Instagram and Your Business

Instagram’s popularity among businesses continues to rise and over 25 million businesses have an Instagram profile. If your business relies on Instagram to meet your target audience, you should know that big changes are coming! Businesses will soon be able to better manage their organic presence; they will be able to view posts they've been tagged in, view other business profiles, and, to the great excitement of many users, schedule posts ahead of time.

Most other social media networks allow businesses to schedule posts in advance, but Instagram has held out until now on offering this convenience. Facebook announced last week via Instagram’s Business Blog that this capability will soon be available to all business profiles. But there are a few things about this exciting feature that you need to know.

Only business profiles will be able to schedule posts in advance.

In the past, many business owners have balked at the idea of switching their personal profiles on Instagram to business profiles, afraid that they will then be forced to pay for market attention. While these fears may have some validity based on what happened with Facebook business pages years ago, it is worth considering the time-saving benefits a switch now offers. Instagram has said that they will eventually extend this update to personal profiles, but not likely until 2019. For now, only photos will be able to be scheduled in advance – not videos.

Your business must be using social media software to take advantage of this feature.

At this time, a third-party software such as Social Report will be needed to schedule posts. While these platforms currently allow you to plan out a post, they still send you a reminder at a specific time to share the prepared post yourself. Instagram has not announced any plans to integrate this ability into its own app.

Good social media managers already use social media software to ensure the effectiveness of your social media campaign and will be able to easily navigate these changes. It’s important to remember that a social media strategy that isn’t well thought through or badly managed can hurt your brand. Evolve Impact Group offers personalized social media management solutions for your business to ensure improved market presence and sustainable, long-term impact in the marketplace. We can also help with creating original and relevant content to share both on your blog and on social media. Contact us today to learn more!