Do you love Instagram but:

• You’d rather take pictures with a camera instead of a phone and edit them on your computer
• You’d love to schedule a bunch of photos ahead of time

Later can help

I love taking pictures with my camera.  Getting them to Instagram was awkward.  I’d have to download them to my computer, edit them, email them to my phone, download them on the phone, and then upload them one at a time when I remembered.

Later is a website and an app that work together to simplify the process. When I’m ready to schedule Instagram photos, I go to the Later.com website.

I can upload all the photos that I want to work with and drag them onto the day and time that I want to post them. This is perfect for photo challenges if you take a bunch of photos at once but need to wait until the appropriate day to post.

Selecting a photo brings up this screen.

From here you can crop, change the date and time of posting, edit captions, and even make it add a link in your bio.

Ideally, Later would then publish the post for you but this is were it gets little bit awkward still.  Instagram does not allow third party software to post directly to the site. 

Instead, you have to have the Later app on your mobile device of choice.  At the time that you scheduled, you will get a notification that you have a post ready.  You open the app and select post.

The app downloads the photo to the device and asks you to select Instagram.  It also copies your caption to the dashboard.

You are able to do any additional editing like normal with Instagram.  Then you paste the caption into the text block and post.

Is a perfect solution?  No.  Does it help?  Absolutely.  I like being able to batch upload my challenge photos once a week and then not have to think about it again until I get a notification.

Your Bloggiesta Challenge

1.  Sign up for a free account on Later.com
2. Schedule a photo to post to Instagram before September 19 at midnight.
3. Tag me so I can see it by using @dvmheather

Everyone who does this will be in a drawing for a $10 Etsy gift card so you can buy more props for Instagram photos.