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Scheduling social media is a great way to prepare your posts in advance, helping you to save time and create well-thought-out, engaging content that your followers will love.
With Instagram schedulers you can also schedule your photos directly from your computer, meaning that you can benefit from using desktop apps to edit and optimise your images.
How can you make the most out of schedulers? Just take an hour out on Monday morning, make yourself a big cup of tea or coffee and plan all of your Instagram posts for the week. It’s that simple!
Although Instagram doesn’t provide an ability to schedule within the app, there are a lot of great schedulers available that you can utilise. Best of all, most of them are free to use!
Here is a list of some of our favourites:
Later
Later is one of the most well-known Instagram schedulers on the market. You can schedule up to 30 posts a month with its free package. Stories are included as part of this count, although video and carousel posts are not included
As well as Instagram posts, you can also schedule Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest posts.
Later works on your desktop, although you can also download an app which you can use to schedule posts on the go.
Other free features on Later include post analytics, a bio page you can use to drive traffic to your website or blog and a stock photo library for creating clean and crisp images in no time at all.
One of the benefits of Later is that you can see how your scheduled posts will look on your Instagram feed, helping you to construct a feed inline with your brand’s look and feel.
Tailwind
Tailwind is most commonly used for scheduling Pinterest posts, but it can also be used for curating the perfect Instagram feed.
It comes with its own mobile app, the option to create a bio page, as well as a 9-grid preview for optimising the look of your feed.
Tailwind has free functionality, but you can only schedule thirty Instagram posts. If you have a small business and don’t post frequently, or are looking a scheduler to help you with a specific campaign, this may be sufficient; otherwise you will run out of posts fairly rapidly.
You have full functionality during this time though and can access full analytics and hashtag suggestions. You can also utilise something known as ‘Post Inspector’ which lets you which posts have provided you with the most engagement.
Planoly
Planoly provides a free Instagram scheduling system where you can schedule 30 posts a month.
An app is available for scheduling posts on the go, as well as basic analytics and an Instagram bio. A cool feature is that you have the ability to reply to and manage comments directly from Planoly.
Hootsuite
Hootsuite is well known as one of the largest social media scheduling dashboards in the world. As well as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, you can also schedule Instagram posts for free.
You can schedule a total of thirty posts across all social networks at a time. Although you cannot create a bio, you can download the Hootsuite app and view basic stats as well as search Instagram for hashtags, making Hootsuite an excellent choice for social listening.
Bear in mind that if you want to schedule Instagram Stories or carousel posts, you will need to set up a mobile notification workflow. This is easy to do though, and Hootsuite will walk you through the process.
Buffer
Like Hootsuite, Buffer is well known as being an all-rounder when it comes to social media scheduling. With its free plan, you can schedule ten Instagram posts a month.
Buffer lets you schedule your posts on desktop and mobile. Functionality is basic at the moment, but Buffer is looking at bringing in brand new functionality in the future including an Instagram grid for planning your future posts
Summary
A lot of the scheduling apps available have a lot of similar features so it may be that the one you choose comes to usability and personal preference. Try them all out and see which one you like the most!
One billion people use Instagram worldwide each day, so it is vital to put out high-quality content to encourage comments, likes and clicks. Using a scheduler will help you make the most of your account and give you back a lot of valuable time.
If you enjoyed this article you might also like to read about Do You Want a Quick Step by Step Guide on How To Use Instagram?
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