How to schedule Instagram pictures

Learning how to schedule your Instagram pictures will help you grow your followers faster by posting at the optimum time. Instagram is a great social media to grow your audience but it doesn't let you schedule your post like Facebook or Hootsuite does.

There are several apps, which let you schedule your post on Instagram and they all have the same limited use. It only lets you pre-upload your picture and add the description and then prompts you with a reminder to post on Instagram.

I have tried several apps and my favourite app so far is called Publish by Crowfire formerly known as TakeOff.

As you can see on the screenshot you can log in using either Instagram or Twitter. For all intent and purposes I will only cover Instagram today.

The free version lets you manage only 1 Instagram account at a time. Same goes for Twitter. If you decide to go for their premium of $24.99 you can manage up to 5 accounts at the same time with unlimited access for 1 year.

The interface is really easy. Just like Instagram, you select the picture you want to post, write a small description and add a few hashtags.

You have the choice of scheduling your post yourself or automatically schedule it for the best time based on your activity and followers. I personally love the auto-schedule, it has worked magic on accounts I manage.

You can schedule up to 50 messages per day.

The app also suggest daily popular hashtags when you write your message. Even though I do like that feature, I don't always find the hashtags always relevant to the subject. I use a different method to add hashtags to my post, which I will cover in a different post, so this feature is not as relevant to me.

After you schedule your post, make sure you have enabled Publish to send you push notifications if you haven't done so already. It is also wise to leave your phone on and not have it on silent otherwise you will miss your the notification to post.

I talk from experience, this happened to me once. It's ok, you can always try to remember at what time your post is suppose to go out but it kind of defy the purpose.

When it is time to post, you will receive a notification. Open it, Publish is going to open Instagram for you and automatically copy your text.

Once in Instagram, apply the filter you want to, paste your message and publish your post.

Voila!!! This is how you schedule your Instagram post.

I know this is not a 100% automated schedule post but this is as close as you can get to having one.

There are currently no tools to schedule Instagram post, but this may very well change in the near future. Instagram has been implementing new tools for businesses, so one can hope a schedule tool may come.

What are your thought about this app? Do you schedule post for Instagram? Please share your thoughts in the comments below.