I was really excited to learn yesterday that Hootsuite is enhancing its Instagram functionality!

Hootsuite is the most commonly-used social media dashboards, so the ability to integrate Instagram as well is extremely beneficial.

This integration means you can now schedule posts, publish pictures, monitor your feed, and engage with your Instagram audience within the Hootsuite dashboard.

You Can Now:

• Publish posts to Instagram immediately or schedule them to publish at a later time.
• Easily manage multiple Instagram accounts in one place.
• Grow your Instagram community by engaging your audience right within the dashboard.
• Get more done by securely sharing access to Instagram with Team Members (Pro only).
• Keep an eye on the competition and find opportunities for engagement by creating search streams that follow specific users, hashtags, and keywords.

How to Add Instagram to Hootsuite

I went through the process of incorporating my Instagram account, and it was easy.

Once you’ve linked your Instagram account, you have the option to set up the Instagram publishing functionalities, which allow for the scheduling of posts.

Back at the dashboard, you can begin setting up your search streams based on your businesses’ needs. Using Disneyland as an example, you can set up streams for Instagram photos taken by the legitimate Disneyland Instagram account, by people using the #Disneyland hashtag, and/or by people who have geo-tagged Disneyland in their Instagram posts.

The Benefits of Scheduling Instagram Content

The ability to schedule Instagram posts will be useful for social media managers who formerly had to post “in-the-moment” and work a bit more spontaneously. Now, businesses can be more strategic about what and when to post to Instagram. Monitoring will also be more seamless with both the Hootsuite integration and other recent updates.

Although it’s easy to check a hashtag and/or set up notifications when your business is tagged in an Instagram photo, many don’t optimize the geo-tag functionality. This update makes it easier to do so.

Similar to how you can now set up all these streams in Hootsuite to monitor your own business or your competitors, the ability to conduct similar searches is available on Instagram itself.

As an example, I conducted a desktop-based search for Oak Grill, a local restaurant. The drop-down gives me the option to search for people/tags who mention Oak Grill’s Instagram account. I can also search for people who’ve checked in at the restaurants or people who’ve used the hashtag.

A marketing manager can now conduct a search seamlessly on Instagram from their desktop and interact with users. Liking photos and commenting on them, thanking people for visiting, leaving specific comments on peoples’ experiences, etc., will help enhance brand loyalty.

Revolutionizing Instagram Marketing Tools

Instagram has become a highly preferred social media advertising platform by many luxury fashion brands. From photo-based posts, Instagram is now dominating the video-based market with the launch of Instagram Reels. These capabilities offer more marketing opportunities for more brands by using the right tools for planning, implementing, and monitoring Instagram campaigns.

Digital marketing managers can use Hootsuite and a private Instagram account viewer to create better social media marketing strategies. A private Instagram account viewer is a type of tracker app that you can download on your internet-capable device that marketers can use to see their competitors’ private Instagram feeds. Being able to access private or locked accounts provides you with great consumer and marketing insights that you can integrate with the analytics data of Hootsuite.

Just imagine how much you can do using these Instagram marketing tools. Exploring the sales and marketing benefits of Instagram is now a lot easier because of the great features of Hootsuite. Marketers can use this powerful tool to attract more followers, shares, and mentions for the brands they represent. 

By doing so, startup brands can step up from the competition and benefit from the increased exposure and awareness Instagram offers.

How will your Instagram strategy be affected by these recent updates?