At Hopper HQ, we believe that crafting the perfect post should be simple and hassle-free. Our platform is designed to provide you with a seamless experience, offering user-friendly tools that allow you to personalize and edit your posts with just a few clicks.
Before we dive into the process of creating and scheduling the perfect post, we recommend checking out this blog piece "Scheduling Content: Getting Started". This resource breaks down important considerations to ensure your content is well-suited for your platform and resonates with your audience.
Now, let's focus on creating that perfect post! It's a bit of a cocktail to success. So grab your glass and let's explore the key elements 🥂
Single media post or Carousel posts?
Quality and size of media
User Tagging and @mentions
Editing
Time Settings
Caption
First comment
Location
Schedule to multiple platforms
Drafts
Single media or Carousel post?
Begin by considering the type of post you want to schedule. Single media posts and carousel posts each have their own unique benefits, so choose the option that best fits your posting goals.
A single media post is a great way to convey a concise message or showcase a captivating image or video. It captures your audience's attention with a single focal point, making it easy for them to engage with your content.
Gallery or Carousel posts are posts with multiple files that can be viewed by swiping to the next photo or video. They are a great way to deliver more value to your followers in the one post. However, with carousel posting you often need to have some level of loyalty and interest from your followers to ensure they swipe left to see the full post. This puts pressure on the order of your carousel post as you need to quickly peak and then retain your audience's interest.
Examples of useful carousel posts are batching a series of similar photos together, before and after images, infographics, long video content broken down, etc.
Quality and size of media
At Hopper HQ, we will automatically re-size your larger images in line with Instagram's maximum dimensions (find out more about these here).
Images that are bigger than 1080 pixels on their largest side will be compressed down to 1080 pixels respectively, as this is the largest dimension Instagram allows.
To avoid any automatic changes from being made on Hopper HQ or Instagram, we advise uploading files that are 1080 pixels on their longest side, to ensure your post isn't stretched or distorted when uploaded to Instagram.
While we don't impose a maximum file size for video uploads, you must ensure that your posts are in line with the following Instagram guidelines.
The maximum video width is 1080 pixels, and the minimum is 600 pixels. While there's no height restriction, videos must be within the maximum portrait and landscape ratios (4:5 and 1.91:1, respectively). We recommend uploading videos in .mov, .mp4, or .m4v formats with a maximum frame rate of 30fps.
User tagging and @mentions
Another sure fire way of increasing engagement on Instagram is by tagging other users in your photo, video, or caption!
Scheduling your user tags and mentions is likely to result in fast engagement, which is important because the Instagram algorithm favours posts that receive likes and comments quickly after being published. As well as engagement, mentions also contribute to building a community and starting conversations with people in your target demographic, which are both huge parts of Instagram management.
Whether you're collaborating with influencers, running a competition, or promoting another brand, don't forget to tag or mention them in your posts.
For more information adding and scheduling a user tag on your Instagram post check our help centre article.
Editing
Our built-in editing tools offer a wide range of filters to help you achieve the perfect Instagram aesthetic. Whether you prefer a moody, bright, minimalist, or vintage look, we've got you covered. Consistency is key, so using the same filter across your posts creates a cohesive visual style.
As part of our mission to save you time, our built-in editing tools allow you to make a variety of changes and perfect your content as you schedule it, from within your Hopper HQ dashboard.
To edit your image (currently desktop only), select the “Edit Image” button that appears when you hover over your image. From our built-in editor you can make a range of changes to your picture.
Our built-in editor lets you:
Add one of over 25 different filters.
Alter the picture’s brightness, contrast and saturation.
Crop the picture inline with Instagram's guidelines.
Add a variable radial blur or vertical blur to create the look of a focal spot or region.
Add a coloured border to your picture.
Add stickers from a selection of over 15.
Use a variable thickness paintbrush to draw onto your picture with any colour.
Create memes and add text to your picture.
And so much more! 🎉
Time Settings
When to post is a big question. We've made this as easy as possible for you at Hopper HQ.
To help you make sure your posts are always easily scheduled at the perfect time, we've added Time Settings to your account. With this feature you can now preset your perfect scheduled times and set timezones for each of your connected social media accounts.
Once you've referred to Hopper HQ's Analytics and our Best Time to Post Tool, you can use this information to create a weekly Post Schedule.
When scheduling content you have three options:
Manually enter the time and date - you have full control to make the scheduling decisions for each and every post.
Use your Post schedule Time - click here for the post to fall into the next scheduled time slot chosen by you in Time Settings.
Post Now - publish the post immediately once you press 'Save'.
Caption
We all want our caption game to be strong. This is because captions have the power to stop a scroller in their tracks. Captions offer a brilliant opportunity to reveal more information, detail and value for our audience.
Whether you are doing a product reveal, business update, customer review follow these six tips to write engaging instagram caption:
The first line is important - ensure your first line is attention grabbing. As captions are often minimised to the first few words, here is your opportunity to turn that scroll into a Like. Saying something funny, hard-hitting, creating a cliff-hanger is exactly how to ensure your audience press into your caption to see what you have to say.
Use line breaks - even with a long caption you can put them into short digestible mini-paragraphs, rather than a bulk of (daunting) text. With Facebook, Linkedin and Instagram you have a looser word count to be able to articulate interesting thoughts. Saying that, not many people come to these platforms for essays, so be tactful in what you say revealing enough to capture attention, but leaving them wanting to know more...
Add a call-to-action - engagement doesn't have to stop at the post. If you've worded your caption right your audience will want to know more. Use this to encourage your followers to visit your website, sign up to your newsletter, shop online, or check out your blog! This is, after all, a central reason we want a strong social media presence 😉
Include eye-catching emojis - make your caption a little more fun with our emoji picker!
Write your captions in bulk - we all know writing captions can be hard, thus why at Hopper HQ we pride in the ability to upload and edit in bulk. This ensure that when you are in the headspace, you're able to create in ease.
Use hashtags to boost your reach - an excellent way to attract new Instagram followers, increase your reach, categorise your posts and find content created about you by your followers. Be sure to make use of our #HashtagExplorer in Hopper HQ, where you can browse hashtags related to ones already in your caption, as well as track their popularity on Instagram.
First Comment
With Instagram posts you're able to schedule a first comment. This can be incredibly useful if you want to have a detailed caption extending into the first comment, or, as a way to have your hashtags separate - see blow for an example.
Location
Instagram posts with a location receive 79% more engagement than those without. Whether it’s your town or city, or the specific office building you’re in, add locations to all of your Instagram posts to improve engagement.
Naturally, your audience want to know where you are as this can help build an image of your account. Whether they are interested in buying something and querying delivery times, or want to visit in-person, with Hopper HQ you can add location tags to all of your scheduled photos and videos, streamlining your Instagram management and saving time.
Schedule to multiple platforms
Scheduling similar content to multiple platforms is fruitful not only because you'll have a coherent social image and aesthetic, which becomes more secure and concrete if replicated across platforms. But also, it saves you valuable time to focus your energy elsewhere.
So if you create an awesome piece of content, have an announcement, or are stuck for time, speed up the scheduling process use our multiple platform scheduling function! It is integrated into our Upload and Edit screen so you can decide exactly what content goes to which socials.
Drafts
Don't worry if your post is not yet perfect...
Simply tick your post and save it as a Draft, where it'll sit ready to be edited and scheduled when everything is perfect. 👌
Final word
There are many components to creating and scheduling the perfect post and we know scheduling content can be a mammoth undertaking, but we hope with our platform we've made this an easy streamlined process.
We can't wait to see the amazing content you're going to curate with us! ✨
What's next?
Don't worry if you're still a little unsure, join our weekly Deminar to explore the platform and ask your questions.
Now you've created and scheduled the best post see how to get on the Instagram Explore page!
Do you have awesome content? Let us know, we'd love to Spotlight YOU!