This one is a big one guys. Most of the photographers are scared to spend money on programs for their business when they can just do things themselves—don’t get me wrong, so do I, but I don’t mind when it gives enough of my life back to call in valuable. If you don’t use a Instagram scheduler desktop at all, you have to try one out! Time saver (keep reading for a free one)! To be outright honest, on my review post last week, I COULD probably live without CoSchedule. I CAN manually schedule all other things (with separate programs) when I write my blog posts. But Instagram has always been irritating to me. And I don’t mean Instagram itself, I LOVE Instagram….but every time it was blog post day, I had to have my phone with me and available ALL DAY. It wasn’t allowing me to be present!
There are free Instagram scheduler desktop apps that allow you to “set images up” through the computer. Seriously, if you’re still emailing or Dropboxing yourself images to post from your phone, check out Later. You only get 10 posts per month, and like most programs, they don’t post for you. It sends a notification to your phone, puts the image in your camera roll, and copies the caption you wrote to be pasted into your Instagram post. Super easy, but it still can easily consume your life when you want to post 3-4 times per day.
I was already in the movement to be away from my phone and computer more, but this was making it so much harder! But then I found ScheduGram!!! Yes, it’s fairly expensive (I get an earful from Max every time I talk about it) but when this was the one thing holding me back from being more present and with the ones I love, it has a lot less of a financial value to me. This is the ONLY program out there that posts your photo for you, instead of just prompting you to do it yourself. I believe, if all done mechanically, this is against Instagram’s guidelines, but this is why ScheduGram posts from a pool of real devices. AND this feature is in BETA right now, but it even gives you a place to type “the first comment” aka your paragraph of hashtags so your post doesn’t look spammy!! Using the free schedulers, you would have had to paste your caption, and then go copy and paste your hashtags from elsewhere manually.
They give you a week-long free trial, with the option to extend if you wish to try it out a little longer before buying. You can also get $5 off with my link here. With both Schedugram & CoSchedule, they have referral programs, so if you love them both, you can save money on them just by organically speaking out it.
I still post my fun life stuff manually with iPhone photos, it’s not all automated—but when it comes to four post pushes a day on blog post day, I was just done! I’d love to see you over on Instagram, you can find me @nicoleamandaa!
