As you likely already know, Facebook bought Instagram back in 2012 and since then, the two have been managed as one following the same trends and sharing many of the same tools. This is good news considering that Facebook recently upgraded its creator management tools in a way that has both simplified account management and expanded content management options.
The new toolset is called the Facebook Creator Studio which also conveniently includes the Instagram Creator Studio for all the same features managing your Instagram account.
For all creators and advertisers looking to make the most of this new excellent toolset, we're here to offer a quick rundown of the new features, their capabilities, and what you can do to make use of them.
By far one of the most useful features added is Instagram scheduling. In the past, it's been necessary to use external apps to artificially schedule your Instagram posts in advance. But now, with the Facebook Creator Studio, Instagram scheduling is finally native. Not only can you schedule without a third-party tool, but it overcomes the original API restrictions that third-party apps are subject to.
Third-party Instagram scheduling has been fairly limited. But creators who like to plan ahead will be very glad to hear that the new Instagram Creator Studio features allow you to schedule posts as far as six months in advance. That's six months of self-managing Insta campaign in addition to whatever you choose to post in the moment.
Now you can see exactly what your Instagram posts will look like and how they will function when you are scheduling. No more accidental embarrassing format errors with your Instagram scheduling. You can be certain that your scheduled Instagram content will look and function exactly as you intend it to.
The Creator Studio allows you to build scheduled content with options and complexity beyond what most third-party Instagram scheduling apps can achieve. One of the most notable features is the ability to add more than one image per post and format them with captions and tags. And if you are building a video, you can use the Sound Library to access a wide variety of free music and sounds.
Creators can integrate multiple pages into their Creator Studio accounts for Facebook, Instagram, and IGTV. When you create a post, you will have the option to schedule it for, say, one of your selected Instagram feeds or an IGTV channel.
In addition to the scheduled content, you also have far greater and easier to tackle controls over your current and scheduled posts via the Content Library. Here, you can sort and review all of your posts based on feed, stats, scheduling and publishing, expiration, status, engagement, and so on. From there, you can manage posts in groups or select one to fine-tune with some very handy options like promotion, deletion, and editing.
For a more data-driven view, you can pop over to the Insights section to examine how your feeds and pages are doing on the data side of things. There are many data-driven insights and guiding points on how to boost your data results. Data categories include performance, loyalty, audience, and earnings concerning each type of content and how well your content is performing for your overall campaign. Learn from data insights to improve your Instagram scheduling and content strategy.
Monetisation via advertisements is a big deal in both Facebook and Instagram, so it's no surprise there is a whole section dedicated to monetisation in the new Creator Studio. In your feed, you can select ads and decide whether they appear before or after specific content. And your control over ads in your videos is even tighter. While you can let the platform automatically choose ad-breaks, you can also manually place your ad-breaks for greater user engagement and satisfaction.
Finally, if you have any copyright-protected material that you post to Instagram or Facebook, the Creator Studio can help you protect it. With copyright monitoring, the creator studio will keep an eye on the platforms and ensure that no one else is snagging your copyright-protected content to use as their own.
The new Facebook Creator Studio and paired Instagram Creator Studio suite is an incredible upgrade and an essential tool as social media marketing becomes ever-more complex. And for those of us who have been using third-party apps for Instagram scheduling, this upgrade is the best thing since sliced bread. For more insights into today's digital marketing landscape and strategies, contact us today!