Tackling Instagram: Planning and Posting for Writers

Are you an avid user of Instagram? Well, I am not. I love Facebook and post regularly on Twitter. But for a long time, I ignored Instagram. For one thing, you had to do everything on your phone and for another, Instagram is a visual platform, and most of my photos and graphics are edited and stored on my computer.

However, everyone is saying Instagram is where it is at, so with the release of my newest romantic thriller, I decided it was time to learn how to use this media platform.

Designing your Instagram Presence.

First off, I wanted to see if there was anyway to post to Instagram from my computer. A search of the Internet turned up https://www.plannthat.com.  This is a site that helps you create beautiful, color-coordinated posts organized in a way to best market your book or product. PlannThat.com, with its ability to edit your photos and apply the best hashtags, is absolutely fantastic for showing your best “face” on the platform. Unfortunately, at this time, automatically posting to Instagram via computer is only in the Beta test stage. But it is coming.

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 Uploading to Instagram on your Computer

So, although I now have a marvelous tool for planning and presenting my posts, I am still stuck, uploading my photos to my computer, editing them, and then retrieving them back to my phone and finally posting to Instagram. Ugh!

So I did more research and here is what I found. Yes. You can upload directly from the computer. It’s just a bit tricky. However, once I did it a few times, I got the hang of it. So don’t be put off by these technical sounding steps.

1. 1. Open your Chrome Browser.
   2. Sign in to your Instagram account on the computer.
   3. Click on the three little dots in the upper right corner of the browser menu
   4. Open and scroll down to MORE TOOLS
   5. In the window that opens, select DEVELOPER Tools at the bottom.
   6. A split window opens. At the top of the Code panel on the right, click the tiny blue rectangle that sort of looks like a tablet with a cell phone on top of it.
   7. The screen on the right that is showing your Instagram account will convert to a phone view.
   8. At the top of the Instagram view, Click RESPONSIVE and select the phone that is closest to what you use.
   9. Now for the most important step. REFRESH the Screen. You will now, if you scroll to the bottom of your Instagram image see the square with the plus sign in it and be able to upload your edited photos and graphics right off your computer.
   10. And don’t worry. If you make a mistake, just close the Chrome browser and next time you open, you get to start fresh. Unfortunately, this means you have to redo all these steps every time you sign in, but as I said—it gets automatic after a while.

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Waiting for PlannThat

For the time being, I will be satisfied with this rather clumsy method. But I am hoping that Plannthat.com will soon work with Androids.

Another approach I might take as well is to use my Buffer account to schedule my posts to Instagram. The problem with that is you can’t see the total aesthetic effect of your posts nor get the theme effects or post planning help that PlannThat offers. I guess I will have to do all that on my own.

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How do you post to Instagram?

I look forward to your thoughts and comments.