How to schedule an automatic post for Instagram

Iconosquare offers automatic posting to Instagram for your single-image posts and videos once you've enabled these permissions. Check out this article to learn how to create them for your Instagram profiles. 

Please note, in order to unlock this feature, you must be both:

- An Admin or Editor of the Facebook page linked to your Instagram business profile

and

- An Admin or Manager of your Iconosquare account. If you're a team member, please ask an Admin on Manager to unlock the feature.

To enable automatic posting, follow these 3 simple steps:

1.) Navigate to the Scheduler section of Iconosquare here.

2.) Click the "Unlock auto-posting" button at the top right corner of the scheduler.

3.) Authorize Iconosquare's access to the Facebook permission 'Upload media and create posts for the Instagram account connected to your Page' (we recommend not customizing ANY of the permissions).

To schedule an automatic post, follow these steps:

• Click on 'Schedule a new post' or on a time slot in the calendar and select Photo, Video, or Carousel.
• Upload or select the media from your Media Library.
• Crop the image if needed (be sure to select one of the cropping options that meets auto-posting requirements - they'll have a lightning bolt icon).
• Make sure the Autopost blue toggle is set to 'Activated' (see screenshot below).

• Add a geolocation and tag other accounts. Make sure you use their exact Instagram handle -if you type a handle name that does not exist, the post will fail to auto-post. Please also be sure to tag public accounts only - if you tag a private account, you will see an error message advising you that the post will not be posted automatically.
• Add a first comment to be scheduled and posted automatically with the media.
• If you have the post validation security measure switched on, you'll need to validate your automatic post through the app to ensure it posts automatically. You can find more information about that here.
• Click 'Schedule post' and wait for the confirmation that your post has been scheduled:

You can always check which of your posts in the calendar will post automatically by seeing which of them have the little lightning bolt icon next to the thumbnail. If your post appears like this, it's good to go!

Images must follow these specifications:

Maximum file size: 8MB

File type: JPEG

Must be within a 4:5 to 1.91:1 aspect ratio range

Minimum resolution: 150x150 (lower resolutions will be scaled up to the minimum)

Maximum resolution: 1920x1080 (higher resolutions will be scaled down to the maximum)

Color space: Instagram supports the sRGB color space. Images that use other color spaces will have their color space converted to sRGB.

Videos are only eligible for auto-posting on the PRO, ADVANCED and ENTERPRISE plans, and must follow these specifications:

Container: MOV or MP4 (MPEG-4 Part 14), no edit lists, moov atom at the front of the file.
Audio codec: AAC, 48khz sample rate maximum, 1 or 2 channels (mono or stereo).
Video codec: HEVC or H264, progressive scan, closed GOP, 4:2:0 chroma subsampling.
Frame rate: 23-60 FPS.
Picture size:
Maximum columns (horizontal pixels): 1920
Minimum aspect ratio [cols / rows]: 4 / 5
Maximum aspect ratio [cols / rows]: 16 / 9
Bitrate: VBR, 5Mbps maximum
Duration:
For Instagram:59 seconds maximum, 3 seconds minimum

File size: 100MB maximum

What if I wanna schedule a Carousel automatic-post?

You can have a look at this article for all of the specifications on how to schedule an automatic Carousel. 

What if I want to schedule a post that doesn't follow the above specs?

That's easy! You can still schedule media through our scheduler as you did before. We'll send you a notification when it's time to post. For push notification posts, our scheduler accepts photos up to 15MB and videos up to 150MB! 

Which plans include automatic posting?

All Iconosquare plans can benefit from automatic posting.

Can I schedule an automatic post through the Android/iOS apps?

You can schedule automatic posts through the Android and iOS apps. Please make sure you downloaded the latest version of our app.

How can I disable the automatic posting for a given post?

Even if you enabled the automatic posting, you can still disable it for a given post by editing it and then switching the blue Autoposting toggle to 'Deactivated'.

Which Facebook Page roles can authorize automatic posting?

You must be an Admin or Editor of the Facebook page.

I have a Creator Account on Instagram - can I still schedule auto-posts?

No, auto-posting is unfortunately not available for Instagram Creator Accounts. Read more about this here.

NB: When scheduling automatic posts one after the other please make sure that there is at least a 5-minute interval between posts. Otherwise, the images may post out of the order that you had envisaged.

Looking for more information?

How can I automatically schedule a video?