This article describes the workflow for publishing to personal Instagram profiles. Posting to Instagram personal profiles is different from publishing to your other social networks, because Instagram requires these posts be published via the Instagram app on a mobile device.
See this help article to set up direct photo and video publishing to Instagram business profiles
When you send or schedule to your personal Instagram profile from Hootsuite, a reminder notification is sent to your Hootsuite mobile app when the post is ready to publish. From the notification you can easily publish the post via Instagram.
You'll need the Instagram app and the latest version of the Hootsuite app installed on your mobile device (requires at least iOS 10 or Android 4.4).
When you add your Instagram profile to Hootsuite, you will be prompted to set up publishing in your Hootsuite mobile app.
Note that the phone number requested when you set up 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.
To set up publishing to Instagram on your mobile device
- Open your Hootsuite app.
- Tap Account & Settings
on iOS, or main menu
> Account & Settings on Android. - Tap the Settings tab.
- Tap Notification Settings.
- Toggle Instagram publishing push notifications to ON. A green toggle means enabled.
- *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 those 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 notifications.
To share a post to Instagram
- Optional: Enter a caption for your photo in the message box. Emojis are supported, and captions can contain a maximum of 30 hashtags. Links will not hyperlink when posted to Instagram.
- Click Attach media
. - Click Select files to upload, select a file, and then click Open. Enterprise users can click Content Library and then select an image. The file size limit is 5MB. See file requirement details for images and video.
If multiple images are attached, only the first one will post to Instagram. Carousels are not supported. - Click Send Now (or Scheduling
to schedule publishing for later).
A notification will be sent to the mobile device(s) that have enabled notifications for the profile. 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:
- 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
- Open the notification in your Hootsuite mobile app:
- Android: Tap the main menu in the top-left corner, and then tap Notifications.
- iOS: Tap Streams
and then Notifications 
in the top-right corner.
- Android: Tap the main menu
- Tap the new notification indicated by a blue dot.
- Tap Open in Instagram. You will be launched into the Instagram app.
- Select Story or Feed.
- Proceed to add formatting and filters in Instagram as usual.
- Tap-and-hold in the caption box and then tap Paste to paste in your composed caption.
- Tag people or add location info to your post.
- Tap Share.
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.
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.