Instagram’s New API Update: What You Need to Know

Mitch Milaitis — February 7, 2018

— February 7, 2018

Remember the days of needing to have your content ready at a specific time to post on Instagram? The drag of creating your wonderful content and saving it as a draft, only to forget to post at the right time. Well, I am happy to tell you those days are now behind us. Instagram will be rolling out an update this week that will finally allow scheduled posts so that you never forget to post an update again!

With Instagram’s new API (application-programming interface) you are now able to:

Schedule organic posts
View other business profiles
View public posts that they have been mentioned or tagged in

Hootsuite, one of Facebook’s marketing partners who can take advantage of this update, shared an image of its planner with Instagram’s new API abilities.

Last November, Instagram announced that there has been a significant increase in businesses that were using Instagram as a marketing platform. Business accounts increased from 8 million last March, 15 million last July, to 25 million this past November. With a booming increase in users, it is no wonder why Facebook is making life easier for businesses on Instagram’s platform.

Ryan Holmes, Hootsuite’s CEO, stated that “Scheduling and publishing of Instagram content have been the No. 1 request for our 16 million customers. Now, they can manage large volumes of content, multiple team members and multiple Instagram accounts with ease and security.”

Although this is all great, there are a few drawbacks. First scheduling posts must be done through a third party scheduling software, like Sendible and Hootsuite. For agencies, this is not a problem since we use this software already. The second concern is that this will increase the number of spammy business promotions. Instagram is still very user-focused, but with this new update, people are worried that Instagram will turn into Facebook; meaning that it will be very business oriented.

Even with these concerns, this update has been one we have all been waiting for, it’s now time to dig in and enjoy the new Instagram API capabilities!

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