The Problems with Instagram Publishing
For years, Instagram was the main social platform that didn’t let you auto-publish content through scheduling tools – you’d have to get a notification and finish publishing the post on your phone.
Nowadays you can auto-schedule Instagram posts to your Feed, using your favorite Instagram scheduling tool, but the photo or video still has to fit within their strict limitations.
The Instagram API only lets you auto-publish video posts to your feed if they’re shorter than 60 seconds, which isn’t ideal if you have longer and more engaging content.
Additionally, you can’t auto-publish a video to your Feed if the aspect ratio is taller than 4:5 – not ideal if you want to share full-screen videos recorded at 9:16 aspect ratio.
This means that if you want to upload a video longer than 60 seconds, or full-screen 9:16, you’d have to do it manually on your phone.
Are Reels the Future of Instagram?
Luckily Instagram has been improving its API over the last few months; you can auto-publish Carousel Posts with up to 10 images, and they now let you auto-publish videos to Reels.
Instagram has introduced Reels as the future of their platform, to help fight off the popularity of TikTok. Full-screen videos are what people seem to enjoy most, so Instagram is promoting Reels content heavily, and is even merging Reels and feed Videos into one stream.
Using Reels for Better Instagram Feed Videos
While the Instagram app only lets you share Reels that are up to 90 seconds long, the API lets you upload Reels up to 15 minutes long. And any Reels uploaded via the Instagram API also appear in your Feed Grid.
So here’s a simple trick to help you bypass two Instagram’s limitations for auto-publishing videos:
Use an auto-scheduling tool like SmarterQueue to upload your videos to Instagram
Simply select the “Reels” option when uploading your video in SmarterQueue
BENEFIT #1: Auto-publish your 9:16 videos full-screen, without having to crop them to 4:5 first, or publish them manually
BENEFIT #2: Auto-publish videos up to 15 minutes long, instead of being limited to 60 seconds
By choosing to publish your Instagram videos to your “Reels” instead of “Feed”, you can avoid the length and aspect-ratio limitations of auto-publishing videos to your Feed.
Additionally, Instagram may promote your content even more, as they’re making Reels more visible in Instagram feeds.
This Simple Trick Lets You Auto-Publish #Instagram Feed Videos up to 15 Minutes Long, and at 9:16 Full-Screen Size Click To TweetBONUS: You also get all the benefits of using an Instagram scheduling tool:
- Visual Instagram Grid Planner
- Auto-Schedule your posts using Categorized Queues
- Saved Snippets with your favorite hashtags, captions, and mentions
- Analyze your Profile and get engagement stats
Start your free 14-day trial of SmarterQueue – the most powerful scheduling tool for Instagram, and all your favorite social platforms
