Over 100 million photos and videos are uploaded to Instagram every single day — but with all that posting comes a very real challenge: how do you organize your Instagram content?
With so many photos, videos, dates, photo credits, and hashtags to remember, it can be difficult to stay on top of your Instagram content calendar. Especially if you’re a small business with a million other things to do.
Enter: Instagram apps to help make your life easier (and your content organized and searchable)!
Wondering how you can organize Instagram content better? In the following post, we look at 6 Later tools that are perfect for organizing your Instagram content:
Why Use an Instagram Organizer like Later?
If you’re a small business on Instagram, keeping track of all the photos and videos, Instagram Stories, hashtags, posting times, and more can be super time-consuming.
That’s because there are so many moving parts! Photos, videos, captions, dates, collaborators… the list goes on!
All of this can make life really stressful — especially if you have a million+ other things to focus on, like growing your business or building relationships with influencers.
That’s why it’s such a good idea to use an Instagram organizer and planning tool like Later. It can help you keep all of your Instagram content in one place and accessible on any device.
Need a few more reasons? Here are 6 Later tools that are perfect for organizing your Instagram content:
Organize Instagram Content #1: Centralize Your Photos and Videos with Later’s Media Library
Keeping all of your photos, videos, and Instagram content organized can be a major challenge for businesses — especially if you have multiple team members creating and collecting content for your account.
Rather than storing your photos and videos on several different devices (and scrambling to find that perfect post when you need it!), you can use Later’s Media Library to keep all your content stored, labeled, and accessible from a single place — even when you’re on the go.
Think of it as a home for all of your great social content!
Another benefit of Later’s Media Library is that you can upload and store as many photos and videos as you like — there’s no limit whatsoever!
It’s also really simple to get content into your Media Library — you can drag and drop multiple photos and videos from your desktop, or upload directly from Dropbox or Google Drive.
Your Media Library also automatically syncs between the web and the Later mobile app, so you can access your social content from anywhere!
Later’s Media Library also makes it super easy to manage your Instagram content as a team! All the content inside your Media Library is automatically shared with the team members on your Later account, so anyone can upload content!
But what makes Later’s Media Library such a useful organization tool for businesses is that you can label, star, and segment your content so that you can find exactly what you need, right when you need it.
For example, you can create labels for user-generated content (UGC), social campaigns, or even for photos that have a certain color palette.
You can even label by used and unused to avoid posting the same content twice!
According to digital strategist and designer Quinn Tempest, these labels are especially helpful for finding content quickly — especially when you have hundreds or even thousands of items in your Media Library.
“I have over 1,000 images in my Later account and my labeling system keeps me sane and organized while helping me plan out of my grid quickly and painlessly,” she says.
Check out Quinn Tempest’s complete review of Later here!
Ready to get more organized with Instagram? Get started for free now**!**
Organize Instagram Content #2: Get a Complete View of Your Scheduled Content with Later’s Calendar
Once you have all your content and assets, it’s time to put everything together and plan out your social media content calendar!
That’s where Later’s intuitive and easy-to-use content calendar comes into play.
You can schedule your photos and videos to Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and Pinterest, and view all of your posts on a single content calendar to have a complete view of everything that’s going out.
That part about scheduling to multiple social accounts at once is important.
Some platforms, like Instagram for example, allow you to share the same post to your Facebook profile when you hit publish. But that means you need to be actively posting from the app itself, which definitely isn’t the most efficient solution.
If you’re looking to buy back some time and organize your content in a more holistic way, scheduling your posts to go live across all your social platforms at once is key!
To do this with Later, simply click the “+” sign at the top of your Later calendar to select the social profiles you’re scheduling posts for.
From here, drag and drop the image from your Media Library that you want to schedule and create the caption for Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter.
You can even customize the caption for each platform so you’re never duplicating content!
If that isn’t enough, you can also get a bird’s eye view of all your scheduled content by viewing multiple profiles in a single content calendar!
To do this, just click the “+” sign above each of the accounts you want to view, and then click the “Month” button in the top-right corner of your screen.
Even if you’re not ready to actually schedule your posts yet, you can still plan out your social posts with Later’s Calendar Notes feature.
You can add notes to keep track of all your important dates and deadlines — it’s perfect for campaign timelines, photoshoot dates, holidays, and special events.
You can even mark off new product launches, influencer takeovers, collaborations, and promotions. The possibilities are endless!
Have post ideas ready, but don’t have the content or images yet? You can also use Calendar Notes to save spots on your calendar until you have your photo and everything ready to go.
You can also create placeholders based on the type of content you want to schedule. For example, mark off when you’ll be posting a product close-up or flat lay, a selfie, quote, or a lifestyle shot.
Your calendar notes will show across all social profiles too, so you don’t have to worry about missing an important date!
Organize Instagram Content #3: Plan & Schedule Your Instagram Stories with Later
Did you know that 62% of consumers have become more interested in a brand or product after seeing it on stories?
Instagram Stories help drive traffic and sales, increase brand awareness and engagement, and strengthen your relationship with your followers.
But trying to post to Instagram Stories every day can be challenging — whether you’re struggling with what to post, finding the time to create content on your phone, or just forgetting to post altogether!
If that sounds like something you’ve experienced, we have a huge time-saving solution for you: scheduling your Instagram Stories with Later!
Just like you would with posts, you can upload your stories to the media library, plan your content calendar, and schedule your Instagram Stories to go live at the times you want!
But that’s not all!
With Later, you can storyboard your content, add captions or links, collaborate with your team, and visually plan and schedule Instagram Stories right from your desktop — something you won’t find on any other marketing platform.
Scheduling your Instagram Stories doesn’t just save you time, it also helps you create better stories by planning ahead and optimizing your stories for traffic or sales using analytics, CTAs, and trackable URLs (that you no longer need to keep track of!).
Mr. Porter, a men’s luxury brand with over 1 million Instagram followers, has already seen success from using Later’s Instagram Stories scheduler.
“Since we got access to Later’s Instagram Stories scheduler, we use it all the time,” remarked Sophie Hay, social media at Mr. Porter.
“We love planning out our Instagram Stories content in advance so that we can create a more cohesive look and post more often. It gives us time to focus more on strategy, and less on logistics.”
Watch our step-by-step video tutorial to see just how easy it is to plan and schedule Instagram Stories with Later:
Ready to grow your business using Instagram Stories in 2019? Upgrade now to visually plan and schedule Instagram Stories with Later for just $9/month!
Organize Instagram Content #4: Collect User-Generated Content with Tagged Media
Sharing user-generated content is a great way to fill your feed with beautiful content, but it’s also hugely valuable to your audience.
In fact, according to research from Suzy, UGC is 50% more trustworthy than any other type of media!
But how to do you go about finding this super valuable user-generated content?
We recommend using Later’s Tagged Media tool — it lets you quickly find images and videos that you’ve been tagged in on Instagram and save them to your Media Library for future posting.
To access your Tagged Media, simply open your Later account on the web, click the “Collect” tab on the left sidebar, and then select “Tagged Media.”
Here you’ll be able to collect and save all the photos, videos, and carousel posts that your account has been tagged in.
TIP: You can also access your tagged media by from your side library! Just click “Show Filters” and select the “Tagged Media” system filter!
Leveraging UGC on Instagram is a great way to curate a beautiful Instagram feed and an excellent strategy for marketing your business.
But it’s incredibly important to follow the UGC rules of reposting to Instagram! Always remember to give credit to the original poster and when in doubt ask for permission.
Tagged Media is only available on all of Later’s Business plans starting at $19/month!
Organize Instagram Content #5: Source Photos & Videos for Instagram with Contributors
If your business works with multiple photographers and influencers, keeping track of all the photos and videos you receive (and who sent what) can be super time-consuming.
And if you find yourself juggling multiple media sources, you run the risk of posting the same image twice or scrambling to get images from your contributors and collaborators at the last minute. And that’s one stress you can live without!
Last year, Later created Contributors, a brand new media submissions tool to help streamline your process for collecting photos and videos for Instagram from your photographers, influencers, or other sources!
If you’re managing multiple Instagram profiles, as well as contributors, this tool really is a huge time-saver and a great way to project manage your account!
With our new Contributors feature, all you have to do is invite a photographer or influencer to be a contributor to your account, and they can immediately start submitting content to your Later account for you to review.
And once you’ve received a submission from a contributor, you can easily transfer it to your Media Library and then schedule it to one of your social profiles!
Later’s Contributors tool also creates an easy way for businesses to approve or reject the content they receive from photographers and influencers.
Once a photographer submits a piece of content to you, it will appear in the Pending tab of your Contributors folder.
From there, you can either approve it by adding it to your Media Library, or if you decide that the photo doesn’t match your Instagram aesthetic, you can reject it by selecting it and then clicking the Discard button.
Overall, Later’s Contributors feature offers a simple and effective way to organize and keep track of all your submissions — so you can quickly find the perfect photo or video right when you need it, and easily remember who to give photo credit to.
Watch this video to find out more about Later’s Contributors feature:
Contributors is available now on all Later business plans, starting at $19/month.
Organize Instagram Content #6: Categorize Your Hashtags with Saved Captions
Using relevant, targeted hashtags on your social media posts is still one of the best ways to get discovered by new audiences — but as we’ve said before, not just any hashtag will do!
You need to be deliberate with your hashtags and only use relevant ones that focus on the content you are sharing and relate to your brand.
Unfortunately, since they’re often the final step, Instagram hashtags can become something of an afterthought.
If you’re looking to be more consistent with your hashtags, you should consider using Later’s Saved Captions feature, it lets you create multiple hashtag lists based on your frequently used hashtag categories and then easily insert them into your captions with just a single click!
For example, let’s say you run a spa in San Diego, and your Instagram feed is a collection of beautiful California-based travel photography, and images of your spa and treatments you offer.
Instead of trying to remember (or find) relevant hashtags for every post, you can use Saved Captions to keep them all organized, so you can quickly add them when scheduling in the future.
If you want to schedule a photo of a beach in San Diego, since you’ve already saved hashtags for different categories, you can we can insert relevant hashtags for beaches, California, travel, and San Diego with just the click of a button!
After you’ve written your caption, just click on “Saved Captions” and then click on the appropriate hashtag list to instantly add those hashtags to your caption!
When it comes to keeping your Instagram organized, using with an all-in-one social media scheduling tool like Later is a great way to save time while improving your performance, engagement, and growth rate!
Ready to get organized and plan out your Instagram content in advance? Start scheduling with Later, the #1 Instagram marketing platform trusted by over 2 million businesses! Sign up now — it’s free!
