1. How to define your Instagram scheduling plan?

Whether you're managing it yourself or especially when you have a team maintaining Instagram content, the scheduling tool becomes beneficial as your Instagram strategies become more complex.

To continue to be relevant, your Instagram Brand will require a set posting schedule. However, be cautious not to inundate your fans with too many posts.

To figure out what is the best posting frequency for your company, you must test various timeframes and frequencies and then analyze the results.

Create and update a content calendar to keep track of what you want to publish and when it will go live as you figure out what works for you.

Experts say that, for the greatest outcomes, prepare your content calendar at least a month in advance.

2. Scheduling various Instagram content types

When Instagram originally launched, they only allowed for single-photo posts, but today you can post videos, carousels, stories, reels, and more.

To be successful on Instagram, you must make the most of every medium provided by the platform.

Although you will learn by experimenting over time, as a general guideline, you should aim for the following:

• Single photo/Carousel posts - 3 / week
• Stories - 3 / day
• Reels - 1 / week
• Videos (long-form) - 1 / month
• Guide (depending on your brand) - 1 / week

3. Impact of scheduling on content creation

Your scheduling may also drive your content preparation, as Instagram is a daily use social media platform. People are looking for content that is relevant to the current date and trends.

So make note of the following when scheduling your content to drive higher engagement from your audience.

• Important dates (holidays, Mother day, etc., product launch, brand updates, Instagram live sessions)
• Trend hopping (throwback Thursdays, Covid related, Important news, Viral content/memes)
• Macro content timing (if you are posting blogs or youtube videos, you can tie it up with an Instagram post)
• Collaborations (with influencers and other brands)
• Instagram native ads (if you plan to spend money, marketing your content on Instagram)

Instagrumpy has an amazing template to help you set this up, you can check out our Notion Insta OS.

4. Prerequisites of content scheduling

After you've developed the content, whether it's a single image post or a reel, you'll need to include hashtags, attributes - when you reuse others' content and a catchy caption before you can schedule them.

5. How to choose Instagram scheduler?

To begin, you must realize that Instagram only allows business accounts for automatic posting from the scheduling tools. There is no auto-posting feature for the creator or personal accounts.

On top of that, it does not allow scheduling tools to post automatically all of the content types, only two are allowed for auto-posting i.e. single photo posts and Instagram videos.

For business accounts, creators, or personal accounts, you can still use scheduling tools to schedule your content such as story, reel, video, or even a carousel. But instead of auto-posting, you'll receive notifications to post them manually from your phone.

There are plenty of tools out there, even their pricing is all over the place. So how on earth you can choose one. The answer is just to try and stick with the one doing the job for you. 

But wait there's more, consider the following factors. Most scheduling tools are packed with many marketing features and you may want to have them.

Features

• Scheduling: well this one is the must
• Calendar view: Viewing all your content schedules visually
• Grid view: See how your Instagram feed will look like
• Content Sources: To find content inspirations
• Hashtags: Helping you find hashtags for the post
• Analytics: Show all reports, post-performance, competitor analysis
• Workflows: To enable approval of the content, if there is a larger team

Cost

Depending on features and towards which type of customer the tools are targeted, the price change significantly. 

Obviously, as someone who is just starting out on Instagram, one may not want to get a super tool with all possible features. You would not want to learn to drive in a Ferrari, would you?

Scalability

Most of these tools are geared towards all types of social media platforms (Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, etc.), so depending on your needs and future growth prospect, make a decision on a tool you need. 

For example, if you only plan to manage just one company or brand, you will want to choose a platform that allows you to do that at a lower cost.

You can always try new tools and switch as most of them give a free trial and freemium options to try out.

5. Instagram scheduling tool recommendations

Let's look at some of these tools,

Creator Studio (Free)

Instagram hasn't enabled direct posting from Instagram.com yet, although the new Creator Studio from Facebook does allow you to publish and schedule Instagram feed (single images only) and Instagram videos.

You can find Creator Studio here, http://facebook.com/creatorstudio.

If your Instagram account is already linked with Facebook, you'll see the Facebook and Instagram logos at the top of the browser window. If your Instagram account isn't yet connected, choose "Connect."

A drop-down arrow button will appear to the left of the Publish button after you've completed the post. You may select a publish date from a drop-down menu that appears when you click on it.

Creator Studio is the only tool that allows you to schedule Instagram videos (formerly IGTV) at this time. This software will assist you with your content planning if you produce a lot of Instagram videos.

Third-Party Tools (Freemium, Paid)

There are numerous other scheduling programs and social media management software that may be used to schedule and publish to Instagram. Creator Studio can't match the comprehensive functionality of many of these third-party tools.

You can check out some of our recommendations below,

New bees,

• Creator Studio by Facebook
• Planoly
• Postoplan
• Combin

Small to Midsize companies,

• Social Pilot
• Metricool
• Later
• Buffer

Large Enterprises/Marketing Agencies,

• Sked Social
• Hootsuite
• Falcon

Summary

The simplest approach to save time on Instagram is to schedule your posts ahead of time. So you can focus on creating more content and applying growth strategies to achieve your goals.

There are many different types of scheduling tools and solutions that exist, and there are pros and cons to each one. Your choice will depend on what you need for your business.

Be sure to weigh your needs now, as well as what might be needed in the future when making your selection based on scalability.