How to Schedule Instagram Posts on a Desktop With Facebook Creator Studio
Posting to Instagram from the desktop has long been a dream for many marketers and users, and while there’ve been plenty of third-party tools out there as workarounds. We haven’t had the option to post natively to Instagram via the desktop until recently thanks to the new Facebook Creator Studio which allows us to post and schedule directly to Instagram.
I’m going to walk you through everything you need to know to access the Creator Studio and post Instagram. Stick around.
Thanks to the Facebook Creator Studio, Instagram users have the option to post natively from the desktop to Instagram.
Let’s figure out how, and stick around to the end of the tutorial where I’m going to show you how to add multiple Instagram accounts, so you can manage all of your business accounts. So, to access the Facebook Creator Studio, you’re going to want to go to Facebook.com/CreatorStudio and then go a head and click the Log in button if you’re not already logged in via either your Facebook or your Instagram account.
So, once you’ve logged into the Creator Studio, it’s going to default to your Facebook profile. Now at the very top there’s a Facebook tab and the Instagram tab. Just click on the Instagram tab and it’ll take you right to your Instagram content library with all of your posts.
So, now that you’re into the Creator Studio and you’re ready to create some content, what can you post?
- You can create regular feed posts
- You can do photos, videos, and carousels
- You can do IGTV videos
You cannot do Stories using the Creator Studio. So, now that you’re ready to create a post, you’re going to slide on over to the left side of the screen where you see the big blue Create Post button, and you’re going to click on that. We know Instagram and Facebooklove to change things, so it may look slightly different when you see the screen.
So when you click on the Create Post button, you’re going to get two options. One, is going to be for Instagram feed, one is for IGTV.
In this case, we’re going to do a Feed post, so go a head and click on Instagram Feed. Now, you’re going to see over on the right-hand side, a screen’s going to pop up for you to choose which Instagram account that you want to post content to. In this case, if you only have one account open, you’re only going to have one to choose from. So, you’re going to click that, and then it’ll move to the next screen.
However, stick around to the end, ‘cause if you have multiple accounts, I’m going to show you how to ad all those extra accounts for when you log in. So, once you’re in the actual post creation screen, you’ll see it’s very easy to use.
It’s very clearly laid out.
You have your place to paste your caption, you have the Add Location field, and then you have the upload content field. You even have the option to check that little box and share automatically to Facebook. You’ll notice that with no content in here the Publish button is grayed out.
That will not turn blue and you will not be able to click on it until you have uploaded a piece of visual content, whether that’s a photo, video, or multiple components for a carousel. When you click on Add Content, you’re going to get the option to upload from your computer or from your Facebook page. In this case, I’m actually going to go a head and select from my Facebook page, and I’m going to choose this one here, and then go a head and Continue with Selected Posts.
If I wanted to make this a carousel, I could actually choose multiple images and those would go in as the carousel. In this case, I’m going to do just one for a single post. Now that I have the visual content, I can go ahead and write in my post caption. The fun thing that I actually like about the Creator Studio is you can see, right here, it actually shows you how many characters you have remaining as you type out your caption.
So, captions are limited to 2,200 characters, and as you type, this ticker actually keeps track. Likewise, if you @-mention somebody, so in this case if I @-mentioned Social Media Examiner, and they pop up and I select them, now I have 29 mentions left, and as you use hash tags in your content, now you can see how many hashtags are still available for me to use.
So you won’t go over your limit. Now, here’s a caveat that maybe this’ll change in the future, but for right not the way that Creator Studio is set up, you can only put your hashtags in the caption. If you’re typically somebody who likes to put your hashtags in a first comment, you would either have to do that manually after this post has gone live, or there are some third party tools that allow you to do a first comment post with your content, but the Creator Studio does not offer that functionality.
If I wanted to add a location, I would go a head and start typing that in here. So, I can pick a city, I can pick a very specific location, and now my post is ready to upload. Go ahead and go down here to Publish. You can simply click the Publish button and it’s going to go live right away on your Instagram account.
If you go ahead and click on schedule, you’re going to get the option to choose the calendar date and time, and when you go a head and click Schedule, it’s actually going to go a head and pop up in your content library now, showing that that is a scheduled post for a future date.
Now, the caveat to using the scheduling tool with the Facebook Creator Studio is that you can’t actually edit or change the scheduled post time of anything that’s in your content library. So, if it’s a post that’s already gone live you can’t edit the content. If it’s a post you have scheduled, you can’t edit the content, meaning if you have a spelling mistake or you wanted to add something or delete something you can’t do it from the Creator Studio.
You would actually have to delete the post altogether and then re-create it within the Creator Studio and then reschedule it to go back out. If it’s a live post, you can just head over to your Instagram profile and you can edit directly from within Instagram. Now, of course that ‘show this currently works and we never know when Instagram and Facebook will make changes, so try to edit before you just jump over and edit it on Instagram.
Try to edit here within the Creator Studio, hopefully they update that functionality at some point in the future. One of the things to remember when you’re uploading video is that video files have to be between three seconds and 60 seconds in duration. If it’s shorter or longer than that, you actually won’t have the option to upload it. You also want to make sure that it’s either in a 4:5 or 16:9 ratio that fits within the normal Instagram parameters.
The content you upload is exactly how it’s gonna go out on Instagram. There is no editing functionality like filters or any of those sorts of things we’re used to on Instagram, so you want to pre-edit all of your content in advance to make sure that it’s ready to go the moment, you get it into the Creator Studio. In order to upload an IGTV video, you’re going to click on the Create Post and choose IGTV from the drop-down, then you’re going to choose the Instagram account that you want to post to, and now you’re in the IGTV video content creation screen.
File Upload
For the file upload options for IGTV videos, you can upload from a file on your computer, or again, from your Facebook page. Fire restrictions for IGTV videos are a minimum of 15 seconds and up to 60 minutes if you’re uploading from the desktop.
You’re going to want to give your IGTV video good title that’s descriptive to what is coming up in that video, and then you’re going to wanna fill in your description for that video as well. Here’s where you want to give more insights and information into what they’re getting out of this video.
This is where you can also include your call-to-action and put a clickable link. All users have the ability to put a clickable link in an IGTV video description. You also get to use hash tags here to show up in more search results, and you can do up to 30 hashtags in your description. If you want more information on how to use hash tags for IGTV videos, make sure you check out our tutorial on that exact topic.
As with uploading IGTV from a mobile device, you have the option to upload a custom thumbnail for that video. So, you want to create that thumbnail in advance. Have that ready to go in your file folder, and you can upload that directly in here, so you have a custom thumbnail on your videos.
So, one of the tricks to getting more view son your IGTV videos is to share a preview of a video to your Instagram feed. This way it actually shows up to all of your followers as a one minute preview. To share your preview to the feed, you’re going to click this box right here, and at that point you will get the preview for any videos over 60 seconds in length.
When your video content is uploaded and ready to go you can click Publish to publish immediately, or you can schedule by clicking the down arrow and selecting the schedule option, choosing the date and time that you want that video to go live. Now, when you do upload videos that are longer in length, sometimes it won’t show up immediately in the Creator Studio ‘cause it takes a little while to process and get in there.
So, give it a few minutes and then it’ll be ready for you to view. So, now that you know how to schedule and post to both IGTV and Instagram, it’s bonus time!
I’m going to show you how to add multiple Instagram accounts?
So that you can use all of your different accounts to create content using the Creator Studio. You’re going to click on theMInstagram Accounts option from the left-hand menu. When you do that you’ll see any of the accounts you currently have logged in, and in the top right corner you’ll see the Add Instagram Account button. Click on that and follow the prompts to go through and add any additional accounts you have access to.
So in this case, click Switch Accounts, and log in with your new account. So, in order to add an Instagram account to the existing list, it has to be an Instagram account that you have Admin access to as the Facebook page.
Now, you’re already logged in as your existing Facebook page which is a one-to-one ratio to an Instagram account, so to add an additional Instagram accounts, your Facebook page that you’re logged in as in the Creator Studio has to have page access to the additional Facebook pages that have the other Instagram accounts you want to add.
Once you’ve added the extra Instagram accounts you can easily toggle back and forth between those account options to go ahead and schedule any of your content or add content as needed to each individual account. Knowing how to use the Creator Studio to create content forInstagram is wonderful, but having high-quality content that works for you and your audience is also incredibly important.
