We've had a couple of questions about how the Instagram planner operates when customers are using a number of accounts at once.
Currently, the Instagram planner is just that – a planner for your Instagram accounts. It will only show Instagram content, because obviously Facebook doesn't have a grid!
This means that when you move posts around, you will only make a change to posts scheduled/queued to Instagram, not any other channels. It will also only make changes on the account that you are currently 'viewing'.
The reason the planner does this is because we want to make sure you can see the changes you are making – when you update your posts in the planner, you can see that they are saved in a certain order and way.
If you were making changes across multiple accounts, we would want to make sure you can see the changes having an effect across multiple accounts – which isn't possible in the planner.
For users with just one Instagram account and one Facebook Page, it might make sense to automatically link them! However, our customers range from managing 1 account to upwards of 200 – and once you start having many different accounts and brands in the dashboard, the risk of scheduling to the incorrect account can be disastrous.
There are a number of ways you can change future-scheduled/queue posts in Sked. You can do it in the planner one Instagram account at a time, or you can change it in the upcoming posts or calendar views, including adding other account(s) to an existing post.
When you save something in upcoming posts or calendar, you will see the change – including if you are copying posts from just Instagram to add a Facebook Page for example.
Our product team is in ongoing discussions about how best to handle this for customers, as we do understand that some customers just want to copy their Instagram posts verbatim to other channels.
However, given that each network has its own style (e.g. caption length, number of items allowed in carousels), we want to make sure that we empower customers to show their brand the best way possible, while also improving efficiency. That can be a tricky balance to manage in some situations, and so currently we ensure that through making the Planner only 'effect' Instagram accounts.