7 time-saving Instagram hacks

You might try all of these, or only a few. But give it a go and see if they help.

Scheduling tools like Later, Sprout or even Meta’s Business Suite let you timetable content ahead of posting day. You can automatically post your image, video, story etc at a certain date and time - days, weeks or even months in advance.

It means you can get on with your day without interruptions, and frees up the evenings and weekends. It also saves you having to set multiple alarms to remember to post RIGHT NOW!!!

Create an automated response to any DM you receive.

This could even say we’ll get back to you within 24 hours or point towards an FAQ page to answer the question for them. It buys you time and sets an expectation to your followers of when they’ll hear back from you. Meaning you don’t have to feel like you HAVE to reply right now or people will hate you! Maybe that’s just me…

First of all make sure you have a business account, and your Facebook and Instagram are linked.

• In Instagram head to Privacy and select Messages
• Enable the “allow access to messages” toggle
• You then need to head back into your Facebook business page and head to Business Suite
• Go to Inbox and select Automated Responses
• Switch on Instant Reply and then Edit Message
• Select Instagram and then come up with your message
• Save and you’re all set up

Give your content a recognisable look and feel. This can speed up your content creation process as well as increasing your brand recognition.

Establish a colour palette, templates to use, a folder of imagery. You then have less to think about whenever it comes round to making your posts.

For example:

Freddie’s Flowers has a consistent approach to product imagery throughout their posts.

Later uses a pastel colour palette and the same font and shapes on their page.

This tip doesn’t only save time but is also super helpful with focus.

Block out 30 mins - 1 hour daily as your “engagement time”. It’s all too easy to jump into Instagram for a few minutes every now and then. Before you know it you’ve actually spent 4 hours of your day interacting with your Instagram feed.

Whilst spending time interacting with followers is good, 4 hours may be too much! Other important business priorities might suffer. So block out a set time (or times) in the day and only engage at that time.

It can be super useful to set a certain day in the week as your “content day”.

On this day, you create posts for the week ahead. Meaning you have one day where you get in the zone, and then don’t have to worry about it again for the rest of the week.

Do you feel the burden of creating content lingering over your head during the week? Get it done in one go and you won’t have to worry about it again for another week.

Sometimes inspiration strikes, and other times writer’s / designer’s block strikes. When you’re feeling more creative, lean into that and give yourself options for future posts.

This could be coming up with templates for posts. Writing captions you may want to use. Even having posts completely ready to go but which aren’t a part of your current posting schedule.

We do this quite often ourselves! Whenever we have a workshop or talk recorded we break it up into bite size chunks to post in the future.

We do this quite often ourselves! Whenever we have a workshop or talk recorded we break this up into bite size chunks to post in the future.

It’s always good to have a bunch of content in your back pocket to draw from whenever you need.

Fair play if you want to create all content yourself, but there are easier and quicker ways to do it. Plus you might end up creating better looking content than ever.

Try tools like VSCO, Canva, and Figma. You can access pre-prepared templates, filters and formats for creating some good looking content.

If you’re not willing to spend on a tool yet, another good option is to save content as inspiration from other pages. And then you can recreate that for your own Insta. They do say imitation is the highest form of flattery!

Now you’ve managed to batch create content, prepare content ahead of time, and automated your posting - there’s also the option to save time on running your ads.

Because, honestly, less time spent in Ads Manager can only be a good thing!

Feed runs your ads for you. You don’t have to waste time wrestling with Ads Manager or boosting posts with limited results

You’ve made all that brilliant content - with Feed, make sure new and existing audiences actually see it!

Sign up by heading to tryfeed.co. Or if you’re interested in hearing more about our Managed tier send an email to team@tryfeed.co.

Have a look at our other articles for more tips and tricks for running Instagram and Facebook ads.

• A beginner’s guide to Facebook and Instagram ads
• Facebook Ads: Lookalike and custom audiences
• How to get set up for conversion ads