The Most Important Instagram Hacks to Save You Time

If you only take one tip away from this article, make it this one. Scheduling your Instagram content ahead of time is the best way to make your process more efficient. Not only will you be able to ensure your posts are going live at your best times to post, but you can also visualize the amount of content you have readily available, and when you are planning to post it.

You can bulk load content you already have, or pop in placeholders for content you know you will be receiving, which helps keep you organized, see where there are gaps to fill, and also see the future aesthetic of your grid. Another great thing about scheduling that will save you time, is that you can write your captions in advance. Sometimes, our creative juices won’t be exactly flowing when we are in a panic to post something in time, but when you’re in the right mindset you can craft captions that are value-adding, and have them ready to go.

Finally, you can post across multiple accounts, and tailor content to different platforms, which will make your content go even further, and be seen by more people. Here’s the link to our scheduling platform to get started.

Did you know that you can actively see what audio is trending on Instagram? Whether you have your Reel ready to go and you just need to find a sound to pair with it, or you are looking for sounds to craft your audio around – you can use this hack to see what sounds are going viral.

When you are on the Instagram homepage, click on any Reel (as long as it’s not your own). Scroll through the Reels, and look at the audio track, which is listed near the caption at the bottom of the video. If there is a small arrow next to the track, it means the audio is trending, so you can save it for later or create a Reel using it immediately.

For even more insight on how much it is really trending, you can click on the audio track, and see how many people have made videos using that sound. Depending on your account size, you might want to go for a sound that is just starting to trend (fewer videos) or already viral (more videos).

You might want to repurpose your Instagram Reels onto Tiktok or vice versa, but you’ve probably noticed when you save a Reel or TikTok that already exists, directly on the platform, your video will have a watermark over it.

Another best practice hack that will save you time on Instagram is repurposing your content. This can work in two different ways – either resharing content you’ve already published, or turning one piece of content into many.

It’s ok to reshare a piece of content you’ve already posted in the past because it’s not guaranteed that your entire audience will have already watched that video – and it’s likely you have had new followers since then. Pick videos or photos that had lower engagement than you expected and try posting them again at different times – they might pick up and the time you spent making them isn’t wasted!

Secondly, you can take one piece of content and repurpose the idea or format it into multiple posts. For example, you might have created a Reel – can you pull any quotes from that Reel to make a static post? Can you split that Reel into multiple parts on one topic, to make 3 videos from one? Can you make the topic or information from your post into a carousel? Think about how you can make your content go further, in order to save time on creating.

Flick grew up on hashtags, so it’s safe to say we are the experts in this space. In our hashtag finder (which comes with our scheduler and analytics and vice versa) you can input keywords that relate to the content you are about to post or your general niche. We then suggest hashtags that will perform best, based on your account size and average engagement. You can save these hashtags into categorized collections, which are accessible in our scheduling tool, which makes it easy for you to quickly copy across the tags you’ve saved for specific types of posts as you schedule.

Our analytics suite will also show you which hashtags are actually giving you reach and performing the best, so you can alter your collections, copy, research and post all in one place!

If you find yourself spending a lot of time editing, why not use presets? Presets are settings that are created or saved ahead of time, that you can quickly apply to a photo without having to tweak the brightness, contrast, sharpness etc. to your liking. You can save your own preset on tools like VSCO, or you can buy presets from your favorite creators, whose editing style you already like. Click the image below for some tips on different preset aesthetics!

If you ask any Social Media Manager about Canva, they will probably light up with joy. Especially when you don’t have access to a graphic designer, using a design tool that is easy to use (like Canva) saves so much time trying to watch endless YouTube tutorials on Photoshop. Canva has pre-saved templates, or you can create your own creations from scratch using the dimensions of your platform posts. They also have a library of rights-free stock images and videos, fonts, and more, and you can upload your company font and colors directly to their brand hub, making them easily accessible.

Find yourself getting a lot of DMs, but struggling to respond to them all as quickly as you’d like? You can set up saved replies to DMs with information to frequently asked questions or directions to an email address, which saves you the pressure of having to reply ASAP. You can then go through the responses that need a little more attention and filter out those that could have already been answered with your saved response.

To create an automated response, you’ll need to log in to the Meta Business Suite. Select inbox, then select automated responses. Write your automated response, and voila!

A saved reply is different from an automated response in that you can be more specific. You’ll still have to open up the DM but you’ll be able to type a keyword shortcut in response to the message, which will pull up a ‘reply’ you’ve already crafted based on the specific question.