Buffer for Instagram — Plan, track, and analyze your Instagram marketing

@rrhoover Agreed, I was pretty amazed they didn't include it with their business offering - especially given the # of companies out there doing it anyways in the hack fashion.

@rrhoover Thanks Ryan :) Yeah, hopefully Instagram considers opening their API up some more soon! It is super exciting to see that they're headed more and more towards supporting businesses with their new features. Will be interesting to see what the rest of 2016 brings from them :)

@suprasannam @rrhoover totally agree with the sentiment here. we use buffer for twitter and pinterest like crazy, instagram has always been the PITA but I guess the philosophy is that it's supposed to be a personal publishing platform. But now that they are moving more towards supporting businesses, hopefully an API is on it's way, or not :)

@rrhoover I think everyone can agree that not being able to schedule posts sucks bigtime. What I do love is that Buffer is owning the fact that Instagram doesn't let you do it in this product offering. Traditionally I've felt like any of the scheduling apps that offer Instagram support are trying to hide this fact. "We've added Instagram support!" "Wait, so I can schedule posts to Instagram with your app now!" "We've created a system that will make it much easier for you to post at the right times!" "Wait, so does it schedule them for me?" "With our app, scheduling your IG photos is a breeze!" "Yes, but will it post at certain times automatically?" "You'll love our new IG features!"

@suprasannam Great video. That bit at 2:28 with regards to multiple accounts is going to be such a hassle. I'd ask if IG lets you automatically change the account for me, but I'm guessing the answer is 'no'. I've actually noticed it's somewhat buggy even in iOS - I'm frequently logged out of an account when I check my iOS notifications while another account is selected.

@colemercer Thanks Cole! Fantastic question there. Here's how I'd explain it :) When you login to Instagram, imagine it's your very own workshop and only you have the physical key to the door. This key is your login and password. Instagram also has a friendly guard at your workshop door. When Buffer shows up, we can ask for some things like analytics for you but not other things like getting in through the door. Only you can do that part :) The guard checks to make sure you've let us access some of that info and gives us analytics and we're on our way! Certain other companies and apps try a different approach - they ask you to hand them your one and only key (your username and password) and they make a copy of it that they keep. Now they can get into your workshop anytime at all from here on out unless you change the key and lock (change your username/password). Instagram frowns on this and we at Buffer believe is too big of a security risk to ask all our users to hand us copies of their keys. Hope this helps clarify a bit and totally open to answering any more questions around this! You're totally right that it can be confusing when first evaluating Buffer vs. some other apps out there :)

@suprasannam This is awesome. I love how the technical restrictions did not stop you guys from delivering on the general promise of what Buffer stands for. Great video overview. Buffer for me = transparency + creativity + masterful customer service.

@sarthakgh Wow Sar - so happy that's what Buffer means to you! Thanks for taking the time to share :)

@suprasannam This is awesome. Looks like Buffer for Instagram completes the entire suite of products I use often – and would need a scheduling tool for. I had some quick feedback on the marketing page you put together. https://www.opentest.co/share/e8... What do you think?

@suprasannam I started using it today along with Pablo and the experience is amazing. I was spending so many hours designing IG posts and scheduling them with different apps.

@_shahedk Hey Shahed! First of all, Opentest is super cool and I love how you utilized it here :) Second, thanks so much for providing that great feedback. Great point that a secondary CTA at the top would've been helpful! Appreciate you taking the time :)

@galeriks Hiya Halyna! Ah, that seems weird. My hunch is that the reconnection for Facebook might be a separate thing. Sorry for the confusion. Curious if you cancel that popup to reconnect Facebook, can you continue with connecting your Instagram profile? :)

@alfred_lua I closed the Facebook pop-up twice and then I proceed to Instagram connection. Well, maybe Buffer really wanted me to re-connect Facebook :D

@galeriks Ah, that might not be the best experience - sorry! Love to look into this for you if you are still not able to connect your Instagram profile :)

@benterry Wahoo! Amazing that we can help you hit your OKR's :) Best of luck this quarter and thanks for using Buffer :)

@benterry looking forward to seeing more pictures of Todd, Ross, and The Park on ig! ;)

@colazionearoma Hey Teresa! Great question. It depends on which plan you might be on with us but we show users number of comments and likes and Buffer for Business users get advanced insights like sifting by date range, sorting by various criteria and more :)

@tyreljohnson i believe that Grum (and similar services) hacks the IG API to achieve the scheduling option. Hootsuite has had this "work around" service available for many months now. Glad to see that Buffer has caught up.

@tyreljohnson Hey Tyrel! Thanks for the question :) I can't speak specifically to any other service but, in general, there are services out there that offer to post directly without having the user involved at all. Unfortunately, this requires you to hand over your username and password for Instagram directly to that service as they are not using the Instagram API to post (because Instagram does not allow posting via their API :) ). We wanted to build the feature in a way that would not risk our users' accounts being banned by Instagram and in a way that kept their account login information secure. Hence our solution above :) I also tried to take analogy approach to explaining this in a question above :) https://www.producthunt.com/tech... Hope that answers your question! Feel free to ask any more that you might have :)

@tombenattar Thank you Tom, that's so kind of you :)

@trellwest Hey Trell! That is such a great one! I can see how that can be really helpful. That has also come up during our research and it's something we are thinking about already. Glad that you brought it up! :)

@alfred_lua @trellwest This is not quite there yet for me! Not only missing the visual representation of what the feed looks like, but also the hashtag suggestions with the numbers from Instagram. Also for me is very important to engage with the community from the previous post, and this usually takes 10-15 minuets to go through the likes and comments, before I'm ready to post, so if the buffer reminder takes me straight to the editing part it kind of breaks the process for me! Congrats on the launch. Im looking forward to see how this is going to evolve.

@inditravlr Glad it helped Piyush! Reach out to us if you have any more questions :)

@sharifkhalladi We'll be sure to jump on it if they do open things up. :)

@cameradam_ I'm sure I can speak for the whole team when I say we really appreciate your kind words! :) You're totally welcome and hope you love it :)