How To Schedule Instagram Posts From Your Computer.
To effectively manage an Instagram account, you need to work smart.
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The most time-consuming and inefficient part of managing and growing an Instagram account is the time and energy it takes to stop everything you’re doing several times a day to take out your phone, open Instagram, take/upload a photo, write a caption and publish a post.
Although posting consistently is an essential Instagram growth strategy, disrupting your daily workflow to do it, doesn’t have to be.
In my case, I have to post at least 40 times a week to make a living from my Instagram accounts (@pinlord / @potteryforall / @macramemakers), and I do it all every Monday, in a few hours.
How the hell do I do it? I schedule and automate the process of posting.
What’s the best Instagram posting automation service out there?
I’ve tried them all, but by far the best (in my opinion) is onlypult.com.
Hootsuite, Buffer and Later are all well known Instagram content management tools that claim to fully automate publishing, but in reality, they have a bunch of restrictions around how and what you automate and they don’t offer the option of including your hashtags in the first comment of your post, which Onlypult does.
Including your Instagram hashtags in the first comment not only allows you to receive the surfacing power of the tags, but more importantly, it helps you convert more followers because you avoid having to include them in your caption and turning off those users who tend to judge and not follow accounts that use a lot of hashtags in their posts (believe me, there’s a lot of those users out there).
Apart from that feature, Onlypult is like any other service out there so if hashtags in the first comment isn’t a big deal for you (which it should be) feel free to use whichever service you enjoy the most.
How do you schedule and automate your posts?
1. Create your content in bulk:
If you know how many times per week you should post to optimize growth, you’ll know how many photos or videos per week you’ll need. To take full advantage of the ability to automate your posts, you should create that content in bulk instead of creating new content every single day you need to post. It’ll make the process much more efficient and save you a lot of time and energy
For example, if you want to post once a day for a week to grow your account faster, you know that you’ll need 7 photos. Spend some time at the beginning of the week shooting all of the photos at once, instead of trying to figure out what photo to take every day.
Being able to create in bulk will also help you to plan your Instagram grid ahead of time, allowing you to differentiate your account and grow your audience much faster (if you want to understand why a differentiated account will exponentially increase your growth, read this article on why your Instagram account isn’t growing).
2. Upload your content:
Now that you’ve created your content, the next step is uploading it to Onlypult. This is how I do it:
After you’ve signed up and linked your Instagram, you’ll find yourself on the dashboard. Click on ADD POST:
Now, you’ll find yourself on posting dashboard. Here, scroll to the bottom where you’ll find the Upload Files box. Drag and upload the posts you’ve already created.
In this example, I’ll upload the 7 posts I already created.
Once they’re uploaded, they’ll appear in your posting dashboard. There’s a lot of options here, but if you’re just starting off, I recommend that you focus on writing your Caption, including Instagram hashtags in the First Comment, Cropping the photo, Photo Tagging, and setting the Date & Time post.
3. Write your captions:
For each post, you’ll see the photo on the left with its corresponding Description and First comment tabs on the right. To write your caption, click on the Description tab and write your caption in the box, like so:
4. Include your hashtags in the first comment:
Next, take advantage that Onlypult is the only post automation service that offers the First comment functionality and include your hashtags in your first comment. To do that, just click on the First comment tab and copy-paste your hashtags.
5. Cropping your photo:
Photos and videos in 4:5 portrait format take up the largest amount of space on people’s screen out of all other photo formats on Instagram and this can slightly increase the engagement of those posts. Because of this, you should strive to post all of your content in this format.
If your original files aren’t in 4:5 portrait, you should use the crop feature on Onlypult.
To access the cropping screen, hover over the photo and click Edit:
and in this screen, again click on the Edit icon:
Now you’ll be in the photo edit screen. Here, click on the Transform icon on the upper left-hand side, then select the 4:5 ratio, crop your photo, and once you’re done, and click on the blue check at the bottom.
Then you’ll be sent to a new screen and hit Save.
6. Photo tagging:
You can also photo tag on Onlypult if your post requires it.
Once you Save your photo crop, you’ll be sent back to the Edit media screen. There, click on the tagging icon:
Then you’ll be in the photo tagging screen. Here, click on wherever on the photo you want the tag to be, then enter the username you want to be tagged in the search bar, add it through clicking on the “+” when the account shows up, and Save.
After this, you’ll be sent back to the Edit media screen. Here you can just X out of that screen since you’ve already cropped and tagged your photo. Once you X out, you’ll be sent back to the dashboard.
7. Set the Date & Time:
Next, set the date and time.
Once you’re back on the dashboard, click on the Select Date and Time button and you’ll be able to schedule the exact day and time your post will be published Instagram. Hit save, and you’re all set. Your post now has a caption, that hashtags that will be posted on the first comment, it’s cropped, tagged, and scheduled time and date to be posted on your account.
8. Do the same for all of your other posts.
Now that you’ve completed all of the elements for one post, do the same for your other posts and click Schedule.
Once you’ve done that all of your posts will appear in the Scheduled posts screen.
Boom, you’re all set!
They’ll be posted for you on Instagram without you having to do anything on the app.
Now you can use your time on more important things that don’t include opening the Instagram app to upload photos, write copy and publish your post every day.
Btw, if you want to know more about other techniques that’ll help you grow your Instagram, read these articles on what Instagram really is and how works, how the Instagram algorithm works, Instagram niches and why they are the key to growth, how to build an Instagram repost account that makes money, how to pick the right Instagram username, Instagram bots 2021, how to automate Instagram interactions, the best Instagram bots that’ll keep your account safe, the state of Instagram bots, how the Instagram algorithm works, how to create effective Instagram sponsored posts, how to check if you’re shadowbanned, how to monetize your Medium articles, as well as how to measure what an influencer is worth, how to find the most valuable influencers on Instagram, how to reach out to influencers, how to measure your influencer marketing ROI, and everything you need to know about TikTok Bots.
Hope they help :)
