Instagram Puts Brands Ahead of People With New Scheduling Feature
Welcome to a more corporate feed
On Monday, Instagram announced it would give creators the ability to schedule posts up to six months in advance. The new feature enables creators to decide when, exactly, images will publish to their feed, as well as IGTV videos. There’s just one catch: In order to get access to the scheduling features, you’ll need to already have a Facebook Page for your business. In other words, it’s aimed more at brands, artists, and celebrities with significant followings — a move that suggests that the social network, like the Facebook of years past, will emphasize commerce over individual users.
Until relatively recently, scheduling Instagram posts required complicated workarounds that were little more than glorified notepads. Third-party social media manager Buffer, for example, would let you write a post in advance and then, at the time the post was scheduled to go up, the app would send you a reminder. Then, you had to copy the Instagram draft and post it manually. Hardly an automated system.
In early 2018, Instagram created an API that allowed third-party tools like Buffer to offer direct scheduling, which improved the process. But this week’s update deletes the middleman entirely. Now, brands can schedule posts directly from the app…
