If you've heard me ramble on about Facebook, Instagram and auto posting any time over the past 3 months, you've likely perceived my discontent in the fact that many third-party posting software had an arduous time working as intended this past Summer. If you are a social media manager and use third-party apps, then you already know this first-hand. Algorithms have shifted, proxies have been restricted, accounts throttled, APIs denied, etc. This manifested in incomplete posts (pictures/videos with no caption, etc), significantly decreased engagement, and ultimately, frustration.
As much as FB and IG hate third-party app integration for posting, mass-looking, auto-comments, auto-follow, auto-unfollow, etc, they clearly have to understand two things by now: 1) These apps help to keep the ecosystem interesting. Outside of the obnoxious digital marketer - ykno, like the mastermind behind the Create 5000 Hair Bundle Instagram Accounts With 9 Pics And Follow Everyone In The World! campaign - these apps are pretty helpful in producing quality engagement with your audiences with a few clicks within a significant time frame which leads me to my 2nd point; 2) It's dumb hard and time-consuming to manage multiple Instagram accounts without one (especially from your smartphone solely). Look, most days, I have trouble acknowledging all my loved ones' latest & greatest posts on social media let alone all my business followers and my all my clients' followers!!
Well, it would appear that as of today, all of the madness has meaning because now, you can post and schedule posts to Instagram via Facebook's Creator Studio (CS). It only makes sense that they've created their our desktop post planner via desktop; I was wondering what was taking so long. Once you connect your IG account to the Studio, you're good to post and schedule posts to IG either as a regular post or to your IGTV.
Pretty seamless for the most-part although:
While you have the option to also POST TO FACEBOOK (see above image) from the IG portal (within the studio), you don't have the option to post to IG from the FB portal (also, within the studio).
You cannot select the POST TO FACEBOOK option if you select SCHEDULE (on the right of the above image) from the IG portal but you can schedule FB posts from the FB portal. In other words, you cannot SCHEDULE a post to both platforms from one portal via CS; You have to schedule them separately. This may not make sense to you until you jump in and use it but I'd love to see these options cleaned up soon.
Lastly, from what I can tell, you cannot throw filters on your pics or tag people when posting to IG via CS. Maybe that's on the way.
Happy posting.