GUIDE

14 of the Top Time-Saving

Instagram Hacks for
Social Media Managers

No matter the size of your business, managing a

professional Instagram presence takes a lot of time
and resources (more than most people expect,
right?). Use these Instagram hacks to save time on
administrative tasks so you can focus on what really
matters—creating thumb-stopping content that will
delight your audience and attract new customers.
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GUIDE
Table of Contents
3 Competitive research

4 Customer service

5 Content management

6 Photo and video sharing

8 Profile optimization

9 Hashtags
 Competitive research
3

1. See all posts you’ve liked

GUIDE
Take a walk down memory lane with a review of all your past photo
likes. (So. Many. Puppos.)

How to do it:
• Go to your profile
• Open the hamburger menu in the top right corner
• Tap Settings
• Tap Account
• Tap Posts You’ve Liked

2. Set up notifications for other accounts

NEW POST
Add alerts for your favourite accounts and never miss a new post from
your favourite Japanese mascot fan page again.

How to do it:
• Visit the the profile page of the account you’d like to get
notifications for
• Tap the Following button
• Select Notifications
• Toggle the content you want to receive notifications about: Posts,
Stories, IGTV or Live Videos

3. Bookmark your favourite posts

Think of “Collections” as your digital scrapbooks: save your favourite
posts here.

How to do it:
• Go to a post you’d like to save
• Tap the bookmark icon underneath the post you want to save
• It’ll automatically be added to a generic collection, but if you’d like
to send it to a specific one, choose Save Collection; here you can
select an existing collection or tap the + icon to create and name a
new one
• To see your saved posts and collections, visit your profile and tap
the hamburger menu. Then tap Saved
Customer service
4

4. Create shortcuts for common responses

GUIDE
iOS users can create auto-complete comments to respond to common
questions, and save precious seconds. Time is money, people!

How to do it:
• On your Instagram profile, tap the hamburger menu and then
Settings
• Tap Creator and then Quick Replies.
• Tap New Quick Reply
• Choose a few words or a phrase to act as a Shortcut (e.g.,
OpeningHours).
• In the Message section, type the generic response you would
like to create (e.g., “Hi! We’re only open for business during the
Full Moon!”.)
• Tap Save
• Anytime you want to use that specific comment, type out your
shortcut and your phone will automatically populate the full phrase

5. Hide comments from your feed

A picture is worth a thousand words—so do you really need other
people adding to the conversation? Particularly trolls and bots?
Here’s how to keep the comment section quiet.

How to do it:
• From your profile, select the hamburger menu from the top
right and tap Settings
• Tap Privacy
• Tap Comments
• Set Manual Filters for specific words or phrases, or select Hide
Offensive Comments to auto-filter for common rude language
• While you can’t disable comments across your profile, you can
disable comments on a specific post by selecting Advanced
Settings>Turn Off Commenting while you’re posting
Content management
5

6. Remove old posts

GUIDE
(without deleting them forever)
Like the Instagram equivalent of the Disney vault, you can hide old
posts out of sight with the “Archive” function.

How to do it:
• Tap … at the top of the post you want to remove
• Select Archive
• To review all archived posts, go to your profile and tap the
hamburger icon in the top right corner
• Tap Archive
• At the top of the screen click Archive to view either Posts or Stories
• If you want to restore content to your public profile, simply tap
Show on Profile at any time and it’ll show up in its original spot
Photo and video sharing
6

7. Create line breaks in your caption

GUIDE
Take control over the pacing of your caption with this trick to create
line breaks.

How to do it:
• Edit your photo and proceed to the caption screen
• Write your caption
• To access the Return key, tap the 123 key on your device’s keyboard
• Use Return to add breaks to your caption

Note: While the breaks will start a new line, they won’t create the
white space that you would see between two paragraphs. To create a
paragraph break, write out your photo caption in your phone’s notes
app and copy it over to Instagram. Wanna break up lines even further?
Try using bullet points, dashes, or other punctuations.

8. Schedule your posts and Stories in advance

Prep your content to post at premium times with the help of
Hootsuite’s Instagram scheduling tool.

How to do it:
• Watch this YouTube video

Note: Check out our guide to scheduling posts on Instagram to learn

how to do this from a personal account.

Try Instagram scheduling for free today

 7
9. Choose a cover photo for your video
Your hair looked particularly cute 10 seconds into your video, and you
want the world to know. Here’s how to handpick the still that kicks off

GUIDE
your vid.

How to do it:
• Use a graphic design tool like Canva to create an intro image,
and then place at the beginning or end of your video with editing
software
• Tap the + button on the bottom of your screen to select a video
from your Library, or create one in the moment
• Next, tap Cover
• Select the intro image from the selection of stills

10. Use your own fonts on stories

Why Instagram won’t allow you to just use Jokerman font natively,
we may never know. But where there’s a wackily designed ’90s serif,
there’s a way.

How to do it:
• Open a fonts tool. There are plenty of free options via your web
browser, like igfonts.io: be wary of third-party font keyboard
apps that can monitor everything you type, though!
• Type your message into your font tool of choice
• Select the font you want
• Copy the text and paste it into your story (though this works for
profile bios and post captions, too)
 Profile optimization
8

EDIT HIGHLIGHT 11. Change the cover of your Story highlights

GUIDE
Highlight your highlights with a fresh first image.

How to do it:
• Tap your highlight, then tap Edit Highlight
• Tap Edit Cover
• Select your photo from your camera roll

12. Add line breaks to bio

Break up that block of text and share your info in a visually appealing way.

How to do it:
• Open up a notes app and write out your bio as you’d like it to
appear—line breaks included
• Select all the text and choose Copy
• Open the Instagram app
• Tap your profile image icon to visit your profile
• Tap the Edit Profile button
• Paste the text from your notes app into the bio field
• Tap Done to save your changes

13. Switch to a business profile

Officially declaring yourself as a business on Instagram gives you some
serious advantages, like running ads and getting insights. If you’re a brand,
what are you waiting for?

How to do it:
• Go to your profile and tap the hamburger menu
• Tap Settings, then tap Account
• Tap Switch to Business Account
• We recommend that you connect your business account to a
Facebook Page that is associated with your business. This will make it
easier to use all of the features available for businesses. At this time,
only one Facebook Page can be connected to your business account
• Add details such as your business or accounts’s category and
contact information
• Tap Done

For more tips on how to optimize your profile, check out our post of
Instagram Bio Ideas for Business.
 Hashtags
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14. Find the top (and most relevant) hashtags

GUIDE
to use
If you want to be discovered, including hashtags in your post is key.
Here’s how to figure out which ones are the best fit for getting your
content its Star is Born moment.

How to do it:
• Select the magnifying glass icon to visit the Explore tab
• Type in a keyword and tap the Tags column
• Choose a hashtag from the list
• This will take you to a page of posts bearing that hashtag
• Above the “Top” and “Recent” portions of the page, there appears
a small bar labeled “Related.” Next to this, Instagram will display a
list of relevant hashtags that you can swipe through for inspiration
(and further research)

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Instagram marketing
strategy?
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