In today’s world of social media frenzy, scheduling apps might come in handy, and more and more Instagram users are leaning on scheduling apps to create and publish their content. Instagram is one of today’s biggest online billboards, with over a billion active users.
Of those users, 51% visit Instagram on a daily basis, and 80% follow at least one business account. But most importantly, Instagram Stories amassed 500 million users on a daily basis in 2019, and that number continues to rise. So if you don’t schedule Instagram stories yet, now is the time to get started!
In this article, we will present you with the top 4 Instagram Story schedulers in 2020, but before we do that, let’s dive into the Instagram Story feature and see what it is all about. Why do you need it in your marketing strategy, how to create top-quality content, and achieve your marketing goals?
Instagram released Stories in August 2016, as a 24-hour feature that allowed users to add photos and change them with various layers and effects for a better impression. Instagram Stories are an easy, and fun way to maintain contact with your audience.
As a business, it’s important for you to ask questions regarding your products or services, update the audience on recent ideas, or new products, and share news regarding your industry. Instagram Stories have come a long way since 2016, and new updates constantly keep rolling out.
Today you can add videos, background music, create Boomerangs, ask users what they think about your new product or business idea, compare your product with those of your competitors’ using pools, and announce events or recently presented services. With these features, Instagram Stories are one of the key assets for maintaining communication with users and getting a feeling for their needs.
As part of an Instagram marketing strategy, keeping up with Stories is essential, and it’s recommended that you add at least 3-5 stories daily. Considering all other activities on Instagram, such as posting, answering messages, commenting, and reaching out to your target audience, adding Stories multiple times throughout the day may seem like a burden.
This is where a Story scheduler comes in to save the day. With a Story scheduler, you can take a few hours of your time to create and schedule all of your planned Stories for the next week in advance. In this article, we will cover the four most popular Instagram Story schedulers, comment on their features, and compare their pricing, so let’s begin.
If your beginner who isn’t familiar with Instagram Stories tips and tricks here is a simple and easy step-by-step walkthrough all features you can use – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PaLjL3xkL0o
Agorapulse
Best for: Medium to Large-sized businesses
Back in 2001, Agorapulse co-founders Emeric Ernoult and Benoit Hediard launched Affinitiz, or as they called it “Agorapulse 1.0,” a B2C company with an emphasis on Social Media Content and B2C app development. In 2011, they released Agorapulse, focusing primarily on Social Media Management for platforms such as Facebook and Twitter, with Instagram and YouTube management following a couple of years later. Today, Agorapulse is all about SMM, helping its clients utilize the best of social media marketing on platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, and YouTube.
Agorapulse Features
- Agorapulse monitoring tools help you scan Instagram for mentions of your brand and keywords you input into their software.
- Agorapulse acts as a CRM tool, helping you store previous comments and messages under a particular name. In that way, they help you maintain oversight over prospects and customers—for example, responses from recent questions on Instagram Stories.
- Upload bulk content and schedule Stories – Upload dozens of Stories at once and schedule them throughout the following week.
- “Automatic labels” – Mark your most active followers and reach out to them with an offer or a message of gratitude.
- Gain an analytical overview exported as a PowerPoint file for ease of measuring statistics – these reports will discover the best posting time, most popular topics, and uncover your followers’ behaviors and demographics.
Agorapulse Pricing
Agorapulse offers four packages to their clients, and those are;
“Medium package” – best for small business standing at $89/month billed annually
This package includes:
- 10 social profiles, and 2 users
Additional Addons:
- Add-on Profile – $17
- Add-on User – $34
- Add-on Shared Calendar – $22
“Large package” – best for agencies standing at $178/month billed annually
This package includes:
- 25 social profiles, and 4 users
Additional Addons:
- Add-on Profile – $13
- Add-on User – $28
- Add-on Shared Calendar – $17
“X-large package” – best for larger organization standing at $268/billed annually
This package includes:
- 40 social profiles, and 6 users
Additional Addons:
- Add-on Profile – $9
- Add-on User – $23
- Add- Shared Calendar – $14
“Enterprise package” – standing at $447/billed annually
This package includes:
- 60 social profiles, and 20 users
Additional Addons:
- Add-on Profile – $5
- Add-on User – $17
- Add-on Shared Calendar – $10
Later
Best for: Small to Medium-sized businesses
Founded in 2014, Later is one of the most popular Instagram Story schedulers out there, and while you can use it to post on Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter, Later puts a strong emphasis on Instagram. Later app similar to Instagram is a primarily visually focused platform aimed at helping Instagram users to manage their profiles and content.
As Instagram, Later requires starting with image upload and then adding text to the image. Most importantly, Later has a Stories button that you can use primarily to schedule Stories for your Instagram account(s). One thing that separates Later from its competition is a “Search & Re-post” feature, allowing you to search old content via #hashtags for re-uploading and adding to your Stories, using their scheduler app.
Later Features
- “Search and Re-post” feature – that allows you to search old posts using #hashtags and reposting them, either as a post or a Story.
- “Stories button” – This feature can be used to plan, optimize, and schedule your Instagram Stories from your desktop.
- “Media Library” – This feature allows you to store graphic images and add notes, helping you distinguish used from unused Instagram content.
- “Conversational Module” – This feature allows you to manage comments, keep notes on replies, and create history tracks on prospects.
Later Pricing
Later offers 5 packages to their users, note that packages are billed annually;
“Free Package“
- $0
- 1 profile per social platform
- 30 posts per social platform
“Plus Package“
- $7.5/month
- 1 profile per social platform
- 100 posts per social platform
“Premium Package”
- $16/month
- 2 profiles per social platform
- 250 posts per social platform
“Starter Package“
- $24/month
- 3 profiles per social platform
- Unlimited posts
“Brand Package“
- $41/month
- 5 profiles per social platform
- Unlimited posts
Storrito
Best for: Small to Medium-sized businesses
Unlike previously mentioned software that allows the full spectrum of SMM, Storrito is primarily focused on helping create, monitor, and publish Stories on your Instagram account. In other words, Storrito is primarily an Instagram Stories focused tool, and if managing Stories is the only thing you need, then Storrito is the right choice for you. With 100,000 users and rising, Storrito helps marketers, influencers, and other Instagram users create and schedule mind-blowing Stories to help them spread the word to one billion Instagram users.
Storrito Features
- Storrito allows you to create and upload Stories from your desktop and crop them automatically to fit Instagram Story’s aspect ratios.
- If you’re out of ideas or images for your Stories, don’t worry. Storrito’s editor provides you with stock photos directly from Unsplash that you can use right away.
- Storrito’s video management tool helps cut your content into 15 seconds snippets, allowing you to post stories according to the Instagram Stories format guidelines.
Storrito Pricing
Storrito offers three packages to its customers;
“Free Package”
- $0/ month
- Up to 10 posts per month
“Standard Package”
- $15/month
- Up to 100 posts per month
“Professional Package”
- $60/month
- Up to 500 posts per month
Planoly
Best for: Small to Medium-sized businesses
Released in 2014, Planoly is a great Story scheduling platform for marketers and influencers who are strongly focused on Pinterest and Instagram, as Planoly is primarily geared towards managing the visual content of previously mentioned platforms. However, you can also use it to manage your Facebook accounts if you prefer.
Other than that, Planoly is an official Instagram partner, thus it primarily focuses on helping its users create and manage Instagram content, including Instagram Stories. Planoly primarily focuses on helping SMBs, and since 2016, 850,000 users have given Planoly a chance.Planoly offers a shopping feature called Shoplink. Shoplink allows you to shop on Instagram with no fuss, and you can also add Shoplink to your website and drive sales. This feature costs $50 per month, but if you’re a product-based business, that is a well-spent money.
Planoly Features
- Planoly primarily attracts influencers, fitness coaches, lifestyle businesses, fashion brands, and bloggers, but everyone can use Planoly to achieve their goals.
- Planoly’s analytics present you with information on posts, likes, followers gain/loss ratio; and it also allows comment sectioning and archiving.
- Planoly has a separate Stories Edit app that allows you to plan, create, and publish your Stories. If you’re short on content, Planoly has an extensive catalog of templates and stock pictures to help you create your own content. Subscribing to the Premium Package allows you to get StoriesEditPRO, thereby gaining access to limited editions of templates and stickers for your Stories.
Planoly Pricing
Planoly offers four packages for their users;
“Free Package“
- $0
- 2 social profiles
- 30 uploads per month
- 1 user
“Solo Package“
- $7
- 2 social profiles
- unlimited uploads
- 1 user
“Duo Package“
- $15
- 2 social profiles
- unlimited uploads
- 2 users
“Custom Package“
- Starting at $23
- custom social profiles
- unlimited uploads
- custom users
Conclusion: How To Schedule Instagram Stories
And there they are, the top four Instagram scheduling tools that you should definitely check out if you want to schedule Instagram stories. Before you make a final decision, though, be sure that you try them all to see which one works best for you. Using an Instagram scheduler will help you save time, tap into analytics, and provide many more benefits.
Instagram is one of the biggest platforms, with over 500 million daily users and growing. Every cent that you invest in Story schedulers and marketing will pay off; the Instagram platform offers huge possibilities, and you don’t want to miss out on them.
