Schedule Posts on Instagram Stories at scale
Undoubtedly, Instagram has established itself as a social media powerhouse, with a significant impact on both personal and business use. Its status as one of the most influential social media platforms is set to endure for years to come. Over the last few years, Instagram has maintained its position as a leading social media platform by continuously rolling out cutting-edge features and tools. These advancements have enabled both regular users and business owners to effectively share their content with the platform’s massive user base of about 2 billion monthly active users.
One of the many popular features that have been released on Instagram is Instagram Stories. Instagram Stories was launched in August 2016 and was introduced to allow users to share multiple photos and videos of their day without having to keep them on their profile. Stories are ephemeral, meaning they disappear after 24 hours, so you can share more personal and candid moments without worrying about them being archived.
Instagram stories have become increasingly popular, and as of this writing, there has been a reported figure of over 500 million people who actively watch Instagram Stories. Although Stories have enjoyed a decent amount of growth this year, they still fall short of surpassing Posts in terms of reach and visibility. With this in mind, it’s best advised that you don’t treat Posts and Stories differently and instead consider both a part of your marketing arsenal.
Why Are Instagram Stories Very Popular?
Instagram Stories have gained immense popularity owing to their distinctive blend of immediacy, visual appeal, and interactive functions. When you compare Stories to conventional posts, Stories stand out as they offer a transitory peek into the daily lives of individuals and businesses, establishing a genuine and instantaneous connection. Additionally, the variety of creative tools available, such as stickers, filters, and text overlays, allows users to customize their Stories and make them visually appealing. Businesses in particular have found success using these features to customize their posts in ways that traditional posts simply aren’t equipped to. The incorporation of interactive elements, such as polls, questions, and swipe-up links, offers users the chance to engage and provide feedback, ultimately elevating their overall experience.
The combination of all of these has resulted in Instagram Stories becoming a must-use feature for individuals and business owners to share memories and engage with their audience in a fun and captivating way.
Posting Your Instagram Stories Through Postly
Postly provides our users with a unique and simple way to post their stories by utilizing a set of features designed to help them take advantage of everything Instagram has to offer. Let’s look at how to use Postly to post your Instagram Stories.
After uploading a photo, kindly select the platform you’re posting to, which you can do by clicking on the “Select Platforms” button on your Postly dashboard.
Simply select Instagram as your preferred platform to post on by clicking on the Instagram icon, and confirm that this has been selected when you see the blue tick.
Resize Your Image
Before posting to your Instagram Stories, please ensure that your image or video is in the right format. Instagram Stories occupy the full width and length of your phone screen (9:16 aspect ratio), with a recommended size of 1080 px by 1920 px.
Schedule Your Instagram Stories
You can manually post or schedule your Instagram Stories to be posted at a convenient date and time of your choosing. However, before doing that, kindly ensure that you enable “Publish Image as Instagram Stories” by clicking on the button next to it.
Before going on to manually post or schedule your Instagram Stories using Postly, it’s very important to note a few API limitations that exist with Instagram Stories:
Instagram accounts are limited to 50 API-published posts within a 24-hour moving period and each story counts as one post
You cannot add stickers, a trending sound, or any other element offered by the native Instagram app
You can only select one photo or one video at a time
Videos need to be up to one minute long and less than 100 megabytes
JPEG is the only image format supported.
Once you’re satisfied with all of these, go ahead and either schedule your post for a later date/time or you can post immediately.
It’s a wrap!
There you have it: you have successfully mastered the art of posting and scheduling your Instagram Stories using Postly. There is no excuse whatsoever not to come aboard the Instagram Stories train, as I have pointed out its benefits in helping your business multiply its reach and offering a level of flexibility that can’t be enjoyed with regular posting.