Create an Instagram post

Create and publish your Instagram posts in Hootsuite. To save time, you can publish to several Instagram accounts or social networks at once. You can choose to publish posts right away, or schedule them in advance for a specific day and time.

See also Create an Instagram story or Create an Instagram reel.

Create your post

If you have an Instagram Business account connected to a Facebook Page, you can create publish Instagram posts directly from Hootsuite or via the Instagram mobile notification workflow. If you have a Personal or Creator profile, you need to publish your post using the mobile notification workflow. Learn how to use the mobile notification workflow.

1. You can start your post from Composer or Planner. Select one of the following options:
   • Select Composer, and then select Post.
     
   • Go to your content calendar in Planner , select the week view , select a time or recommended time to schedule your post, and then select Post. Learn about scheduling posts in a content calendar.
2. Select the Instagram accounts you want to publish to.
3. Create your caption and proofread your text using Grammarly. The character limit for Instagram captions is 2,200. You can include the following in your caption:
   • Up to 30 hashtags - Select AI hashtag suggestions for a list of hashtag suggestions based on your post text and media. Learn hashtag best practices.
   • Emoji - Select the smiley face to add emoji (see also Add more inclusive emoji).
   • Mentions - To mention someone, enter @ followed by their exact username. Mentions remain in plain text until the post is published. Learn more about mentioning a user or Page.

     Tip: To keep paragraph spacing when the post is published, remove spaces at the end of each line. These can often appear if you copy and paste text into the Content area.

4. Add up to 10 images or videos to your post.
   Media upload options

   • Drag files from your computer into the Content area.
   • Select Upload media to add videos and images to your post.
   • Select Design with Canva (see Design images with Canva for details).
   • Select Media library .
     
     Notes:

     • The maximum file size for images is 8 MB, and maximum video length is 60 seconds.
     • Instagram direct publishing requires that your photo have an aspect ratio between 1:1.90 and 1.91:1. Use the Instagram-specific square, landscape, or portrait crop options in the image editor to resize the image.
     • The Composer preview for Instagram may crop portrait images, but your published post will include the full image.

     To learn more about media file requirements, see Image file requirements and Work with videos.

5. To edit an image, add filters, or make other adjustments, point to the image thumbnail and select Edit image . Learn how to use the Hootsuite image editor.
6. To choose a custom cover image for a video, point to it and select Video settings.
   

   Note: Facebook Pages and Instagram Business accounts use the same cover image. Choosing a custom cover image for Instagram will override any uploaded cover images for Facebook.

7. When you’re finished creating your post, take a look at it in the preview on the right to see how it will look. Hootsuite alerts you to any issues. Once you're ready, select from the following options:

   • Publish directly - This option is only available for Instagram Business profiles. Select this option, and then select Post now or Schedule to publish your post directly from Hootsuite.
     
     Instagram limits Business profiles to 25 posts or reels in any rolling 24-hour period when using direct publishing from Hootsuite (or any other third-party publisher). To publish more than 25 posts in 24 hours, you can switch to publishing via mobile notification, or go to Instagram. Stories and mobile notification posts aren't included in the limit.
   • Publish via mobile notification - Instagram requires that Personal and Creator profiles use this method for all posts. Instagram Business profiles can choose to publish this way to add final touches in Instagram such as filters or tags. Select this option, and then select Post now or Schedule to send a push notification to your Hootsuite mobile app when it's time to post. Learn more about how this works.
     

Advanced options

Here are some more things you can do with your post:

Tag products to make your posts shoppable

See Tag products in your Instagram posts for details.

Promote a post

If your post contains a single image or video, select Promote this post under Promotion to boost your post on Instagram. Instagram doesn’t support boosting for posts with multiple media files. For more details, see Boost an Instagram post.

Specify a campaign (Business and Enterprise organizations)

Select Campaign to associate your post with one of your organization's campaigns. To find out more, see Create and manage content campaigns.

Apply a tag (Business and Enterprise organizations)

Select Add next to Tags to apply tags to your posts and analyze their performance in Hootsuite Analytics. Select the tags to add to your post, and then select Add. To find out more, see Add tags to track your outbound posts.

Important: Tags are not applied to posts published via mobile notification. Apply tags to your posts from the "My posts" stream after publishing.