How Personal Trainers Can Schedule Content On Instagram

On today's episode we talk about 4 different platforms personal trainers can schedule content on Instagram: 

• Buffer
• Hootsuite
• Later
• Grum

Aaron: [00:00:15] Allright. Hey, guys. Thank you again for listening to another episode of TheMarketing Natives. We truly appreciate it. This is a podcast for local businessowners, specific topics, and niches, and today's episode is how personaltrainers can schedule content on Instagram.

Christian: [00:00:39] Yes.So we have about four different ways that you can do that. Actually, just togive you a little bit of a preface. Pre-face? Pre-face?

Aaron: [00:00:48] Preface.

Christian: [00:00:48] Preface.Pre-face. As of about March of this year actually Instagram allowed- Theychanged their API. So apps like HootSuite and Buffer and Later were able topublish directly to Instagram. Now there's a little caveat. Caveat? Caveat?

Aaron: [00:01:12] Caveat.

Christian: [00:01:14] Caveat.You have to have a business Instagram account for the ones that I mentioned.There's a last one that we're going to talk about, but it's kind of likeunderground, I guess. Or they're not- How can I say that? Let's just say thatmaybe they have way too many clients or users, and they're playing catch upwith that.

Aaron: [00:01:41] Right.They're- We'll get- Yeah, we'll get into that one.

Christian: [00:01:44] Butyeah. So you have to have a business profile which is very easy to switch. Someof the benefits of having a business profile is that you can actually look atsome of the analytics on your Instagram account, whereas a personal profilepage you cannot do that, and you can also run some advertisements which youcannot do on your personal.

Aaron: [00:02:07] Absolutely.All right. So our first one here is probably the most well known and that isHootSuite. It's probably one of the most widely known, and I know that it'sbeen around for probably the longest or one of the longest anyway. What's goodabout HootSuite is that you can, as Christian mentioned, publish directly toInstagram with it. So. But there is again another caveat. It is only- It onlyallows you to publish images. So if you need to do videos, it will send you anotification, and you'll get that on your phone. It says okay, it's time topost your video for Instagram. It will be there, but you have to manually putthat data inside of there.

Christian: [00:02:49] Yeah.I think that's another thing- I don't believe the API allows you to do anythingelse besides single posts to Instagram. So everything that we're going to talkabout here, they only allow you to do - except for the last one - they onlyallowed you to do a single image post to Instagram. So some of them have differentfeatures. So, for example, the next one that we're going to talk about isLater. Later, actually, they used to have a different name. I don't remember.

Aaron: [00:03:23] LatergrammeI think is what it was called.

Christian: [00:03:25] Wellmaybe. But I feel like it was something different than that. I don't know, butthey've always been super focused on Instagram. I think they're, yeah,self-proclaimed number 1 Instagram scheduling platform. That's how they startedwas they had Instagram tools, and now they've expanded it a little bit to othersocial networks. And with the addition of the change of the algorithm, theyactually have some pretty good stuff for you, especially revolving around, youknow, Instagram. One of those is a way to look for content that's already onInstagram and be able to repost or reshared that onto your own account which isgreat. I don't think HootSuite or the next one we're going to talk about,Buffer, I don't think they offered that. So that alone is a really pretty greatfeature right there, and also Later, comparing it- I mean, if you look upHootSuite, Later, and Buffer and you compare what they can do even on theirfree plans, Later, I think, is just a little bit better than the other ones.Just talking about- L et's just say like the amount of posts, for example. WithLater, you can do 30 posts per month. With HootSuite you can only do- You cando 30 as well. Then Buffer you can only do 10, which kind of sucks because youwould have to do it almost weekly updating your content. So Later is definitelya good option if you want to schedule things a month in advance with yourInstagram posts.

Aaron: [00:05:10] Yeah,and I think one of the other cool features about Later was the drag and dropcalendar. So if you can imagine here, you have this calendar option of likewhat's going on these days, and you can easily take like oh, these are kind ofthe posts that I want, and you can drag them and drop them and then just easilyclick a button to schedule it on the time. So I think on their website it saidsomething like, you know, schedule two weeks or schedule a whole month or-Yeah, maybe one week and 20 minutes or something. So they're really focused onmaking sure that you have your content and getting everything scheduled and notwasting a bunch of time.

Christian: [00:05:46] Yep.As far as- There was something else I wanted to talk about. Yeah. Okay. So samewith HootSuite and Later, they both allow you to do videos and the carousel orlike the multiple images, but those are push notifications. So what you'll dois you actually go to HootSuite or Later. You'll sort of put all yourinformation. You'll put your video. You'll put your caption, your hashtags, andall that, and Later and HootSuite - they both do this - they will send you anotification to your phone when the post is supposed to be published. You clickon it, and then it automatically opens Instagram for you with the image. Allyou have to do is paste the caption, and it all can be right there. But you haveto do it manually, but they give you all the information. So it's still kind ofnice. It's just not that auto-publish.

Aaron: [00:06:39] Right.And I guess one last thing or one good thing about Later is that they have thatshared calendar which I talked about, but they also have the multi-photo thatChristian mentioned, but then they have like the service called Linkin.bio. Ifyou've heard of like Linktree which allows you to have one link on yourInstagram profile, but they created something specific to their company whereyou can put multiple links to different software or to like your website oryour podcast on there, and it's all with inside the brand. And then if you'renew to Instagram, it has like hashtag suggestions or the best time to post. Soit really- It really guides you. If you don't need it, then it's fine, but ifyou really are trying to figure out when is the best time to do something andschedule my content, they do a lot of handholding with that as well.

Christian: [00:07:26] Yes.Now do take into consideration that a lot of these features that Aaron wastalking about are on the paid version of Later. So you won't get the hashtagsuggestions until you are in the premium tier which is about $19 per month, butto be honest like in between HootSuite and Later as far as like free, I woulddefinitely go with Later.

Aaron: [00:07:53] Awesome.All right. So this next one is- Oh, actually this is our favorite time here.Let me pull up our favorite app, and then if you guys have been listening tothe podcast, you know what's about to happen here. And-

Christian: [00:08:11] Awesome.So this is a time where we talk a little bit about BitBranding which is acompany that Aaron and I run here in Allen, Texas. We actually recently not toolong ago moved to a new location. It's on 550 South Watters Road at the YeagerOffice Suites. We're at 271. So if you want to come by and check us out, youcan definitely do that. We're happy to have some visitors from time to time. Weare a digital marketing company. We specialize in social media marketing, a lotof Facebook advertising. We're really trying to educate ourselves in the realmof YouTube marketing and YouTube advertising as well. So that's somethingthat's going to be coming up in a few months. Hopefully, we'll start doing alot more of that, and the next big thing that we do is website design. I mean,we've actually just hired recently another person to help us grow our websiteand our graphics side of the business. So we're pretty excited about that. Youhave anything else?

Aaron: [00:09:15] Ido not. That was good.

Christian: [00:09:16] Allright.

Aaron: [00:09:24] Allright. So we are back, and this next one is one that we've actually used a lotpreviously. So HootSuite and Later. I think I used HootSuite in the verybeginning before BitBranding. With BitBranding and just did social mediamanagement. I never used Later, and Christian and I, I think, both have someexperience with Buffer. It's the same thing. It allows you to share directly toInstagram, but what's cool about Buffer is that you can get their - what is it- like Chrome extension, and you can be on multiple sites and easily click abutton and be like oh, I want to share that or I want to add that to a queue tobe shared later or to post later. So for that kind of posting, you can usethat, and it's really seamless. So if you find a good piece of content you wantto write about, click a button and it schedules for your queue, and you couldwrite a little bit about it. So I feel like in that sense that's kind of one ofthe big differentiators for Buffer. What else do you got?

Christian: [00:10:22] Tobe honest, like I don't like Buffer because of the very limited amount of poststhat you can do. So comparing it to Later and HootSuite with the free accountcan let you do 30 posts. Buffer only allows you to do 10 posts. So I thinkthat's like the biggest hurdle for me when it comes to just comparing all thesethree on the free account. You know, the fact that I would have to go every weekto schedule things. I think it's a big hurdle for me. I think another thingthat they offer under the free is the link shortening and tracking. So onceyou're on the free version and you put a link, it automatically shortens thelink, and you're able to track that instead of having to go to Bitly oranything like that to shorten those links. And HootSuite might do the samething. I'm not sure.

Aaron: [00:11:15] Yeah,I'm not familiar with theirs, and I know that HootSuite- It's been a while. Thereason why I left HootSuite anyway was just their interface was bad. I don'tthink that Buffer's interface is that good either, like the aesthetics of itand like being able to navigate. Later, to me - I don't know about Christian -like the website's just really clean. You can understand things, and I'massuming that that's what their dashboard is like too. But one thing that Ididn't see on Later but I do see on Buffer is the location tagging. So, forexample, we take a picture, and we schedule it on Buffer, but through Instagramwe can tag the location of BitBranding. And I don't know if you can do thatwith Later.

Christian: [00:11:55] Idon't know if you can do it with Buffer either.

Aaron: [00:11:56] It'sactually a new improvement and a new feature that they have.

Christian: [00:12:04] Really?

Aaron: [00:12:05] Yes.I'm literally reading it right here. "We just released two new, like,improvements, location tagging and gallery images." So I guess they didn'thave gallery images before.

Christian: [00:12:16] So.And that works for Instagram?

Aaron: [00:12:19] Yes.That is for Instagram. So it's for- I think both of those were updates forInstagram.

Christian: [00:12:27] Ohokay. All right.

Aaron: [00:12:28] Anythingelse good? I don't know if- Yeah. As far as Instagram, I don't think that theyhave any other standout features as far as like suggestions for hashtags oranything like that.

Christian: [00:12:37] Idon't think so. So the last one that we have here is Grum, and I believe we-This is a very unknown app or software, and I think we found found this from-

Aaron: [00:12:53] AppSumo.

Christian: [00:12:54] AppSumo.It was like an AppSumo deal. If you don't know about AppSumo, they just- Yeah,they come up with deals from, you know, other companies basically, like Grumor, you know, HootSuite and Buffer also do the same thing. It's usually likeunknown companies that want to spread and gain more customers. They usuallycome up with the really, really good deals, and I think we got an awesome dealwith Grum where we only paid once and we just have it for, I think, four orfive different Instagram accounts. But Grum is specifically for Instagram.Right now the message that they have on their website is that due to heavy loadon our servers, sign up is now available for the valid coupon codes holdersonly. Our sincerest apologies for the inconvenience.

Aaron: [00:13:45] Yeah.We've been scheduling on there still, but we've noticed that, yeah, it'sdefinitely- Their servers are definitely taking a hit. The interface is not thesame as what it was before.

Christian: [00:13:57] Yeah,and Grum is a little bit different as far as- Cause with Grum we actually wereable to schedule the single image posts before the algorithm or the API change,and it's because I believe the way they do it is they actually have eitherphysical people or like they're logging into to our accounts and posting on ourbehalf. So it works a little bit different. It's not just completely automated,I don't believe, but that's how they work there. I mean, one of the other coolthings is that you can actually do a comment too. I don't know if you can dothat with the other ones, but you can do the caption and then you can alsoschedule that first comment, which we usually use it to schedule the hashtags.

Aaron: [00:14:43] Yeah.No, it's pretty cool. Yeah, we had no idea how it was working before, and atthe time, we had been using Grum for a couple of years before this update. So alittle bit ahead of the curve as far as that. So something to check out. Maybeyou can - I don't know - bookmark it, and maybe they will open it back up assoon as they figure out something with their servers.

Christian: [00:15:03] Yep.

Aaron: [00:15:05] Allright. That is the end of this episode. We hope that you personal trainers areable to schedule more on Instagram so you can grow your businesses online, andif you enjoyed this podcast, please make sure to subscribe. And if you aresomebody who just loves the podcast, you listen every episode, we would love areview, but also we'd love for you to share this episode with a personaltrainer so that they can help grow and get more customers.

Christian: [00:15:30] Yeah.Awesome.