How to schedule your posts on Instagram for free

Instagram is a great platform that can’t stop growing. Launched in 2010 like its direct competitor Pinterest, it quickly took off the ground to reach this year not less than 700 million monthly active users[1] . But unlike most of other social media that combine a mobile and desktop platform, Instagram is only available on mobile and does not incorporate the emerging planning feature.
Thus, this can become time-consuming if you want to post frequently to develop a powerful account with thousands of followers. And that’s something you should do! Posting everyday relevant posts with the right hashtags show consistency in your branding efforts with a very cost-effective way to reach out to your key audience. Latest statistics show that Instagram is by far the best Social Media for organic engagement, with 2.3% interaction rate per follower. It looks low but compared to Facebook that has 0,216%, it’s actually A LOT![2]
Free services you can use to plan your post
Now comes the most interesting part for you. How to plan your posts using a third-party platform. There are very limited free solutions but fortunately they work well. The first one is not to present anymore: Hootsuite, while the second one Crowdfire, formerly JustUnfollow, changed its name in 2015 to better fit with its new services and goals.
While these platforms provide a useful service, they may not do what you would totally expect… however, it’s not its fault. Instagram has always favored human actions, banning all kind of automation by limiting its API (Application Programming Interfaces), the system that allows any third-party app to interact with the Instagram app.
Then, how does it work ?
The first step is to install the Hootsuite or Crowdfire’s app on your phone. Everything can be done from this, but the big perk is that its websites are also synchronized with its own app, thus you can do your work on your laptop. Then, it would be automatically forwarded on your mobile. Indeed, nothing can be done directly from Windows, even with a third-party service. That’s not all, now comes the tricky part, as the API is limited, what is planned through Hootsuite or Crowdfire cannot be automatically posted neither. Instead, at the precise planned time of each post, a notification will be pushed on your phone to open Instagram with the content directly copied in the clipboard. What remains to do is just be to paste and publish.
This system is thus not a miracle. It does not allow any auto-publication nor the possibility to plan posts in the middle of the night in case your audience Is worldwide… But it gives the opportunity to better organize your editorial efforts. As of now, what you can do is sit down for half a day, think deeply of what you want to communicate to your audience and write everything in advance. The outcome is still time-saving and quality oriented.
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