Blogging

4 Tools to Automate Instagram Scheduling

Dec 30, 2020 | Social Media

Out of all of the major social networks, Instagram has remained one of the most closed.

It doesn’t let you put links in your captions.
It hasn’t added as many other functions, though we do now have Instagram Stories.
For a long time, it didn’t allow third-party apps to post to the platform.

That last point was especially tricky for digital marketers.

The benefits that services like Hootsuite and Buffer brought to managing other social networks didn’t carry over to Instagram.

You couldn’t plan your content ahead of time and publish it automatically like you could on Twitter or Facebook. That means when you wanted to post something to Instagram, you had to be there to push the Share button.

Luckily, Instagram changed that in 2018 by allowing businesses to schedule their posts on Instagram via an API.

That makes it easier than ever to take advantage of Instagram’s high engagement rates.

Having an Instagram community is part of a crucial strategy of social proof, something you can leverage to increase your conversions.

This means you might be ready to explore scheduling apps that let you organize, upload, and preview your Instagram posts.

To help you succeed on Instagram, I’m going to show you how to use four different tools to automate your Instagram content scheduling.

Let’s get started.

4 Tools to Automate Instagram Scheduling

One of the best ways to engage your Instagram audience is to post engaging content on a regular basis. These tools make that much easier — you can schedule posts, so they go live when your audience is most active.

#1. Later for Instagram Scheduling

The first app I’m going to show you is called Later. It’s a social media scheduling tool that works with Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook, and Twitter.

The best part about Later is that it’s free for up to 30 scheduled posts per month. If you’re posting once a day, this is really good news.

But you will need a premium plan if you’re going to use video, so keep that in mind.

As a tool, Later has two primary benefits.

The first benefit is that it lets you preview your posts so you can see what they will look like as part of the bigger picture — your entire Instagram account.

This is very helpful for marketers who want to have a harmonious Instagram page.

The second benefit is that you can synchronize your images directly from services like Dropbox and Google Drive.

That means skipping the pesky step of saving your images to your camera roll on your iPhone before posting through to Instagram.

Let me show you how it works.

You need to create an account to get started. Once you’ve entered your Instagram information and chosen a name and timezone, you arrive at the main dashboard.

It looks like this:

To be able to schedule posts on Later, you need to download and sign in to the Later mobile app.

Once your mobile app is connected, your dashboard looks like this.

To get started using Later, you need to add media. You can either drag images to the media library or connect to Google Drive or Dropbox.

Later is great because it lets you organize a lot of content quickly in two different ways.

First, you can select the option to see only the content you haven’t posted or content that you’ve starred.

The more in-depth option is to add labels to your images, which you can then filter to only see certain types of images.

To add a label, click on the image.

Then create your label.

Now you can go back and filter your images.

If you don’t have a lot of images in your media library, it probably isn’t worth your time to go through and label them.

But if you have thousands of images, taking some time to organize them can save you a lot of scrolling over the long run.

There are a couple of different ways you can create a post in Later.

The first is by clicking directly on the image itself.

The post creation window posts up. You can edit your crop and add a caption for the post.

Then, at the bottom of the window, you select the date and time you want.

The scheduled post is now on your calendar.

You could also just drag and drop the content from the media library into the calendar at the slot for the time and date you want.

When you do this, it automatically opens the pop up to write in the caption. The date and time are already added to the bottom.

When it comes time to post your content, they will automatically post your content.

#2. Agorapulse for Instagram Scheduling

Agorapulse promises to centralize your social planning in one place. There’s an option with a free trial to see if it’s right for you.

Like Later, it provides scheduling for the major social networks. I’m going to focus on the Instagram scheduling for this article.

To get started, click on the “Start my free trial” button at the top.

There is a caveat, however. You have to connect with your Facebook account. You cannot just create an account with your email address.

Then there are a couple of different authentication steps before Agorapulse asks you which accounts and pages you want to connect with. You can skip the Facebook and Twitter step and just do the Instagram account.

When you get logged in, the first screen you see is your inbox. Your inbox is a collection of all the comments from your Instagram posts.

This is a great way to be able to engage with people who have engaged with you. For a community manager, this is especially convenient.

What we’re concerned about for this article is publishing, so click on the Publishing tab.

The Publishing tab gives you a calendar view showing when you’ve already posted. For days in the future, you have the option to click on the calendar date to schedule a post.

You can also click on the Schedule Post button on the menu on the right.

The pop-up box allows you to create your post. You can upload media directly through this box.

Once you’ve uploaded your media, you will get the prompt to download and install the Agorapulse mobile app, which works more or less exactly like the Later app I showed you above.

A cool feature of Agorapulse is the Instagram view, which gives you a preview of what your post is going to look like directly in the post creation pop up.

Once you’ve installed the app, you can add your post to your queue.

Another cool feature is the time slots option for your queues.

You know how you can see your Insights in Instagram?

If you scroll down, you can see when your audience is most active for each day of the week.

Then, in Agorapulse, you can set up a default time slot for each day of the week. That way, when you add your posts to your queue, it’s automatically assigned to the best time for that day.

Agorapulse is also advanced when it comes to reporting and identifying your top followers. You can see who interacts with you the most in a glance and who your most influential followers are.

#3. Autogrammer for Instagram Scheduling

Another platform that promises to centralize your social networks’ scheduling is Autogrammer, which offers a free seven-day trial.

It’s much faster to get started with Autogrammer than Agorapulse. Once you’re in, you can add your social network accounts from the menu on the right or from the green button in the middle.

To add an account, type in the details in the pop-up.

When your Instagram account is connected, you will see the prompt to add a post.

Just like with the other services I’ve outlined, you can upload an image directly, add a caption, select a time, and add multiple social networks if you want to publish to Instagram and Facebook at the same time.

The post comes up in your queue.

The interface is designed to be as simple as possible, but you can still access things like the calendar view by clicking on the Scheduled Posts option at the top.

Like the other services, you can add a new post directly from the calendar view by clicking on each date’s little plus button.

Finally, there’s a Bulk Upload option if you want to add multiple media files at one time.

#4. Sprout Social for Instagram Scheduling

For a more robust option in terms of functionality, Sprout Social could be a way for you to go.

Like the other platforms, there is a free trial to get you started. It lets you evaluate if the interface and functionalities are what you’re looking for.

The free trial is super important for Sprout since the plans can get really pricey. It’s positioned more as an enterprise service.

You might want to take that into account before you get hooked.

I want to point out that if you’re just starting out, there’s a standard service that runs $59 per month instead of the basic plan that starts at $99 per month.

You can find that option hidden below the other major plans.

You can start your free trial with any of the options.

After entering your email address, you can link your social accounts.

The more expensive plans let you add more social profiles. The standard plan lets you add five.

The next screen in the setup window. It will ask a little more about your business since Sprout catered more towards business and enterprise clients.

Since we’re concerned with scheduling on Instagram, click on the Publish & Schedule option.

You will still have access to the other features of the platform, but Sprout will immediately orient you towards the publishing features and a video explaining how to publish and schedule. That’s a nice touch.

To create a post on Sprout, you are always only one click away with the green Compose button on the top right. The pop-in window resembles the other services I’ve already shown you.

The publishing tab shows a calendar view that lines up your scheduled posts. You can adjust the date range on the right to see more or less time.

When it comes to Instagram scheduling, the mechanism is similar to the other services I already described. You download the app and connect your Instagram.

Then, you have to follow the steps to go through and share the content on Instagram via the Instagram app.

Sprout goes further than the other platforms I’ve outlined in both its project management capabilities and its focus on helping you grow your accounts.

Take, for example, the tasks tab.

As people interact with your Instagram account, you can manage your messages in the messages tab. By adding a task to a message, such as reply or contact this person, your task will show up in the tasks tab.

This is helpful when working in teams where a community manager can centralize the responses that are needed by going through and assigning who needs to do what.

You can also label someone as a potential lead, and make sure to follow up with them in a way that’s more sales-oriented than a simple response to a comment on an Instagram post.

The other cool feature on Sprout is the Discovery tab. The Discovery feature lets you created customized searches around hashtags to find people to interact with.

You can also use a geo-filter to narrow your search to a specific geographic area.

If you click on Suggestions on the menu on the left side of the screen, you will be able to find more people to follow who either follow you or who have interacted with you.

This is especially helpful if you’re managing a big community and you want to go through and find new, key people who are closer to helping you boost your business since they already know you.

Conclusion

Instagram finally allows automatically publishing on their account — at least if you have a business profile.

Now it is easier than ever to schedule Instagram posts at the best times during the day and week to reach the maximum number of your followers.

To properly execute your Instagram strategy, use an Instagram scheduling tool, and make sure you avoid common mistakes.

Each platform offers different benefits, and above all, different interfaces.

Some interfaces will naturally be more comfortable for you. The only way to know is to test.

Once you find the right one, it will go a long way towards helping you execute a successful Instagram strategy.

What apps do you use to schedule posts on Instagram?

Essential Content Scheduling Tips for Running an Efficient Blog

Oct 9, 2020 | Blogging

Creating a blog can be a great way to build your business. However, it can be taxing at times. One of the biggest challenges is consistently creating great blog content.

The content creation process does get easier over time. Getting started can be intimidating at first, but once you get the hang of things you will start to see some impressive results. However, the amount of work involved isn’t going to decline, as long as you keep your blog.

You need to make the process of developing new content more manageable by breaking things down into simpler steps. You should also try to make things more efficient by handling these processes in batches. Scheduling content is a great way to do this. However, there are some common mistakes that people make when scheduling pieces of content, which you will need to watch out for.

Grasping the Benefits of Scheduling Content

Creating great content is essential for engaging with visitors. You need to make sure that the web content that you are putting out is interesting, thought-provoking and optimized for SEO and social media. Readers are also going to expect your curated content to be published regularly, so you are going to want to have a system for delivering quality content on time. Fortunately, WordPress and other CMS platforms have content scheduling systems that you can use for better content management.

Here are some tips to make sure content is scheduled properly.

Start with a Content Calendar

Once you have your website up and running and have established a blog host you wish to use, then you need to start creating web content each month and produce a content calendar. You need to start by organizing your content ideas and prioritize the topics that you want to focus on.

You will need to be highly organized. Fortunately, there are some great tools that you can use. Google Docs, Airtable and CoSchedule are great options for managing your future content. Your entire team should have access to these content management tools.

Decide How Frequently You Should Publish Content

How often should you produce new content? That depends on your goals and your audience’s expectations. HubSpot recommends writing at least 16 blog posts every month. You could increase your organic traffic (and revenue) by 550% with content publishing at this rate, as opposed to only once a week.

Assign Sufficient Resources to Your Content Development Strategy

Content curation will require time and man hours. You are going to need to determine the following:

How many posts you are going to produce?
How much time you are going to dedicate to each post?
If you have a team writing your content, decide who is going to write each post.
Who is going to be responsible for creating each post (it is best to assign topics to people that are best qualified to produce them)?

Devising a consistent blog post schedule is essential for the growth of your blog, just choose a cycle that works best for you and try to stick to it.

Make Sure Content Will be Topical When Published

Content needs to be able to inspire, spark interest or provoke a response. Therefore, you need to think about what your readers want to read and come up with a range of topics you know will satisfy your existing readers as well as entice new readers to your blogs. When you are doing this, you must consider the relevance of the content when it will be published – not just how great it will be when you first write it.

This means that you are going to need to factor for seasonal trends and probable events that are going to affect the reception of your content before scheduling it.

When creating content, you should consider the other content that is available on the Internet. Keep in mind that a new blog post in your industry could be a great starting point for your own content. However, it may be stale in a few months and people might not even think about it.

You need to keep this in mind when scheduling content that you wrote in response to other blog posts or videos you found online. It might be best to publish those articles right away if they are written about other online content.

When you are planning on scheduling content into the future, you should schedule evergreen posts instead.

Think About Topics that People Will Always Be Talking About

Some topics never go out of style. Creating blog posts about these issues can be a great idea if you need content that will be scheduled months in advance.

This is a strategy that bloggers that write about developments in the real estate industry are able to follow. Are there new properties coming to market that everyone is talking about on social media? Are there any changes in legislating surrounding the property market and the way people buy and invest? These questions are great sources of inspiration as you know there is interest behind these blog posts already. People will still be searching for information about these topics for months or years down the road.

If you are trying to create evergreen content, begin by brainstorming ideas. What are the most frequently asked questions people ask? How can you answer them in your blog post? One tip is to keep a notebook with you, so you can jot down any ideas when you are on the go, alternatively start making notes on your phone.

One of the best sources of inspiration is to look at other similar blogs that share the same subject matters as you. Observe what works well for them and what you would change about their content if you were to do it your way.

This is something else that we have seen work well with real estate bloggers. Numerous property investment companies use a blog as a way of marketing their services and developments to their readers. A perfect example of this can be see with RW Invest, who have opted for a buy to let news section on their website as a way of showcasing their content. This is a great idea if you plan to start your own property blog as it allows easy navigation around your site as well as helping to categorize your content.

Find powerful images

When you are scheduling content for the future, it can be easy to get lazy about it. You might feel that you don’t need to make sure that your blog post looks perfect, because it won’t show up for weeks or months. You may tell yourself that you will go back and tweak things later, but you obviously won’t get around to it.

One mistake, bloggers make is not including great images before scheduling their posts. Sourcing relevant images is part of creating content, as images are a crucial component in producing eye-catching content. When choosing images for your blog, find those that will spark the most interest, but be careful not to use copyrighted material. You may wish to create your own infographic material that will be unique to you. If you design these with your logo on or a link to your blog, if it ends up getting shared across social media platforms, or other websites use it to support their content, then your blog is gaining free exposure which is a great marketing strategy for promotion.

Scheduling Software 101: How Scheduling Software Can Save Time, Money and Increase ROI

Oct 6, 2020 | Online Marketing, Seo, website

Written by Zac Johnson

Scheduling is an integral part of your business. No matter what type of business you own, whether you are a doctor or dentist, party supply store, or writer, you need to have a system for scheduling new clients. That’s how you keep your business growing.

If you find it hard to get new people scheduled regularly, perhaps you need a little help from a friend. This also ties into how well you use your time management at the office or when working from home.

Scheduling software is a great tool to help busy business owners to create their appointments in real time while they are busy doing something else.

What is a scheduling software?

Scheduling software is a specific type of software that allows you to use AI and automation technology to schedule appointments in real time.

Scheduling software works by allowing people to sign up for an appointment or schedule a time to see you that is convenient for both you and the customer or prospective client.

The way it works is that you create a schedule of available slots that you can take client appointments and leave the slots open for new people that you can allow so that they will be able to choose the best time for them.

Other types of software focus more on scheduling employee shifts. This can prove effective in saving money, as well as time and increasing your results.

How Scheduling Software Helps You

You can save both time and money if you use scheduling software to schedule your appointments on automation. You save money because, when you have this kind of tool in place, it runs 25/7. Such platforms can work with both desktop and mobile scheduling, which makes it a perfect fit for all audiences and workplaces. You get notified when someone makes an appointment, and you do not have to worry about hiring people to call leads to make appointments over the phone.

Businesses love the convenience of letting this automation work for them while they busy themselves with other tasks of running their businesses.

Popular Scheduling Applications

There are several different scheduling solutions available for business owners who want to use this method of scheduling meetings and appointments.

1. Deputy

Deputy is a new online employee scheduling software that allows you to schedule shifts or periods that employees with work throughout your work week. You can easily log in and make changes, and you may even be able to replace the traditional “time card” check-in system with this application.

Monitor attendance and breaks. Check up on the exact time that an employee worked, and more. This nifty application improves your workflow, too by holding people accountable for customizing pay rates and keeping careful track of exact work times. Deputy is also easily integrated into your workflow and HR system so that you can incorporate it into your payroll systems.

2. 7 Shifts

This is a restaurant shift scheduling software that allows restaurant owners to schedule shifts among their employees quickly and easily online.

It can easily be changed and altered to meet the needs of your business or unexpected changes that are needed due to a conflict in the schedule of your employees and staff.

It’s compatible with both desktop and mobile devices.

3. Appointlet

Appointlet is a helpful application that is more focused on scheduling appointments with clients. You can keep it on your main website, and customers can schedule the best time to meet with you based on your available time slots.

You will get reminders and notifications, and you can take breaks between bookings so that you don’t have to go from one meeting to another and you have plenty of time to get ready for your next appointment.

4. Squareup

Square Up is another appointment solution that you can use on your website or blog to allow visitors to schedule an appointment with you. Offer time slots that are convenient for you and your staff, change an appointment if something comes up, and manage your customers all in one place.

This application also has a cloud-based calendar and customer management aspects built right into the program. So you can also use it as a customer organization tool. SquareUp is a popular app with busy business managers and owners because it also sends friendly customer reminders to clients you have an appointment with so there will be fewer forgotten or missed meetings and appointments.

5. Roomzilla

Roomzilla is a bit different because it only focuses on scheduling meetings rooms for meetings that you need to hold for your company. It is a cloud-based application that connects to the available meeting rooms you have in your company buildings and allows you to book rooms for specific purposes such as sales meetings, brainstorming, and budgeting, for example.

How to Use Scheduling Software to Save Time and Money

As you can see, there are many different types of scheduling software programs available for business owners. Many business owners like using the appointment setting software to set up a business or B2B appointments. This saves time in having office staff make calls or sending out emails to them to remind them of their appointments.

Other business owners use employee scheduling software so that they can schedule shifts with ease and make changes anytime they need to.

How to Use Scheduling Software to Increase Your ROI

An even more efficient use of scheduling software is to use it to increase your ROI (return on investment). Many business owners are using this convenient method to

keep a closer eye on the time employees work, break times, and efficiency. By studying the results of data tracking and scheduling within the application, you can make better use of your employment dollars by putting people in places and time slots where they can improve the results and level of productivity you get.

Pricing

Prices vary depending on what you are using it for, but you can find most scheduling software in the range of $25 per month or less.

However you use scheduling and project management software, it can definitely save you money and time and can help you increase the return you get on your investment. This is just another example of how AI and automation software can save you money and time and raise the level of your return.

Check out any of the links we’ve provided above and see which one you might like to try out first. It could make a big difference in your bottom line!