The perfect post need not be an abstract concept. Here, at Hopper HQ, weâve made scheduling social media posts simple. Our platform oozes usability and gives you the control to personalise and edit posts within a few clicks.
Just before we get into creating and scheduling the perfect post, be sure to check out our best practice article: What to do Before you Start Scheduling Content. Where we break down points of consideration to ensure your content is perfect for your platform and going to be well received by your audience.
Are you Instagram focused? Donât worry, we have you covered with How to Schedule Instagram Posts in 2021 (And Why You Should)
Components to scheduling social media posts:
- Single media and Carousel posts
- Quality and size of media
- User Tagging and Mentions
- Editing
- Time Settings
- Caption
- First comment
- Location
- Schedule Social Media posts to Multiple Platforms
- Drafts
Single media and Carousel posts
A great place to start is to consider what kind of post youâre going to be scheduling.
Single media was the norm and then carousel posts came along! While both have their benefits, you need to ensure it fits your posting purpose.
A single media post is one image or video published onto social media. Itâs a classic surefire way to get across a snippet of information in an impactful way. This is because it is one focal point for your audience, requiring less effort and commitment from them to engage with your content.
Gallery or Carousel posts are posts with multiple files that can be viewed by swiping to the next photo or video. They are a great way to deliver more value to your followers in the one post. However, with carousel posting you often need to have some level of loyalty and interest from your followers to ensure they swipe left to see the full post. This puts pressure on the order of your carousel post as you need to quickly peak and then retain your audienceâs interest.
Examples of useful carousel posts are batching a series of similar photos together, before and after images, infographics, long video content broken down, etc.
Quality and size of media
At Hopper HQ, we will automatically re-size your larger images in line with Instagramâs maximum dimensions (find out more about these here).
Images that are bigger than 1080 pixels on their largest side will be compressed down to 1080 pixels respectively, as this is the largest dimension Instagram allows.
To avoid any automatic changes from being made on Hopper HQ or Instagram, we advise uploading files that are 1080 pixels on their longest side, to ensure your post isnât stretched or distorted when uploaded to Instagram.
While we donât impose a maximum file size for video uploads, you must ensure that your posts are in line with the following Instagram guidelines:
Aspect Ratio
The maximum video width for Instagram in 1080 pixels and the minimum is 600 pixels width. Unfortunately, this means there is currently no support for Super HD or 4K video uploads on either Instagram or Hopper HQ. The maximum is 1080px for all video files. There is no height restriction for videos on Instagram, they can be any size as long as they are within maximum portrait & landscape ratios â 4:5 and 1.91:1 respectively.
Format and Frame Rate
At Hopper HQ, we recommend uploading your videos in .mov, .mp4 or .m4v format. The maximum support frame rate is 30fps. Instagram often update their video format guidelines, so our best advice would always be to export one video file in your chosen format and size and test this in Hopper HQ. If this posts ok via Hopper HQ, create the others in the same format.
Visually plan your social content. Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn + Pinterest
User tagging and mentions
Another sure fire way of increasing engagement on Instagram is by tagging other users in your photo, video, or caption!
Scheduling your user tags and mentions is likely to result in fast engagement, which is important because the Instagram algorithm favours posts that receive likes and comments quickly after being published. As well as engagement, mentions also contribute to building a community and starting conversations with people in your target demographic, which are both huge parts of Instagram management.
Whether youâre collaborating with influencers, running a competition or want to shout about another brand, be certain to tag or mention them in your posts.
For more information adding and scheduling a user tag on your Instagram post check our help centre article.
Editing
Editing tools have a wide selection of filters that can help you achieve the Instagram aesthetic youâre looking for in a jiffy. Want to go for something moody? How about bright and minimalist? Maybe something more vintage and rustic? Thereâs a filter for that!
If you use the same filter on every post, it will give your content the consistency that creates a successful Instagram aesthetic.
As part of our mission to save you time, our built-in editing tools allow you to make a variety of changes and perfect your content as you schedule it, from within your Hopper HQ dashboard.
To edit your image (currently desktop only), select the âEdit Imageâ button that appears when you hover over your image. From our built-in editor you can make a range of changes to your picture.
Our built-in editor lets you:
- Use 25 different filters.
- Alter the pictureâs brightness, contrast and saturation.
- Crop the picture inline with Instagramâs guidelines.
- Include a variable radial blur or vertical blur to create the look of a focal spot or region.
- Insert a coloured border to your picture.
- Place stickers from a selection of over 15.
- Use a variable thickness paintbrush to draw onto your picture with any colour.
- Create memes and add text to your picture.
And so much more! đ
Time Settings
When to post is a big question. Weâve made this as easy as possible for you at Hopper HQ.
To help you make sure your posts are always easily scheduled at the perfect time, weâve added Time Settings to your account. With this feature you can now preset your perfect scheduled times and set timezones for each of your connected social media accounts.
Once youâve referred to Hopper HQâs Analytics and our Best Time to Post Tool, you can use this information to create a weekly Post Schedule.
When scheduling content you have three options:
- Manually enter the time and date â you have full control to make the scheduling decisions for each and every post.
- âUse My Post schedule Timeâ â click here for the post to fall into the next scheduled time slot chosen by you in Time Settings.
- Post Now â publish the post immediately once you press âSaveâ.
Caption
We all want our caption game to be strong. This is because captions have the power to stop a scroller in their tracks. Captions offer a brilliant opportunity to reveal more information, detail and value for our audience.
Whether you are doing a product reveal, business update, customer review follow these six tips to write engaging instagram caption:
1. The first line is important
Ensure your first line is attention grabbing. As captions are often minimised to the first few words, here is your opportunity to turn that scroll into a Like. Saying something funny, hard-hitting, creating a cliff-hanger is exactly how to ensure your audience press into your caption to see what you have to say.
2. Use line breaks
Even with a long caption you can put them into short digestible mini-paragraphs, rather than a bulk of (daunting) text. With Facebook, Linkedin and Instagram you have a looser word count to be able to articulate interesting thoughts. Saying that, not many people come to these platforms for essays, so be tactful in what you say revealing enough to capture attention, but leaving them wanting to know moreâŚ
3. Add a call-to-action
Engagement doesnât have to stop at the post. If youâve worded your caption right your audience will want to know more. Use this to encourage your followers to visit your website, sign up to your newsletter, shop online, or check out your blog! This is, after all, a central reason we want a strong social media presence đ
4. Include eye-catching emojis
Make your caption a little more fun with our emoji picker!
5. Write your captions in bulk
We all know writing captions can be hard, thus why at Hopper HQ we pride in the ability to upload and edit in bulk. This ensure that when you are in the headspace, youâre able to create in ease.
6. Use hashtags to boost your reach
An excellent way to attract new Instagram followers, increase your reach, categorise your posts and find content created about you by your followers. Be sure to make use of our #HashtagExplorer when scheduling social media posts in Hopper HQ, where you can browse hashtags related to ones already in your caption, as well as track their popularity on Instagram.
First Comment
With Instagram posts youâre able to schedule a first comment with your social media post. This can be incredibly useful if you want to have a detailed caption extending into the first comment, or, as a way to have your hashtags separate â see blow for an example.
Location
Social media posts with a location receive 79% more engagement than those without. Whether itâs your town or city, or the specific office building youâre in, add locations to all of your Instagram posts to improve engagement.
Naturally, your audience want to know where you are as this can help build an image of your account. Whether they are interested in buying something and querying delivery times, or want to visit in-person, with Hopper HQ you can add location tags to all of your scheduled social media posts, streamlining your Instagram management and saving time.
Scheduling Social Media Posts to Multiple Platforms
Scheduling social media posts to multiple platforms is fruitful not only because youâll have a coherent social image and aesthetic, which becomes more secure and concrete if replicated across platforms. But also, it saves you valuable time to focus your energy elsewhere.
So if you create an awesome piece of content, have an announcement, or are stuck for time, speed up the scheduling process use our multiple platform scheduling function! It is integrated into our Upload and Edit screen so you can decide exactly what content goes to which socials.
Drafts
Donât worry if your post is not yet perfectâŚ
Simply tick your post and save it as a Draft, where itâll sit ready to be edited and scheduled when everything is perfect. đ
Final word
There are many components to creating and scheduling social media posts and we know scheduling content can be a mammoth undertaking, but we hope with our platform weâve made this an easy streamlined process.
We canât wait to see the amazing social media posts youâre going to curate with us! â¨
We had the pleasure of speaking with Sophie Greenwood, Founder and Creative Director of Season Communications.
