How to Schedule Instagram Posts for Free:
Benefits of Scheduling Your Instagram Content
If you’re wondering why you should bother scheduling your Instagram content, here are a few things to consider:
Scheduling your Instagram posts saves time. Instead of spending half an hour every single day scrambling to create content, you can spend 1–2 hours to schedule content for the entire week. Scheduling posts to Instagram helps you get a “big picture” view of your social media strategy. You’ll be in a better position to identify gaps in your content, spread out promotional posts, and even create a cohesive Instagram feed. Scheduling Instagram content can even help you write stronger captions. When you’re not trying to think of something every day, on the fly, you have more energy to devote to creating quality captions. Plus, no back and forth from creative mode to business mode.
How to Schedule Instagram Posts for Free—6 Ways
Scheduling Instagram posts is an easy way to save time. But if you don’t have the right tools at your disposal, you’re not going to get the results you want. You’re considering scheduling your posts to save time, after all, so if your tool has a steep learning curve or isn’t fun to use, you’re not going to use it. When you’re choosing a scheduling tool for Instagram, it’s important to consider everything you’ll need the tool to do. Do you just need to schedule posts or do you want something that will schedule Stories, Reels, or IGTV? Do you have a professional Instagram profile or do you need something that works with a personal profile? Do you want a tool that can manage your comments and mentions? Check out our list of the best Instagram scheduling tools to find out which tools meet your needs. Now, let’s take a look at our 6 favorite tools and how to schedule Instagram posts for free using those tools.
1. How to Schedule Instagram Posts for Free With ContentCal
You can sign up for a Hobbyist account on ContentCal for free. That gets you a single user account, four connected social profiles, one calendar, up to 10 posts per month, and even email support. To schedule Instagram posts for free on ContentCal, start by signing up for a free ContentCal account. Easy enough. Once you’ve created your account, you’ll be prompted to create a new calendar:
Name your calendar and click the Create Calendar button. Then, when you’re taken back to the dashboard, click on the calendar you created. The first time you use ContentCal, it will show you a product tour and show you what each section of the page is for. After the tour, you’ll be prompted to connect your social profiles:
Just click Connect next to the social media platform you want to connect to. In our case, we’re going to click the Connect button next to Instagram:
It’s recommended that you have an Instagram Business account connected to your Facebook business page, but you can also connect to a regular account. After you’ve decided which type of account to connect to, click the Connect profile button. After you’re all connected, it’s time to schedule some content. To do that, head back to your ContentCal calendar where you’ll see your connected social profile and a calendar of the next few days. Let’s schedule a new post for Wednesday. When you hover your mouse over Wednesday, you’ll see that you’re given an option to add a new post by clicking (it shows up as + New Post):
After clicking to add a new post, you’ll be able to add a caption, add media, and schedule your post to publish at a specific time or choose a random posting time at the click of a button. When you have everything set up the way you want it, click Add Post:
You’ll be directed back to your calendar where you can see the content ready to go on the right day:
2. How to Schedule Instagram Posts for Free With Loomly
Okay, so Loomly doesn’t actually have a free plan, but it does offer a 15-day free trial. Plus, scheduling Instagram posts doesn’t cost any additional funds once you have a Loomly account, so we decided to go ahead and included it here. Here’s how to schedule Instagram posts for free with Loomly if you already use the platform. Choose your Instagram-connected calendar on Loomly and click the New Post button. Loomly will offer up some content suggestions on the left side of the page that you can use based on the date you choose in the Scheduled Date & Time field at the top of the right side of the page:
Click Next to move onto the next selection, the social channels you want to use. We’re, of course, going to choose Instagram. Click Next again to move to content creation:
Now, you get to create your post using the options in the Loomly library, Unsplash, Giphy, or using your own images and videos. Once you have your content the way you want it, click Next:
In the next step, you get to fine-tune your content, choosing if you want to share your content in your feed or as an Instagram Story, add a first comment, change when the post will publish, and more. When you’re satisfied with everything, click Next:
In the last step, you can choose to save your post as a draft, schedule it, or publish it right away. We’re going to choose Schedule. Once you’re done, you can go back to your calendar and see that the post is scheduled and ready to go:
3. How to Schedule Instagram Posts for Free With Agorapulse
Agorapulse offers a free account that supports one user and up to three social profiles. There’s also a 30-day trial (no credit card required) so you can try out all the features for a while. Creating an Agorapulse account is easy—just an email and password gets you going. Then, you’ll need to finish setting up your account by adding your name and agreeing to the privacy policy. You’ll also be able to add your company information. Once you’ve completed the company side of things, you’ll be taken to a screen where you can choose the social media platforms you want to connect with. We’re going to choose Instagram Business profile and then, after it’s connected, click on the big Let’s being using Agorapulse! button: From your main Agorapulse dashboard, click on the Calendar button:
Choose the social platform you want to schedule to and click the small + button that appears when you hover over the date you want to create content for:
Create the post you want to schedule and, when you’re satisfied, click the Next button:
In the next step, you’ll be able to schedule your post to publish once or multiple times. Then, click the Schedule button:
That’s it! You’ll be taken back to your calendar where you can see your scheduled content appear.
4. How to Schedule Instagram Posts for Free With Sendible
Sendible is another social media management tool that doesn’t have a free plan and offers a 15-day trial. We’ve included it here because it’s a powerful tool that allows for direct publishing to Instagram without paying extra. Here’s how to schedule Instagram posts for free with Sendible if you already use the platform. From your Sendible calendar page, choose Compose and then build your Instagram post. When you’re done, click on the Schedule icon, choose the date and time you want your post to publish, and when you’re done, click Schedule:
You’ll be redirected to your Sendible calendar where you can see the content you have scheduled:
5. How to Schedule Instagram Posts for Free With PromoRepublic
PromoRepublic doesn’t offer a free plan but, like the other paid options we’ve mentioned, does include Instagram direct publishing at no additional cost. The platform offers a free trial as well as a cheaper plan for solopreneurs that includes three social profiles, a social media calendar, and a library of content suggestions. Here’s how to schedule Instagram posts for free with PromoRepublic if you already use the platform. Start by connecting your Instagram account. You’ll be redirected back to your calendar once it’s connected. One of the things we really love about PromoRepublic is the way they’ve set up the calendar with content suggestions for different purposes like engagement, promotional, educational, and motivational or fun posts:
You can either click the New Post button on one of the suggestions or click the Create button at the top of the day you want to schedule content for:
We’re going to click the Create button for Wednesday and build our post out. Then, we’ll click the Schedule button and choose the date and time we want our post to publish. After that, just click Schedule a Post to schedule your post:
Go back to your calendar to see that your post was scheduled:
6. How to Schedule Instagram Posts for Free With Buffer
Buffer offers a free plan that includes one user, up to 10 scheduled posts, and three social media platforms. You can also get a free 14-day trial so you can get a feel for all the features before making a commitment. Before you can schedule Instagram posts using Buffer, you’ll need to sign up for an account. As soon as you create your account, you’ll be prompted to connect your social media accounts. Click the Connect Your Channels button in the center of the page and choose the platforms you want to connect to. We’re going to choose Instagram and go through the process to connect using Facebook:
Once you’re all connected, click on the Publishing tab. You’ll be taken to your queue where you can see the content you have scheduled:
Choose a time slot for the day you want your content to publish. A new window will pop up where you can create your post and edit the publish date/time if you want. When you’re satisfied with your post, click Schedule Post:
You’ll be redirected back to your queue where you’ll be able to see your scheduled content:
Wrapping Up
Instagram can be a powerful marketing platform for your business—if you have the tools in place to take advantage of it. Scheduling your Instagram content will help you improve the content that you share with your audience, curate a visually-appealing Instagram feed, save tons of time, and more. And now you know how to schedule Instagram posts for free using six of the top social media scheduling tools around. No matter the scheduling platform you choose from our list, you’ll be able to build out your Instagram strategy quickly and easily.
