In case you missed the announcement, as of January Instagram has introduced scheduling to posts – something business owners, small businesses, and online marketing companies have wanted for a very long time.

FINALLY YOU CAN SCHEDULE POSTS FOR YOUR BUSINESS MARKETING ON INSTAGRAM

Incase you missed the announcement at the end of January, Instagram has finally announced an update to it’s API allowing post scheduling – something that was not possible without a workaround before.

Why It Matters

Managing multiple social media accounts for your business is extremely time consuming. The best solution to this of course is to use an automated system that will post to all of your business’s social media accounts at once (such as HootSuite, SocialFlow, or Sprout Social). This all sounds great and works great with apps such as Facebook and Twitter…but never Instagram. Instagram’s native API blocked this sort of functionality which created a huge headache for businesses and small business owners relying on online marketing.

The Change We Begged For

“The scheduling and publishing of Instagram content has been the number one request for our 16 million customers,” said Hootsuite CEO Ryan Holmes, in a statement. “Now, they can manage large volumes of content, multiple team members and multiple Instagram accounts with ease and security. Hootsuite is excited to partner with Instagram to make this happen.”

The change was introduced as part of a larger revamp of Instagram’s API platform that also included a plan to deprecate the older Instagram API Platform over the next two years beginning on July 31, 2018. The old API is being replaced by the newer Instagram Graph API, which also includes the ability to analyze metrics and insights about the business’s performance on Instagram, moderate comments, and now, access the business’s mentions and add responses to those.