Everyone loves watching Instagram Stories. They have become arguably the greatest success for Instagram and undeniably been the key drivers of user engagement on this platform. However, every influencer knows just how problematic and time-consuming publishing Instagram Stories can be when they are required to do so at awkward times. Since many bloggers will continue to include Instagram Stories in their marketing strategy, we’ve created this easy guide for how to schedule Instagram Stories by using different scheduling tools.

How to Schedule Instagram Stories: A Step-by-Step Guide

Why schedule an Instagram story?

As you probably know, Instagram does not provide any features out-of-the-box for scheduling your Stories. You either have to add them manually or use a third-party app that can do it for you. Adding your Instagram Stories manually can be time-consuming, particularly if you want to engage with your audience regularly. This is where scheduling tools come in handy. You can use these tools to plan your entire Story at once, adjusting date and time for each image to go live.

Scheduling Tools Save You Time

Undoubtedly the most frequent complaint made about creating Stories is how it can be such a time suck. Adding Instagram Story can also be labour-intensive, as you often have to prepare multiple images that you will upload gradually over 24 hours. In addition, you need to take into account the time zone if your audience keeps different hours than yourself.

Therefore, if you use a scheduling tool you can reclaim your time. You can put your efforts into creating your entire Story when you have the time and do other important activities throughout the day when your Story is active.

Scheduling Tools Give Stories a Standard Look

You’ve probably noticed that sometimes you have to create Stories on the fly. Even if you have enough time, as a live event unfolds, it does mean that you are likely to be editing your images and writing your captions at different times. This might result in a bit disconnected Stories and a lack of consistency.

However, when you use scheduling tools, it becomes easier for you to prepare all components of your Story at one time, ensuring that it has a consistent look and feel, from one photo or video to the next.

For a smoother viewing experience sometimes you need to alter the sequence of your images. Altering the sequence can be quite a pain if you have already published part of the Story, but it can easily be done when you are scheduling your entire Story in one sitting.

For example, a scheduling tool from Later includes a Media Library that makes organizing all of the components of your Story easier.

With Scheduling Tools You Can Plan an Entire Campaign

Naturally, it depends on the specific scheduling tool, but oftentimes such tools give you the potential to create multiple Stories at a time. You can upload all the components and edit them before hitting the “Publish” button.

Scheduling tool enables you to set up an entire Instagram Stories marketing campaign. Thus, you can plan and run a campaign throughout the week, with a set of seven Instagram stories (each containing the required amount of slides). Create a whole campaign at a time to set the scheduled times, and then upload all the relevant assets when you need them.

Scheduling Tools Can Optimize Your Posting Frequency

If you don’t use a scheduling tool for your Instagram Stories, you need to be online at the times you wish to add a Story. If, for example, your computer is having network issues, then you simply won’t update your Story, and you might even miss out on adding images completely.

A lot of scheduling tools allow you to leave it to them to schedule your Stories and sometimes the additional photos you add over the day. They will generally schedule your Stories to appear at the optimal times for your audience.

5 of the Best Tools to Schedule Instagram Stories:

Later

This social media marketing tool can help you create and schedule posts for Instagram, as well as for Twitter, Facebook, and Pinterest. While the last four feel more like an afterthought, tagged on to please their customers, Later is said to be a premier tool to assist you in organizing your Instagram posting.

Later contains all the tools necessary to create a storyboard, so you can thoroughly plan your Story. Start with yourself what your goal is. Why are you creating this Story? Everything you post should come back to your goals.

Once you come up with a Story concept, you can outline a beginning, middle, and ending for your Story. This helps ensure that you start creating images, knowing exactly what content you need to capture. It will also make things easier when it comes to creating design elements.

Then you should think over the details of your Story and find how to convey your message, and what types of media you will need to support it. At this point, you should find out whether you want to use filters, and what call-to-actions and swipe-up links to include.

Once you have everything in place, start adding visual content to Later’s Media Library, click on the Stories button from your calendar view, and drag and drop your media files onto your Instagram Stories scheduler. Use the storyboard tool to visually plan your stories and rearrange them as needed.

However, a rotten apple spoils the barrel – due to Instagram’s API limitations your posting won’t be totally automated. Later will notify you when it’s time to post and then download the Story ready for you to post.

Buffer

With the help of this social media marketing tool you can prepare, share, rearrange and preview your Stories, ensuring that they will be posted in the right order. Buffer allows you to pre-write your captions, so you don’t have to worry about making any typos as you upload your Stories.

Here’s a Buffer user flow to create and schedule Instagram Stories:

  • Open the Stories tab;
  • Select Add to Story;
  • Add up to 10 media files for your Story;
  • Drag and drop your photos and videos to arrange your Story as needed;
  • Add captions or reminders to your Stories;
  • Preview your Story;
  • Schedule your Story by setting the date and times when you want to upload each image in your Story.

Pretty much like Later, Buffer will send you a notification when it’s time to post. You still have to hit the button yourself.

Storrito

Storrito helps you create and schedule Instagram Stories through a web browser. However, Storrito’s web editor boasts auto-post with no notifications required.

You can connect your Instagram stories to your Facebook stories if you want to have the same content. Aside from most of the Stories features, Storrito offers Instagram Goodies like Hashtags, Mentions, Locations, Polls, and swipe links.

With Storrito you can post Stories directly to Instagram, or you can pick a future date and time. This scheduling tool includes templates that allow you to animate the swipe up link, header, and background in your Stories with different styles.

Storrito Features for Stories:

  • Set time and date for the story;
  • Auto-posting without notification;
  • Manage multiple Instagram accounts;
  • Can cancel a story anytime;
  • Bulk scheduling;
  • Enables you to add URL
  • Allows unlimited users

SkedSocial

SkedSocial is an Australian scheduling app built to help manage Instagram Stories & Facebook posts. With more than 10,000 brands worldwide who use it, SkedSocial allows users to automatically post Instagram Stories. This means that you can upload your content to the scheduling app, and at the time and date you want the Story to publish, it publishes. Yes, that simple!

The app also provides a preview for the drag and drop of photos on your feed and stories, and you can also add a swipe-up link if you choose.

Sked also allows you to integrate Canva with Zapier, add stickers, locations, hashtags, texts, tag people and products, schedule on desktop and mobile device and, finally, create Story Chains – three to five stories that go together in a particular order.

Fix the settings of your Instagram account if you want to have the same content on Instagram and Facebook. Connect your Facebook page first to your Instagram account, then enable “Share Your Story to Facebook”. Then, you can tap on the Facebook icon on the right bottom of the mobile once the story is published.

Scheduling Stories on Instagram: Wrapping up

All in all, scheduling Instagram posts is a huge time-saver. All these tools can help you to become more consistent across posts. They will help you to maintain the balance with your posts.

These scheduling tools for Instagram are available in the price range of $7.50/month to $99/month. Buffer, Storrito and Later offer a free plan. SkedSocial doesn’t have a free plan but offers to try any plan for 7 days for free. Buffer, Storrito, and Later offer cost-effective plans.

We hope this post will help you to find the right Instagram scheduling tool that fits your needs.