Help me automate my bar's insta-tweets

January 27, 2016 12:12 PM

The bar I work at has a daily daiquiri, throwback Thursday dinks, and stuff I would like to queue up and set on a timer to be later posted to Instagram on the appropriate date/time, and tweet the insta link. Am not on Facebook. Is there an iOS app that can do that? My dream is to spend 45 minutes once a week or so, queue up all my daily specials I have on the paperwork, and not be fucking around typing on my iPhone while looking at today's sceule while I'm setting up my station. TIA.
posted by Pirate-Bartender-Zombie-Monkey to Computers & Internet (12 answers total)

Buffer?
posted by kevinbelt at 12:20 PM on January 27, 2016 [4 favorites]

I think folks use hootsuite for this.

https://hootsuite.com/
posted by humboldt32 at 12:28 PM on January 27, 2016 [7 favorites]

TweetDeck does this too (though I came here to say hootsuite but forgot what its name was). Just Twitter, though, but you could probably do the post there and use IFTTT to automagically re-post to Instagram.
posted by mrg at 12:31 PM on January 27, 2016 [1 favorite]

I also like HootSuite - I used to do Social Media for a company and would schedule things out a month in advance.
posted by jander03 at 12:35 PM on January 27, 2016 [2 favorites]

I use Tweetdeck, find it invaluable.

That said, I use the desktop in-browser version, so I can't speak for the mobile version.
posted by a fiendish thingy at 12:38 PM on January 27, 2016

Be warned, you have to actually post things to Instagram from your phone/tablet. You can't do it from a desktop or laptop computer. You can set up an alert in Hootsuite to remind you to post to instagram, but it's not as easy as scheduling posts on Twitter or Facebook.
posted by zoetrope at 12:44 PM on January 27, 2016

Be warned, you have to actually post things to Instagram from your phone/tablet.

Reiterating this. IFTTT works with Instagram, but only as a trigger. You can't actually post to Instagram with IFTTT.

Even Hootsuit won't post the image, but will rather stage it for you.
posted by Nonsteroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drug at 12:57 PM on January 27, 2016

On further review, it looks like Buffer has some sort of unsanctioned automated posting going on.
posted by Nonsteroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drug at 1:03 PM on January 27, 2016

Onlypult lets you actually schedule Instagram posts. Hootsuite does not.
posted by annathea at 1:35 PM on January 27, 2016

For IG, Latergram.me lets you upload the pics via desktop, write the captions, and schedule them, then will ping your phone to actually post them to instagram. It's not quite a one-stop solution, but it's pretty fast to just go into the app and hit "post," and saves a bunch of time uploading and typing out the captions on your phone.
posted by Bella Sebastian at 1:51 PM on January 27, 2016

Hootsuite is my rec. We use it to send out scheduled social media tweets about our radio show on Saturdays.
posted by Kitteh at 5:32 PM on January 27, 2016

Best answer: Be warned, you have to actually post things to Instagram from your phone/tablet.

Super double triple reiterating this. What you ask for is not that easy. Unlike Twitter and Facebook, it's hard to schedule Instagram posts because Instagram doesn't want you to do this. As far as I understand, the core of the issue is that Instagram's publishing API does not allow 3rd parties to upload photos.

Because you cannot schedule and automatically publish things on Instagram, there is always an element of manual publishing involved - I managed a realtime Instagram account for an event late last year. We were using Hootsuite. It was really, horribly tedious. You can queue a bunch of posts ahead of time on your desktop/laptop and but can only receive reminders that it's time to publish. No automatic posting.

Using Hootsuite, here's how to publish to Instagram (a 10 step process):

1. First, you receive a push notification on your phone at the given time that your Instagram photo is supposed to go live.
2. You open the notification and go into the Hootsuite mobile app to proceed.
3. It will show you a list of notifications with which post is supposed to go live right now. Tap on the post you want to publish.
4. Now you will see a "post is ready" screen with a button to go to Instagram.
5. After you press it, you tap on the Instagram icon from the iOS share sheet.
6. Then Hootsuite reminds you that you should make sure you're logged into the correct Instagram account (and to log out and log back in, if you are not).
7. Hootsuite opens up Instagram and copies the square photo (and it must be square) to your Camera Roll. It also places the caption on your clipboard, ready to paste.
8. You are now in the Instagram app. Your photo is ready. If you foolishly uploaded a rectangular photo to Hootsuite previously, it is now cropped. Fun! You can also add filters now if you wish. Hit next.
9. You now can add the location and manually paste in the caption you wrote previously.
10. And... now you can hit submit on your phone. (Otherwise, the photo will not get published.)

posted by kathryn at 7:41 PM on January 27, 2016 [1 favorite]