Instagram is making it easier for brands to deliver targeted and relevant campaigns on its platform after adding a long-awaited schedule feature for visual posts.
Instagram has long been a primary outlet for marketers, but they have been restricted to workarounds for publishing content at specific times as there has been no officially supported functionality. Users could schedule a post beforehand but then had to wait for a push notification in order to go back and post it manually.
This system wasn’t befitting of a thriving content hub in 2018, so the latest addition will bring an overdue simplicity to publishing for business accounts. The feature was the most requested according to social media management platform Hootsuite, whose users will now be able to schedule messages for all of its supported networks, including Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.
While post scheduling is not available for ads directly on Instagram, support is being added to Instagram’s API so Hootsuite, as well as the likes of SocialFlow and Sprout Social, can incorporate it into their own product offerings.
“The scheduling and publishing of Instagram content has been the number one request for our 16 million customers,” Hootsuite CEO Ryan Holmes said. “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.”
The change is part of a wider overhaul of Instagram’s API platform, which will soon allow marketers to access and analyse more relevant metrics and gain insights about the performance of content.
