Instagram Scheduling

For anyone that works in public relations the news that Instagram is coming out with a scheduling feature is a big hit. Currently, according to an article on PR News the scheduling feature will only be available for business accounts and there are future plans to make it available for non-business accounts. The Instagram app itself will not have the scheduling feature on it, instead it will use some of its partners which include Hootsuite, Sprinklr, and Sprout Social. The update includes the ability to search for accounts that it has used the @mention feature on previously. There is a fear that the scheduling feature will create an increase posting, and the increase in the number of posts could lead to a lower quality post.  For those working in public relations that are excited about this new feature it still remains important to create quality content even though scheduling may give you the ability to create more posts.

Scheduling posts will give companies the ability to create content ahead of time and reduce the potential workload buildup by allowing content to be created ahead of time. Scheduling also allows content to come out at the same time on the same day every week. It also allows you to post content based on the time zones so people get there content at a normal time of day for the viewer. The ability to schedule also allows companies to send out posts on the weekend or over holidays when the person who is running the social media account may not be in the office.

The ability to schedule has many advantages, one of which is allowing you to stay ahead and be prepared. As an article on Sprout Social points out, if an event is starting at midnight most people would not want to be up at midnight waiting to hit the post button. Using scheduling, it is also important to use it properly, scheduling lots of advertisements can cause a loss of followers to your social media account. Scheduling can allow you to put up many different kinds of content and spread them out so that they are not over saturated.

Using analytics from different social media tools you can also determine the best times to post on your different social media outlets and the number of times a day to post on each form of social media. Scheduling can be a very helpful tool but just like power tools it should be used with respect. Sending out to much content can turn viewers away, or cause them to scroll past your post because some people might see the company name and scroll past it because it has shown up too often. The Sprout article gives guidelines for how many times a day to post on different social media outlets. For twitter it says that you can post between one and 51 times a day. I do not think that it is beneficial to post 51 times per day on any form of social media. It would cause me to either stop following them or to always scroll past the posts that they sent out.