How To Directly Publish Posts To Instagram Business And Creator Profiles

Publishing content to your Instagram Business and Creator Profiles with SmarterQueue has never been easier. 💪

You can publish single-image posts, image carousels (up to 10 images), and Video Feed/Reel Posts (up to 15 minutes) directly to Instagram if your Instagram Business/Creator Profile is connected to a Facebook Page. Check out how to switch your Personal Instagram profile to a Business or Creator one (and connect it to a Facebook Page) to get started with direct publishing today. 

Note: Posting all these posts to Instagram Personal Profiles, as well as Story Posts (for Personal and Creator profiles) will require that you install the SmarterQueue Mobile App, to receive notifications and publish according to your pre-determined Posting Plan.

Stories on Instagram Business Profiles will be directly published. 💪

In This Article

How To Enable Direct Publishing For Instagram Business And Creator Profiles

Once you've made sure that your Instagram Business/Creator Profile is connected to a Facebook Page and you've added it to your SmarterQueue account, make sure that you enable direct publishing, to be able to directly publish your Instagram content. 

1. Go to the Profiles section.

2. Scroll down to Instagram Publishing, find the Instagram Business/Creator Profile you've added, and press the "⚡ Enable Direct Publishing" button. 


3. You will see a quick pop-up explaining the process - you will need to grant SmarterQueue permissions for both your Instagram Business/Creator accounts, as well as the Facebook Pages to which they're connected. Please "Select all" for both to avoid any issues (like failed messages due to lack of permissions).

4. You will be asked to continue with your Facebook Profile (Admin of the Facebook Page linked to your Instagram Profile).

Note: This pop-up is meant to confirm you're logged in as the right user. Rest assured, this does not give SmarterQueue permission to manage your Personal Facebook Profile in any way.  

You'll notice a couple of options available at this stage. We recommend that you click "Edit access" first to review and ensure you're granting all permissions.

5. A permissions pop-up will help you ensure all permission toggles are enabled. Otherwise, you will not be able to create and publish posts via SmarterQueue to your Social Profiles.

We strongly recommend you "Select all" permissions in the dialogue box shown above, rather than granting granular permissions. This will ensure you avoid running into publishing errors that can come up due to one of the many permissions bugs in Facebook's API. It will also make it easier to add any of your other Pages, and Instagram Profiles to your SmarterQueue account in the future.

6. Once you've updated permissions, scroll all the way up to the top and click on the "X" to return to the previous screen.

11. Now you can click to "Continue as" your Facebook Profile.

How To Directly Publish Your Instagram Content

Here's what you need to do to ensure that your Single Image Feed, Carousel Posts, or Video Feed/Reel Posts directly publish:

1. Make sure your Instagram Profile type is eligible.

Publishing directly only works with Instagram Creator or Business Profiles that are connected to a Facebook Page:

  • If you have a Personal one, we recommend converting it to a Creator/Business one instead.
  • If you already have a Creator/Business Profile, make sure that it's connected to a Facebook Page.

2. Enable direct publishing in the Profiles section.

3. Set your posts to attempt direct publishing in the Post Editor.

By default, all posts will be set to “⚡ Attempt Direct Publishing” under "Instagram Publishing Method" in the Post Editor. Leaving this on will ensure that SmarterQueue will try to directly publish your post where possible.

Note: Instagram Business Profiles can also directly publish Stories. Check out additional information here on How To Schedule Story Posts To Instagram.

Check out detailed steps on how to create and publish all of your different types of Instagram posts with SmarterQueue:

Troubleshooting

How can I choose how to publish my Instagram content?

As you create your Instagram post you'll notice an option to choose the "Instagram Publishing Method".

By default, all posts will use “⚡ Attempt Direct Publishing”. Leaving this on will ensure that SmarterQueue will try to directly publish your post where possible. No worries, if that's not possible due to the type of Instagram Profile or media, we'll fall back to the notification workflow.

You can also select “🔔 Get a Reminder” to publish manually, even where direct publishing is possible:

  • To add music, stickers, tags, locations, or filters to the post.
  • Because direct-published stories don’t include any caption text, so by publishing manually you can paste the caption text over the story.
  • Direct-published image/video stories taller than 9:16 or wider than 1.91 will be cropped. By publishing manually, you can resize the image/video to fit within the screen
  • To manually check how your Instagram posts look before being published, rather than silently allowing content to be published (though you can still get an email confirmation whenever an Instagram post is published directly).

When I try to Enable Direct Publishing for my Instagram Profile I get a pop-up asking me to connect with Facebook. 

Personal Instagram Profiles don't support direct publishing for Instagram via SmarterQueue, or any other 3rd Party Scheduler. 

To enable direct publishing, you will need to switch the profile to a Business Instagram one and then connect it to SmarterQueue through Facebook. 

I see a yellow message saying "Instagram Feed/Reel videos taller than 9:16 will have the top and bottom cut off". 

The Instagram API only supports videos of a specific ratio (between 4:5, and 1.91:1). If you add a video that is taller or wider than these ratios, we will still publish the post directly, but crop it to fit the sizes.

If the video is too short or too long for direct publishing, we will instead send a mobile or email notification, so you can publish the post manually - this will allow you to post the image or video, cropped to fit on Instagram.

Why can't my Instagram post be published directly?

There are a few reasons why some posts cannot be published directly, all due to Instagram's API restrictions:

  • Only Single-image, Carousel, or Video Feed/Reel posts are supported. If you're trying to publish a Story to an Instagram Personal or Creator Profile, it cannot be directly published.
  • Videos must be between 3 seconds and 15 minutes in length. The limit applies give or take 1 second, depending on rounding and frame rates. Longer videos can still be published via our mobile app.

Why is my Instagram account not showing up as connected to a Facebook Page? 

If you've followed all of the steps but still not seeing your Instagram account show up as connected to your Facebook Page, then this might be related to a Facebook Bug. 

Facebook has been aware of the bug since February whereby Instagram business accounts are, in some instances, not showing up as connected to a Facebook page correctly. They are working on a long-term fix for this but they do not give a timeline.

They have recommended the following solution in the interim:

  1. Using the Instagram app on a mobile device, convert your Instagram Business account to a personal account.
  2. After it has been converted, log in to Facebook on a computer and convert your Personal account to a Business account again (Settings and Privacy → Settings → Linked Accounts → Instagram →Connect Account and follow the rest of the prompts).

I would also recommend that you check the following help center article from Instagram. 

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