-planned content calendar, one of the many things you can lose track and control of is not posting repetitive content. I know you are thinking, “NOT Me.” There have been so many like you who thought they would never have the absent mind to not realize they have posted about something already but ended up doing just that, I got news for you. So you need to create a carefully thought-out calendar and schedule things ahead to not find yourself goofing up on content and posting about something twice within relatively close intervals.
- Captions
Whether you type in a two-word, super amusing phrase or a well-researched, insightful, fact-rich critique of a product or service, your caption is one of the main things that earn you a loyal and solid fan and client base, so you can’t take it lightly or rush it. You need to take your time thinking it through.
- Hashtags
Hashtags are a big part of the game, as they are the ones responsible for you getting found when people search for businesses like you, so not only do you need to put focus and research into coming up with just the right assortment, but you need to get help with the Instagram marketing/social media management tools to help you with it, both of which need anxiety-free, unrushed time that you can easily have when you schedule Instagram posts in advance.
- High Level Of Engagement Rate
One of the most important factors to guarantee the quality of an Instagram post is the level of engagement it elicits from the audience in form of likes, comments, shares, and profile visits. If you leave preparing and posting your content to the last minute, two scenarios can negatively affect your optimum engagement to get the most conversions:
A. Left with all of your other engagements in life for after that, and you end up leaving one of the most important aspects of your Instagram marketing success to tend to other essentials of life.
B. Or you’re just so racked with anxiety that you underperform in leading engagement in the comment and private message sections, as you need to be responsive to your comments and private messages to create and maintain trust.
2 Ways To Instagram Schedule Posts in 2022
There are two ways you can schedule Instagram posts, you can do it within the Instagram platform and using third-party Instagram post scheduler tools. Let’s see how each works.
1. Schedule Instagram Posts Directly Through Instagram
Through the Creative Studio feature provided by its mother platform Facebook, you can schedule posts on Instagram. To do that, your account needs to be a business profile first, so if it already is, you are good to go; but if it’s not, it gets added to the steps you need to take to schedule a post on Instagram without a post-scheduling tool. Here are the steps:
1.1. How To Turn Your Account Into A Business Profile
A. After opening the account you already have, tap the setting button, choose account settings from the icons, and one of the options you’ll see is the “switch to business profile” option.
B. When tapped on, it will lead you to follow a series of straightforward instructions which end in asking you to connect your Instagram account to your Facebook account.
C. That’s meant as a security measure Meta has taken; you are in fact, verifying your Instagram business account with your Facebook page, and that’s the case for all the social media scheduling tools who want to work with Instagram business accounts.
D. Once the connection is established, you will be instructed to provide your business information like email, phone number, and dress, and you will be done.
You now have an Instagram business profile that gives you a list of features and tools to boost your business, such as Instagram analytics, Instagram insights, Instagram ads manager, and creative studio.
1.2 How To Schedule Instagram Posts On Creative Studio
A. Connect your Instagram’s new business profile to your Creative Studio.
B. Compose your post, the essentials of which include an appropriately cropped image, a caption, and hashtags, with optional steps like adding a location, adding more pictures, adding videos or reels, and…
C. You’ll see a ‘publish’ button and an arrow on its right, with the ‘schedule’ button. Hit that and you’ll be asked to set a date and time up to six months later.
2. Schedule Instagram Posts Through Third Party Tools
There are two types of tools outside Instagram and its mother site Facebook that you can connect with to schedule Instagram posts, both of which have a publishing section with a dedicated part where you can schedule posts.
2.1. Use Social Media Management Tools to Schedule Instagram Posts
Social media management tools, like Hootsuite, Buffer, And Tailwind, have a dedicated part to schedule posts on Instagram AND many other social media platforms like Facebook, TikTok, Twitter, Pinterest, YouTube, and LinkedIn, which makes them ideal for large-scale business with wide-scoped ad campaigns spanning over multiple social media outlets. You can read about the 10 best social media management tools in 2022.
2.2. Use Dedicated Tools to Schedule Instagram Posts
Tools dedicated to scheduling Instagram posts are called Instagram post schedulers, like Later, Social Pilot, and Sendible. These tools are designed for smaller-scale solopreneurs who only use Instagram marketing.
What sets them apart is four features:
- What social media services allow you to work with
- What content creation tools they are integrated with, like DropBox, Google Drive, Facebook, and so on?
- How many posts do they let you schedule in their free or paid plans?
- Whether they offer a dashboard to add other team members.
8 Tips And Best Practices to Schedule Posts on Instagram
We will have been amiss if we only help you figure out how to schedule a post on Instagram and not pad your Instagram posting notes with some must-know pointers you need to keep on the front burner of your mind when composing scheduling a post. Let’s see what they are.
There are six factors you need to be extremely watchful and mindful of to schedule posts on Instagram that keep you in lucrative business both short-term and long-term. Below is the list of the concepts, and below that, we will tell you what to do and what not to do to make sure each of them work for you and not against you.
1. Timing: What time of day and week to post, how far in advance to schedule posts on Instagram
2. SEO: A. Keywords B. Location C. Hashtags
3. First Impressions
4. Editing
5. Engagement
6. Being Responsive To Questions And Inquiries.
What To Do Before You Schedule Instagram Posts
Here are the Dos of Instagram marketing through posts.
1. Beware Of The Time You Post
There is an Insight part on Instagram and all the other social media management tools that show you what time of day, week and month you will have the most visitors and engagement with your posts. If you have ever run an Instagram page, you’ll know that posting in non-maximum-engagement times can mean missing engagement and conversion of thousands of people. So make sure you only post in times your insight section is telling you to.
2. Use SEO Keywords Of Your Business In Your Captions
Many people turn to Instagram to look for a product or service they are looking to buy, and they type the keyword of what they want, so using those keywords that help them find you in captions will directly help your business by helping you get found by them.
3. Create an Intriguing Visual First Impression
There are two reasons you need to ensure the first glance at your post will hook your audience.
A. To Trigger An Interest In The Feed
Although Instagram’s algorithm screens the sea of posts from all of the pages you have followed, there are still a ton of posts in your feed, so much so that you scroll past many of them if the very first picture or scene does intrigue you. So the first visual impression determines whether your post is seen or not.
B. To Stand Out In The Explore
The same thing goes for posts in the explore section, there is a zillion of them, and the Instagram explorers are pretty jaded, and it takes a lot to impress and intrigue them to want to open a post and see what it has to say. So you must ensure the first visual impression leaves a strong enough impression and prompts them to want to know more.
4. Use Well-Researched Hashtags Insightfully
One of the many features you will find in social media management or social media marketing tools is finding the trending hashtags of your business and niche. Make sure your selection of hashtags does all it needs to bring you new business. You can export Instagram analytics to drive meaningful insights.
5. Word Things To Inspire Engagement
What you say in your caption, text, narration, or description directly determines how much people want to like, comment, share and visit the rest of your profile. So wording things ultra carefully, posing questions, stirring up debates, asking for common experiences, and inspiring humor is key to your engagement rate and ultimate success in your Instagram marketing.
What Not To Do for Scheduling Instagram Posts
Here is a list of things people do that they shouldn’t.
1. Don’t Shy Away From Editing
Many Instagram admins think if they make a mistake in the caption, they can’t edit them. That’s a universal mistake, and studies show that leaving things uncorrected will cost you a lot more than not wanting to have the word ‘edited’ at the end of your caption.
2. Don’t Schedule Too Far Away.
When equipped with a feature that enables us to schedule an Instagram post as far ahead as six months, we tend to want to use the tech, but we shouldn’t lose sight of two facts that may advise against jumping the gun too far back in time.
- Trends Change
A good portion of what helps you “sell yourself for you to make a sell” depends on the current trends at the time, which sometimes change pretty fast; after six months, your post’s content may not be relevant anymore.
- Prime Engagement Time May Change.
Prime engagement times are impacted by people’s leisure times, which are affected by factors like waking and working hours, holidays, and seasonal changes, so they may change in more than three months.
3. Do Not Avoid Responding to Questions Or Opinions Directed At You
We have all interacted with Instagram pages that sound ultra-fun, informative, and interesting to follow and buy things from and to do that, we ask questions or leave our idea of what they are presenting to form a decision as to what we want to do next, but they fail to answer our questions. That frustrates us, and we end up looking for similar experiences or goods elsewhere. You don’t want that happening with your patrons.
How to Schedule Instagram Posts: The TL;DR
First, you need to make sure your Instagram account is a business profile, then you can either connect with the Facebooks Creative Studio feature, which lets you schedule an Instagram post, or connect with one of the many social media management or Instagram scheduler tools or apps, which help you to schedule an Instagram post, among many other things to boost your conversion rates. You need to make sure you stay on top of the Instagram post best practices as well for this feature to do its job of bringing you new and long-staying customers.
