Publish to Instagram with the mobile notification workflow

There are two different publishing methods for Instagram. This article describes the mobile notification workflow. Instagram requires personal profiles to use this workflow. Users with business profiles may opt to use this workflow if they want to publish to their stories (or carousels on iOS) via Instagram.
Learn more about Instagram publishing in Hootsuite

Publishing with the mobile notification workflow is different from publishing to your other social networks, because these posts need to be published manually via the Instagram app on a mobile device.

With this workflow, when you send or schedule to Instagram from Hootsuite, a reminder notification is sent to your Hootsuite mobile app when the post is ready to publish. From the notification you can then open and publish the post in Instagram.

You'll need the Instagram app and the latest version of the Hootsuite app installed on your mobile device.

To set up Instagram publishing notifications on your mobile device

When you add your Instagram profile to Hootsuite, you will need to set up publishing in your Hootsuite mobile app.

Note that the phone number requested when you set up mobile notification publishing does not associate your Instagram account with that phone number. It’s used to send you an SMS message to ensure you download the latest version of the Hootsuite mobile app.

Note for business profiles: If you already have direct publishing set up, but decide to use this flow instead, follow these steps to reconnect your profile, and click I don't want to publish directly to set up mobile notifications.

1. Open your Hootsuite mobile app.
2. Tap Account .
3. Tap the Settings tab, and then tap Notifications.
   
4. Tap your connected Instagram profile, and then toggle Instagram publishing push notifications to ON.
   
5. *Ensure that notifications for the Hootsuite app are also enabled in your mobile device settings.

These push notifications inform you when posts are ready to be published to Instagram. Any user with publishing permissions for the profile can turn on and receive a notification when a post is ready to publish. Team members who will be publishing these posts on their mobile devices need to have the native login credentials to the Instagram profile they are publishing to so they can sign in to that profile in the Instagram app.

 Posts will fail to send if these notifications are not enabled. Signing out of your Hootsuite app turns off all push notifications.

To publish to Instagram via mobile notification

1. In your dashboard Composer, enter a caption for your post in the Text field. Emojis are supported, and captions can contain a maximum of 30 hashtags. Links will not hyperlink when posted to Instagram.
2. Click Select a file to upload, select an image or video, and then click Open.
   Or, click Open Media Library to search free stock images. Click an image to attach it to your post. Enterprise users can select a content library image from the media library.
   The file size limit is 5MB. See file requirement details for images and video.
    If multiple images are attached, only the first one will be sent with your notification. iOS users can upload more images from their device photos in Instagram at step 10.
3. Click Close Media Library, and complete the other elements of your post.
4. Click Post Now, or click Schedule for later, select a date and time, and then click Schedule.
   If you receive one of the following errors, it means that no one has push notifications enabled in their Hootsuite app for the Instagram account you are sending content to. See above to enable them.
   
   • Device pairing required for Instagram profile [profile name].
   • Your Instagram account requires a paired device.
   • No subscriptions are available for Instagram. Please configure a network for publishing.
5. At the scheduled time (or right away if you clicked Post Now) a notification will be sent to the mobile device(s) that have notifications for the profile enabled.
   
6. Open the notification in your Hootsuite mobile app: Tap Streams and then Notifications  in the top-right corner.
7. Tap the new publishing notification.
8. Tap Open in Instagram. Your caption will be copied to your clipboard and you will be launched into the Instagram app.
    The Hootsuite app does not detect which Instagram profile is signed in to your Instagram app. If you publish to more than one Instagram profile, ensure you are signed into the Instagram app with the same profile you selected in Hootsuite, so that you send the post to the correct profile.
9. Select Story to publish to your Instagram story, or Feed to publish to your profile.
   Android users: Instagram on Android will only ask you to select Story or Feed once, and then set your selection as the default going forward. To change where you post, follow these steps to clear the Instagram app's default settings on your phone.
10. iOS users: To publish multiple photos, this is where you can select the carousel option and upload up to 10 photos from your device's photo library.
11. Proceed to add formatting and filters in Instagram as usual.
12. Tap-and-hold in the caption box and then tap Paste to paste in your composed caption.
    
13. Tag people or add location info to your post.
14. Tap Share.

When more than one user receives an Instagram notification, tap the notification to see if the post has already been published. The Open in Instagram button will change to Shared by (name) when published.
Tap Shared by (name) to mark the post as not shared or to share the post again.