Add an Instagram profile

Add your Instagram personal or business profile to the Hootsuite dashboard to manage it alongside your other social networks.

What is a business profile?

Instagram business profiles are just like personal profiles, with a few added benefits to help you achieve business goals:

• Promote your posts directly from the Instagram app
• Track post performance and audience demographics with Instagram Insights
• Add business contact information so customers can reach you through Instagram

Anyone can convert their personal profile to a business profile for free. Having a business is not required. Note that business profiles can’t be private, and are different from verified profiles. Personal profiles can also be verified.

Instagram and Hootsuite

There are two different ways to publish a post to Instagram; the type of profile you have will determine which one you can use:

• Direct publishing lets business profiles send and schedule posts automatically, just like to other social networks. Direct publishing is supported in the dashboard and mobile apps.
• Mobile notification workflow sends a reminder notification to your Hootsuite mobile app when it’s time for a post to be published. From there you can then open and publish the post via the Instagram app.
  Instagram requires personal profiles to use this workflow. Users with business profiles may opt to use this workflow if they want to post stories via Instagram.

The following table outlines the Instagram functionality available to each profile type in Hootsuite:

To connect a business profile for direct publishing

See Direct publishing to business profiles to:

• Convert a personal profile into a business profile
• Connect a business profile to Hootsuite for direct publishing
• Enable direct publishing

To connect a personal profile or business profile for mobile notification publishing

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.

Instagram requires personal profiles to use this workflow. Users with business profiles may opt to use this workflow if they want to post stories (and carousels on iOS) via Instagram.

Learn how to use the mobile notification publishing workflow.

1. Click your profile picture ( by default) in the top-right corner of the dashboard, and then select Manage Social Networks.
   
2. Click + Private Network in the bottom-left corner of the dashboard to add Instagram for personal use. Or click Manage beside an organization name and then click Add a Social Network or Add a Shared Network to add this profile to an organization.
3. Select Instagram from the list, and then click Connect with Instagram.
   
4. Enter your Instagram credentials (username and password) and then click Log In.
5. Click I don’t want to publish directly. You’ll now be prompted to set up the mobile notification workflow.
6. Click Setup now!
   
7. Note that the phone number requested does not associate your Instagram account with that phone number. It’s used to send you an SMS message to download the latest version of the Hootsuite mobile app. Click Next step.
8. Open your Hootsuite app.
9. Tap Account .
10. Tap the Settings tab.
11. Tap Notifications.
12. Toggle Instagram publishing push notifications to ON. A green toggle means enabled.
13. *Ensure that notifications for the Hootsuite app are also enabled in your mobile device settings.

Now you’re ready to start publishing with the mobile notification workflow!

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