Automating and Scheduling Instagram Posts for Impact and Reach

REAL photos of REAL things taken by REAL people.  Does your brand follow Krista Neher’s three R’s rule of visual social media marketing?

Neher is a best selling social media author and CEO of Boot Camp Digital and the two of us collaborated with Jabez Lebret this week  the Pubcon Social Media Mastery Workshop where a large focus was on how any size business can succeed in visual social media.

Neher applauds brands like Starbucks on how effectively they deliver user-generated visual content across social networks and opt out of the big brand theory of having to use staged professional photography. So if you’re consistently using generic stock photos, you might want to take note of some insightful ways to attract today’s social media user who is most likely checking their updates on a mobile device.

“You don’t have to be a big brand like Starbucks to be successful in visual social media marketing,” says Neher.

Here’s how your brand can expand Instagram reach by curating great images and automating the process.

Maximizing Instagram For More Visual Exposure

Would you love to triple your social media exposure? For brands that are active on Instagram, there are simple ways to populate other social media networks using Instagram images. By using Instagram-friendly automation tools brands can automagically expand their visual social media footprint  beyond Instagram and push images organically to social networks such as Facebook and Twitter.

Automating for Impact and Reach

A study by Dan Zarrella found that Tweets with images uploaded to Twitter directly were nearly twice as likely to be retweeted but Tweets that used Instagram links were less likely to be retweeted. So, instead of connecting your Twitter account to Instagram and sharing straight from Instagram, get the best organic sharing by using tools that can leverage this advantage.

Repost, Regram, Latergram and If This Than That (IFTTT) can take your visual social media to the next level by leveraging organic image sharing benefits and not  losing that value . For example, here’s what it looks like pushing an Instagram post to Twitter through Instagram vs. setting up an IFTTT recipe.

The Art of Visual Scheduling

Check out some ideas on how to to get started on this right away.

Social PR Secret: Schedule Instagram posts and then have IFTTT post to Twitter and even Facebook.

Step 1. Use Schedulgram or Latergram apps to schedule out Instagram inspirational-type posts a few weeks ahead of time.

Step 2. Set up a recipe in IFTTT to publish images from Instagram to Twitter and Facebook.

Step 3. Go back to Instagram and add additional hashtags to the comments section in order to keep the captions clean.

Curating Great Instagram Images

Reusing pictures is another way to add visual content to your stream. Applications such as Regram and Repost allow share other Instagram users content as part of their own stream, a way to diversify content and add third party content to your social streams.

So there you have it! Now you have an action plan to potentially triple your social media exposure using images and substantially increase your efficiency using visual social media marketing. WARNING! These tools will allow you to set it and forget it but don’t forget to stay engaged in the community.

Keep it real.

REAL photos of REAL things taken by REAL people.

Ready for more? Order your copy of the 2nd Edition of Social PR Secrets, twice the amount of content as the first edition, more chapters, a brand new glossary and lots of Social PR love.