Create an Instagram post, story, or reel

  • Aug 19, 2026
  • Knowledge

Procedure Steps

  Article updated: July 27, 2026

Create an Instagram post, story, or reel

Create and publish your Instagram posts, stories, and reels from 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.

This article describes the new Social OS experience. If you haven't switched yet, select the Classic tab for instructions. Learn more about the Social OS experience.

If you are posting to your Instagram account with direct publishing, you can add the first comment to your post when you create it, and add a location to increase your post's visibility in location-based searches. You can also tag other Instagram users in your post's media and invite users to collaborate on your post. If they accept the invitation, they'll appear as co-authors and your post will be shared to their followers, increasing its reach and engagement.

Create your post, story, or reel

You can create Instagram posts, stories, and reels in Hootsuite. Each is slightly different.

Stories disappear from your profile, feed, and messages after 24 hours, unless you add them to your profile as story highlights. Reels are short videos that you can use to show your brand's personality and engage your followers in new ways. If you add a single video to a post, it will publish as a reel.

Reels are shared to the Reels tab in Instagram and to your own Instagram feed. They can also show up in the Explore and Reels pages on Instagram, so they're a great way to get discovered by new audiences.

Note: Due to an Instagram limitation, you can't add link stickers, stickers, or search for trending audio for your Instagram post within Hootsuite. You can use the Publish via mobile notification flow to prepare your post in Hootsuite and then add finishing touches in the Instagram mobile app before you publish.

Social OSClassic
  1. Go to Perch, then select Calendar to start and schedule your post in a calendar view, or select Create a post.
  2. Select the Instagram accounts you want to publish to and then select whether you want to create a Post or a Story. If you add a single video to a post, it will publish as a reel. (Option for Advanced, Business, and Enterprise plans) - Select your organization, and then select Campaign to associate your post with a current or future campaign. Learn more about content campaigns.
    Sample Instagram post showing the Post and Story options.
  3. Create your caption. It can include up to 2,200 characters and can include the following:
    • Hashtags - Enter up to 30 hashtags or select AI hashtag suggestions to find hashtags that work with your post text and media. Read our guide to using hashtags on every network.
    • Emoji - Select the smiley face to add emoji.
    • Mentions - Enter @username in your post to invite others on social to join a conversation, and help your post reach their audience as well as your own. Mentions remain in plain text until the post is published.

      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 your post.

  4. (Optional) Let AI help you write or refine your post - Select Wisdom to have Wisdom help you optimize your post for your selected social network, change the tone of your post, or make your post actionable. This option is only available to organizations who support using AI (see Hootsuite AI terms).
  5. Add media to your post. Drag images, GIFs, or videos from your computer into your post, or select Add media to upload files. You can add up to 10 images to your post. Learn more about working with images. If you add a single video to a post, it will publish as a reel. Learn more about working with videos.
    You can also add media using:
  6. If you are publishing a post or reel through direct publishing, you can:
    • Add the first comment when you create your post. Your comment can include text (up to 2200 characters), hashtags (30), and emoji. The post preview shows the first comment so you can see how it will appear in your post.

      Note: The maximum of 30 hashtags is a shared limit between the post caption and the first comment.

    • Add a location tag to your post. Enter a location in the search bar and then select a location from the list. Pages must have geolocation coordinates set up in order fort the Page to be listed. You can only add one location to a post. If you're publishing to more than one Instagram account, the location will be applied to all accounts.
    • Invite up to three other Instagram users to collaborate on your post. You can only invite other Instagram Business or Public Personal accounts, and you must enter their username exactly as it appears on Instagram. If your post contains a GIF, you cannot invite other Instagram users to collaborate on it.
    • Tag other Instagram users in your post's media. You can tag up to 20 people on the image or video in your post. You can only tag other Instagram Business or Public Personal accounts, and you must enter their username exactly as it appears on Instagram.
      • For images, select a spot in the image and then add a username. Tagging people in GIFs is not supported.
      • For videos, enter a username in the Tag people here field in the post preview panel. You can only tag people in posts with a single video. Tagging people in carousel video posts is not supported.

      Note: The maximum of 20 tags is a combined total that includes people tags in the post's media and Instagram collaborators on the post.

  7. You can create and publish Instagram posts directly from Hootsuite or use the Instagram mobile notification workflow. If you want to publish a story with more than one image or video, or if you have a Creator profile, you'll need to use the Instagram mobile notification workflow. Read all about the mobile notification workflow. Once you're ready, select from the following options:
    • Publish directly - This option is only available for Instagram Business profiles. Select Post now or Schedule for later to publish your post directly from Hootsuite.
      Note: Instagram allows third-party tools like Hootsuite to directly publish up to 25 posts or reels in any rolling 24-hour period. This limit does not include posts and stories published using the mobile notification workflow.
    • Publish via mobile notification - Instagram requires this method for posting to Creator profiles. If you want to publish a story with one or more images or videos, you must also use this method. For Instagram Business profiles, you can use this method to add final touches to your post in Instagram such as filters or tags. Switch this option on, 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.
      Sample Instagram post with the Publish via mobile notification option highlighted.

Work with images

You can edit your images — crop, add filters, add alt text, and more — right in Hootsuite. Point to the image, select More, and then select Edit image to make changes, or select Edit alternative text to add alt text. Learn how to customize your images in Hootsuite.

A cursor pointing to an image thumbnail, revealing the options to add alt text and edit the image.

Learn more about image file requirements.

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 in the same post.

Work with videos

You can edit your videos — add filters, stickers, music, and more — right in Hootsuite. Point to the video, select More, and then select Edit video to make changes, or select Video settings to view file properties. Learn more about what you can do with videos in Hootsuite.

A cursor pointing to a video thumbnail, revealing the options to view settings and edit the video.

You can change the thumbnail for a video post, but not for videos within carousel posts. Learn more about video file requirements.

If you want to add closed captions to your video or reel, select the Publish via mobile notification flow so you can add the captions in the Instagram app before you publish your post.

Advanced options

You can automate direct messages for your Instagram posts or reels and turn social interactions into leads. Learn how to set up DM automation on scheduled posts.

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

  • Tag products to make your posts shoppable.
  • Ask for a review (Advanced, Business, and Enterprise plans) - Invite a team member to review and approve your posts before they go live. Select one or more team members, or a team, from the Request approval list to help make sure your post is on-brand and polished before you publish it. Learn more about approvals.
  • Boost your post - If your post contains a single image or video, select Boost this post to boost your post on Instagram. Instagram doesn’t support boosting posts with multiple media files. Learn how to promote your Instagram post.
  • Apply a tag (Advanced, Business, and Enterprise plans) - Select Add next to Tags to apply tags to your posts and analyze their performance in Hootsuite Analytics. Find out more about tagging posts.

    Important: Tags are not applied to posts published via mobile notification. You can apply tags to those posts from the "My posts" stream after publishing.

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