Iconosquare now offers the ability to automatically schedule Instagram stories! 🎉
How to automatically schedule a story?
- Go to the "Scheduling" page of your Iconosquare account, with an Instagram profile.
- Click on + Schedule a new post at the top right of the page or click directly on a slot in the calendar.
- Select the "Story" type and click on "Create post".
- Upload your photos/videos or select them from your media library. You can select up to 10 items.
- Resize the image(s) to the desired format or use one of our predefined formats (9:16 recommended) and reorganize them if needed.
- Select the date and time of publication.
- Choose whether you want to automatically publish the story/stories or receive a notification when it's time to post them.
- Choose if you want to publish on other Instagram profiles and select them from the list of available profiles.
- Click "Schedule" and wait for confirmation that your story has been scheduled.
- Congratulations! Your scheduled story should now appear on the planner with a green sidebar, meaning it is scheduled, and a yellow lightning bolt, indicating it is ready to be automatically published. 🎉
If you have enabled mobile validation, you will need to validate your story via the Iconosquare mobile app for it to be published automatically. Please make sure you have the latest version of the mobile app, that there are no updates to be made, and that you are logged in using the same Iconosquare login information as on your computer.
Limitations
- Adding stickers is not available from Iconosquare (location, mention, gifs, music).
- Adding a link to your story is currently impossible
- Stories can be published from 1 to 10 at the same time.
- The number of stories is included in the automatic Instagram post count, which is 25. This means that the number of posts/stories/reels that can be published each day from Iconosquare cannot exceed 25.
- Publishing stories on Facebook is not yet available (API restriction).
Tips and tricks
- Publication format: We recommend publishing your stories in 9/16. Although automatic publication is compatible with all formats, your media may have black bars around it or be resized and zoomed.
- Black bars will appear if your media is wider than 9/16.
- Your media will be resized and zoomed if it is taller than 9/16.
- Do you still want to add stickers to your story, such as mentions, music, or GIFs? Then disable automatic publication. At the time of publication, you will receive a notification on your Iconosquare mobile app, and the media will be downloaded to your phone gallery. You can then manually finish the publication from the Instagram app and add your stickers.
- To easily find your stories, don't hesitate to download your media to the media library. You can download them from your computer, Dropbox, or OneDrive. You can then filter them to distinguish between those you have already published and those you still need to share.
- Need your clients or colleagues to review your stories before they are published? Use our collaboration feature and share your scheduled LinkedIn posts with people without them needing an Iconosquare account! Convenient, isn't it? 😉
Image and video specifications
- Maximum file size: 8 MB for photos and 100 MB for videos
- Resolution:
- Photos: Min = 150x150px and Max = 1080x1920px
- Videos: Max width = 1080px
For more details on technical specifications, please refer to this article.