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Unless you live in a pineapple under the sea like SpongeBob, you know of Instagram. It is the most common photo and video sharing platform of our time. Its estimated reach is roughly one billion users per month.
As a business owner or digital marketer, you need to leverage social media sites such as Instagram to drive traffic and sales. You definitely need content scheduling tools to make it easy for you. You can do native content scheduling or third-party content scheduling. Native content scheduling is whereby you use the platform’s own upload function such as in Twitter Studio and Meta Business Suite. Third-party content scheduling is when you deploy another app or software to schedule your posts.
Here is the thing about scheduling content on Instagram; Instagram restricts scheduling some type of content. Meta Business Suite, for instance, allows you to schedule carousels, posts, stories, and IG TVs but you can’t schedule reels. Stories however can’t be scheduled with add ons such as polls, stickers or GIFs. One might argue this beats the logic for stories as their main purpose is to increase engagement; something the add ons aggressively prompt. Meta Business Suite is from Meta, the parent company of Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp and is free to use.
Hootsuite is another content scheduling tool that allows you to schedule all types of content including reels. The only limiting factor is that it does not automatically post to your stories. It instead sends you a message asking you to post your stories.
Canva allows you to schedule photos and videos but you can’t schedule stories, reels, and carousels. On top of that, you can’t schedule content for multiple accounts at the same time. This makes canva sort of cumbersome and time-consuming for content scheduling.
Another tool, Later, can schedule photos, videos, carousels, IG TVs but still can’t schedule stories. The Preview App is an Instagram-only scheduling tool that lets you schedule posts, videos, carousels, and even reels but not stories. The holy grail of Instagram Stories content scheduling goes to Storrito. It can schedule stories with the add ons but it doesn’t schedule regular posts.
It sucks that none of these tools can do everything in terms of scheduling on Instagram due to restrictions. But looking at it from the point of Meta as a business, it makes total sense. If everyone could schedule all types of content, then people would spend way less time on the platform. Remember, they generate revenue from people interacting and spending time on the platform.
It goes without saying that you need at least two content scheduling tools to schedule your content on Instagram. Our top picks here at ADX Virtual would be The Preview App and Storrito; a winning combo! What would you choose? Comment down below.
You don’t have to go through the struggle of finding out what tool works best for your business if you partner with ADX Virtual. Focus on what you do best, let us wrestle in the mad for you and deliver the perfect content marketing strategy for your business.