The world of social media has been pretty hot to the touch lately. However, one social news event stood out amongst the rest and really sparked my interest. With Hootsuite announcing their Instagram integration, I was excited to dig deeper and learn how this innovation in social media community management was made possible and predict the impact this development will have on the industry.
Facing Instagram’s Challenges
Because Instagram is designed to be an “in the moment” social tool, the closed API has always presented a logistical challenge to brand team managers and social agencies. Up until this week, the only ways to post to Instagram were through the app itself, which means signing out of a personal account and into a branded account – which is tedious, clumsy, and inefficient.
Frontrunners like Latergramme and Schedugram at least created a tool to “schedule” Instagram posts that would remind you, via push notification, that you needed to sign in and post through your Instagram app. These apps lacked a listening and moderation tool for Instagram that needed to be fulfilled by traditional social tools – and these tools lacked the scheduling function. Again, these methods that existed created inefficiencies for teams that manage multiple Instagram accounts for multiple clients.
Hootsuite For the Win!
Two days ago, Hootsuite announced the capability to not only listen and moderate through their tool, but now be able to schedule Instagram posts through their program.
According to a Hootsuite spokesperson, in the Instagram’s terms and conditions, it states that the tool cannot publish. It will send a push notification at the scheduled time “and then from the Hootsuite notification they are directed into the Instagram app (the image will carry over, too), and then they can publish/post the image themselves.”
This announcement is hot on the heels of a webinar that took place July 29th for marketers across the globe, where Instagram rolled out the information and timelines for opening up their API and ad units to brands around the world. The details of a more open advertising platform for Instagram have been long-awaited since their blog post about two months ago and the introduction of carousel ad units, which expanded the way a brand tells a story.
Who’s Next?
This still puts Hootsuite in the running for the top social media management tool to date with these new capabilities.
Now the question is, who will be next? No doubt, Sprout Social and other Hootsuite competitors aren’t far behind.