How to Schedule and Post to Instagram From a Computer

Social networks are a good way to advertise a photographer's work. Sometimes, with all the different platforms available, it becomes difficult to keep track of everything. Tools such as Hootsuite are great to make that easier. However, when it comes to Instagram, there aren't many solutions for scheduling and uploading photos from a computer. But there is at least one, and it works great.

For Instagram to become an advertising tool, posting on a regular basis is crucial. The more posts, the more chances to get new followers. However, if you are like me, you probably often forget to post. Not that I don't have any content, or that I don't want to post, but I just often forget to post. Before Hopper, I used to have a reminder every day on my phone just to let me know, I had to post if I hadn't yet. It helped me posting more, and my Instagram started to grow. But still, sometimes I couldn't post because I was on a shoot, in a meeting or driving and then forgot to post later on that day. I needed to find something to make my life easier.

And so a couple of weeks ago, I stumbled upon Hopper. When I found it, I had just subscribed to Hootsuite for a year. However, the tools for posting and scheduling on Instagram from Hootsuite are not so great in my opinion. They don't post automatically but send you a notification with the content to copy/paste. So I decided I would give Hopper a try. And I'm so glad I did.

How to Post to Instagram From a Computer

Hopper has a very clean and simple interface that makes it easy to use. You can either upload one or multiple pictures and then either post them right away or schedule them. You can also keep track of the photos that have already been posted to your account using the history tab or just check which one will soon be posted using the queue tab.

When adding a single picture, the interface looks very similar to what you'd see using the Instagram app. On the left is a button to upload a new image that you can edit (crop, filters, adding text, etc.). On the right is a text field to add a description, tags, and mentions, as well as options to schedule or post your new picture.

While uploading a single picture is fine, multiple files at once is even better. Hopper can do that too! You can very simply upload new photos from your computer or other locations (Dropbox, Facebook, Flickr, GDrive, or even Instagram) and then conveniently edit their descriptions in bulk. If you need to resize them all at once, in my opinion you are better off using an action in Photoshop. There is the possibility to edit the pictures using Hopper, but you must go through each image individually to do so. You cannot crop all pictures in a square format in one click, for example.

One last very convenient feature is the possibility of having multiple Instagram accounts on Hopper. For example, let's say you read Lance Nicoll's article on why you should keep your wedding business separated from your other work, and you have one Instagram account for each brand. Well, you can manage both accounts on Hopper (it requires an additional or different subscription than the cheapest one though).

Having two accounts in one place is useful. At least I find it very practical. Now, I don't have to log in and log out every time I want to change the Instagram account on which I post. I just use Hopper for posting. If you are wondering, yes, their website is responsive, meaning you can use Hopper on your phone as well.

How Does It Work?

This all sounds great, doesn't it? But if you have been looking around for such an app for more than a minute, you probably have read that apps offering such features are usually banned by Instagram after a couple of days. This is one of the reasons I write this article only now. I have been using Hopper since October 31 without any issue. The website has always been up; all my posts went through at the time I scheduled them to be posted, and none of my Instagram accounts has been banned or blocked. All I have seen is an increase in followers because I can schedule my pictures in advance and thus publish them at the best time of the day.

Hopper is described as a social media intern, posting images on our behalf when we would like to share them. Apparently they didn't reverse engineer the Instagram app. Making sure to keep everything in-line with Instagram's terms and conditions. So it shouldn't be shut down, and users shouldn't encounter any banning or blocking from Instagram.

How Much Does It Cost?

That is probably the only slight downside to this wonderful website; it isn't free. However, it is far from expensive if you use Instagram as a marketing tool, and not a way to share personal pictures. The cheapest subscription starts at $8/month and will let you post up to 10 pictures a month, 2 of which can be scheduled. If you want unlimited posting and scheduling, then you will have to double that to $16/month per account you wish to use.

Despite being great, Hopper is still a fairly new service with room to grow into something even better. Hopper's developers actually have great plans for the future. Video scheduling, as well as photo and location tagging, are things they plan on adding in future versions.  No release date was given for these, but they definitely would be great additions. I cannot wait to see what's coming next!

If you want more information head over to the Hopper website. You can also try it for free for 14 days if you are not sure it is worth the money for your business. But be careful, you might not be able to work without it if you try it.