As an official Instagram Marketing Partner, Social Report has been granted early beta access to Instagram new direct Publishing features. For years, Instagram remained the only platform that did not allow tools like Social Report to publish directly.
As a result we had developed other options like mobile app notifications, sms and email. These days are finally over. You can now schedule directly to Instagram—just like you can to all other platforms.
Please review the below article to important setup steps you would need to take and few limitations that are currently in place.
Important Steps Required Before Scheduling Content to Instagram
1. Convert your Instagram Personal to Instagram Business
To be able to schedule posts to Instagram directly you will need to make sure that your Instagram Profile is an Instagram Business Profile. Converting to a business profile is simple, free and there are lots of good reasons for it. We explained this process in this article.
Important: The Facebook profile used to convert the Instagram profile to a Business profile must have admin rights to the Facebook page.
2. Connect (or reconnect) Instagram profile to Social Report
Once you've converted your Instagram from Personal to Business, you need to connect it to Social Report by clicking the (+) sign on the upper right part of the page and re-authenticate the profile. (If you have it already connected, you will need to reconnect it.)
3. Connect (or reconnect) Facebook profile to Social Report
Instagram Business requires a Facebook page attached to it. You would need to connect that Facebook page to Social Report as well. If your Facebook page is already connected - you still need to re-connect it as this grants the necessary permissions.
You know that everything is setup correctly if your Instagram profile says 'Instagram Business' and 'Yes' for publishing.
Note: Any user with personal profile or those who have not followed the reconnection instructions will still have ability to schedule using mobile/sms/email.
Troubleshooting: If you are not seeing "yes" for publishing and if it still shows 'connect facebook page" link here - please follow the steps outline here
Posting on Instagram for Business
1. Compose your message and attach the photo. Note that we support multi-line posts; if you put line breaks - they will show up in posts as well.
2. If your image does not follow Instagram image guidelines, you will be prompted to edit the image:
Aspect Ratio - between 0.8 to 1.91
Minimum Resolution - 150 x 150
Maximum Resolution - 1920 x 1080
3. Once you click edit, the image resolution will automatically be adjusted to optimal settings. If it is an aspect ratio issue, you would need to select "Crop" and edit the photo based on the provided aspect ratio requirements. The image's aspect ratio and resolution will appear on the lower left part of the photo editor screen and will be marked RED if it doesn't meet the minimum requirements.
4. Once done editing the photo, go to Advanced Settings to add a Place Location and Additional Comment (Note that this option only appears if you have Instagram selected as your target profile).
5. Once published, the post should now appear directly in Instagram with the location and comment:
Multiline Posting
Instagram does allow users the ability to put content on different lines and even have blank lines but they support it in a very special way. See the below image. On the left - post composed in Social Report, on the right, how it was posted on Instagram. Few things to note:
- If you are just putting content on a new line - nothing special needs to happen. See line1 and lien2 on the picture. Just a simple line break.
- If you are looking to have just a blank line - you have 2 options. Regardless of the approach, an empty line will show with a dot symbol on Instagram.
- Leave the line blank
- Place a dot on the lin
Troubleshooting
Direct Instagram scheduling depends heavily on correct conversion of Instagram personal profiles to business. On a number of occasions our users reported that even after they go through the steps outlined above to convert their personal Instagram to business and then reconnect both Instagram and Facebook in Social Report - they are still faced with a screen like this:
After working with several users we have concluded that for some reason conversion of Instagram profiles to business sometimes does not work on the first try. Here are the steps that seem to do the trick:
- Go to your mobile device, login to this Instagram profile and convert it back to personal.
- On Facebook, please go to your Facebook page, Settings, Instagram and make sure Instagram profile is not showing as connected. If it does - disconnect it.
- Now, please return to your mobile device and convert Instagram to business once more.
- On Facebook, please go to Facebook page again, Setting, Instagram and make sure it shows connected Instagram profile
- IF IT DOES NOT - there is something going on with converting to business from Instagram app. You may want to repeat this again. DO NOT use this Facebook settings page to connect Instagram. Instagram should have already been showing.
- IF IT DOES - all good! Please return to your Social Report account and
- Connect Instagram profile by clicking on "+"
- Connect Facebook page by clicking on "+"
If all works well, "connect facebook page" link is now gone and Publish column shows "Yes" for your Instagram Business Profile.
Limitations
Instagram is still working on their publishing and as a result few limitations do apply:
- While you can include the links in posts—they won't be clickable
- Currently only one image can be posted
- Posting of GIFs is not currently supported
- Posting videos is not currently supported
- Images must be within 0.8 to 1.91 aspect ratio range
- Minimum resolution: 150x150 (lower resolutions will be scaled up to the minimum)
- Maximum resolution: 1920x1080 (higher resolutions will be scaled down to the maximum)
Instagram is actively working on it and will add more features soon. Stay tuned for future updates.