How to Schedule Instagram Posts: The Ultimate Guide

A beautifully and logically designed Instagram feed is not only a matter of aesthetics. This is a modern need for owners of commercial accounts or those who want to become famous bloggers and opinion leaders. However, external ease of Instagram account management hides much work. The need to be in touch with followers every day, interact with them, and create engaging content is not a few clicks. So, scheduling Instagram posts ahead of time is one of the most effective productivity hacks to save effort, time, and resources.

In this post, we will stop on the benefits of planning for Instagram, scheduling tips, and discover how you can schedule Instagram posts with no hassle. Let’s get into it.

Benefits of Scheduling Instagram Posts

Let’s cover the why before we go further and learn how to schedule Instagram posts.

1. Save time.
2. Be consistent.
3. Write compelling captions.
4. Organize your content calendar.
5. Build a strong visual story.
6. Post from your PC or Mac.

And now, a few more details on each benefit.

1. Save time.

It might be the most significant advantage of scheduling content on Instagram. Professional management of social networks takes a lot of time and effort from each specialist because this is a full-fledged job that requires total dedication.

Instead of dropping everything every day and writing another post, use tools that allow you to plan content in advance. Allow a few hours at the beginning or the end of the week for a content plan to write a few posts and think through the visual part. Then, transfer the content to your planner, and the scheduled posts will go live according to your schedule.

Did you know you can schedule social media posts with Vista Social for free? Weaponize unique platform features and techniques that will bring real results. Get started now!

2. Be consistent.

Post consistency is vital in Instagram marketing – to increase brand recognition and grow audience engagement. Of course, nothing terrible will happen from a few missed posts. But still, consistency is one of the essential factors of success in social networks. Posting due to the specific schedule strategically and consistently maximizes your organic reach.

Therefore, a content calendar or schedule is necessary if you are serious about promoting your business on Instagram. It will help you organize your work, maintain consistency, and monitor the results.

3. Write compelling captions.

A beautiful photo can express a thousand words, while the text can tell its story and reveal the essence of the image. A strong caption can encourage the audience to subscribe to your profile, briefly talk about your life or business, make a purchase, or increase account activity.

Algorithm hack: Tailor Your posts for Instagram SEO. 💥

👉 Write descriptive captions with relevant, highly-searched keywords throughout.
👉 Manually write alt text for your Instagram posts.
👉 Include up to 30 relevant hashtags

— Later (@latermedia) May 27, 2021

Writing captions on the fly is not about quality – you can make spelling errors or miss the chance to represent your brand’s story most effectively. Instead, when planning Instagram posts, you can allow more time to write descriptive captions with the right keywords and hashtags.

4. Organize your content calendar.

Another benefit of scheduling Instagram posts is keeping your content calendar organized and consistent. You will never miss opportunities to post relevant content on time.

Whether you need to focus on specific social events, public holidays, or any other content, you will always ensure you post efficiently and to the point. 

5. Build a strong visual story.

For successful promotion in a highly competitive Instagram, you need excellent content and a harmonious design of the entire profile. It is necessary to consider the mood and color scheme of the images, the location of the published posts, frames, and filters used to get a beautiful design and tell a cohesive visual story.

Instagram is about style and taste, so get the most of it to make the right first impression. Planning and scheduling Instagram posts in advance allows you to think through your account’s aesthetic and build a strong visual story.

As a tip, Vista Social’s Visual Instagram Feed Planner lets you plan and preview your Instagram feed before you hit publish.

6. Post from your PC or Mac.

Whether you work on scheduling content from a PC or Mac, you will enjoy a larger screen, a full keyboard to write your post captions, and master multitasking when toggling between the tabs.

With Vista Social, it is convenient to deal with content from the computer, especially if you are crafting graphics and social media assets on your PC or Mac. This way, you have more room for creativity and achieve the best results. 

How to Schedule Instagram Posts with Vista Social 

Vista Social is a modern platform that allows managing your Instagram pages with a robust set of tools. Plan, create, and publish engaging Instagram posts with a centralized content calendar, intuitive workflows, and creative tools for Instagram publishing.

Let’s see how to get started.

1. Log in to your Vista Social account.
2. Click the Publish tab on the left side of the dashboard and select Instagram from your list of profiles.

3. Сlick Publish a single post.

Note that you have a few options available in a drop-down menu:

• Publish a single post – you can design and schedule one post only to one or more social profiles.
• Bulk publishing – you can design and schedule multiple posts by uploading content with a spreadsheet or downloading content from a blog you like via RSS.
• Find content – you can easily find and schedule great content using built-in trending content search tools.
• Smart publishing – you specify what kind of content you are looking for and how frequently to publish, and the system will do the rest.

4. Compose your post.

4.1. Click the camera icon and add one or more media items for your post. You can upload from your computer, upload from a URL, choose from the media library, or use the ‘Discover’ option to select a stock-free photo.

4.2 Edit your image – crop, resize, select a social media ratio for your photo, add filters, draw on, or add text or icons to each image.

4.3. Write a caption for your post. Here you can get the most of the posting features supported by Vista Social:

• Attach emojis using a built-in emoji selector.
• Include a link.
• Add hashtags by using a build-in hashtag storage system.
• Use universal mentions to mention users in your post.
• Enable, disable or customize link shortening.
• Optionally enable link tracking.
• Add location tagging.
• Enable/disable comments – users can comment on the post by default, but you may disable this at the scheduling stage.
• Leave the first comment under your post to spark engagement.

4.4. Preview your post with the help of a visual Instagram feed planner icon.

4.5. Choose one of the available options to publish your post:

• Save draft – this option allows you to save the changes and get back to your post later to finish.
• Add to queue – large teams use this option for a manager/client to quality assure the post before it goes live.
• Schedule – this option allows you to pick up a date and time when you want the post to get published.
• Publish now – your post will be published right away once you choose this option.

And voila! You have done it!

4 Instagram Scheduling Tips and Best Practices 

Remember, your Instagram page will not grow on autopilot – you need to leverage Instagram scheduling properly. Below we have listed our four best tips.

1. Stick to the best time to post on Instagram.

Content must be posted at the optimal time for maximum engagement and reach. Surely you have noticed that posts published at a specific time receive the best response.

Based on Sprout Social research, the best time to post on Instagram is Tuesday from 11 am to 2 pm and Monday through Friday at 11 am. So the best day is Tuesday and the worst day is Saturday. Still, there are no one-size-fits for all brands. So experiment with the best posting time precisely for your business and industry to achieve the best results.

TIP: Vista Social allows you to choose the best time you want the post to go live. Get started now to enjoy all the publishing features.

2. Use relevant hashtags.

Using the best hashtags for social strategy is a never-ending topic in social media circles. But how many hashtags should you use for your Instagram posts?

Instagram allows 30 hashtags per post. While using a few hashtags is good, using 20-30 hashtags ensures that your public post is visible to countless people currently viewing image and video content.

Since there is no universal formula for all Instagram accounts, take time to analyze the performance of your hashtags to gauge what is and is not working.

TIP: With Vista Social’s in-built hashtag storage system, you will use the most relevant hashtags for your publications. Discover more publishing tools and achieve real results.

3. Add keywords to your Instagram captions.

Instagram’s new search functionalities and Instagram’s Explore page are constantly evolving. So, you cannot miss the opportunity to get your post found by keywords. This means the keywords you use in the captions do matter. So, use the most relevant ones to help Instagram users find your content easier. 

TIP: When using Vista Social’s content scheduling ahead of time, you can allow more time to write quality and descriptive captions.

4. Make a wow visual first impression.

Think over how your business looks and feels with every social post you publish. Remember, when people visit your profile, they see each publication and the overall picture of the content in the account.

Make an Instagram account visually pleasing and cause a desire to subscribe, like, and order – use high-res photos, brand colors, the checkerboard effect, and more. When scheduling Instagram posts in advance, you have an opportunity to work correctly on the visual part of your account to attach more followers.

TIP: Vista Social’s Visual Instagram Feed Planner lets you plan and preview your Instagram feed before publishing.

Conclusion 

Managing a commercial Instagram account takes much time and effort. It is not enough to write and publish posts only – you need to analyze statistics, communicate with the audience, boost sales, and generate hypotheses for development. One of the best solutions is to automate and speed up each stage.

When choosing the right Instagram scheduler for your project, it is essential to understand what feature set will cover your needs. Vista Social is a complete all-in-one solution that offers publishing, engagement, analytics, social listening, and review management features. You can start with a free plan to see if the tool works for your marketing goals and upgrade to a paid plan to enjoy even more features. So start scheduling your Instagram posts with Vista Social today!