Publishing to Instagram
Connect a brand's Instagram account, and publish feed posts, carousels, stories and reels straight from Studio.
Studio publishes to Instagram. Once a brand’s Instagram account is connected, moving an approved item to Posted is what puts it live, and the same board that tracked the work now does the posting.
Until a brand is connected, nothing changes: your team posts on Instagram itself, presses Mark posted in Studio and pastes the link, and the board stays truthful the way it always did.
Connecting a brand
Connecting is per brand, on Settings → Brands, and only for people who can manage brands. Each brand row has an Instagram line with a status chip and a button.
The account must be a Professional account, Business or Creator. You switch that in the Instagram app under Settings → Account type. A personal account cannot be connected.
Press Connect. Instagram’s consent screen opens in a pop-up rather than taking over the page, so if nothing appears, allow pop-ups for the site and try again.
The status chip tells you where the connection stands:
| Chip | What it means |
|---|---|
| Not connected | Nothing is linked. Posting is manual for this brand. |
| Connecting… | The consent flow is still in progress. |
| Connected | Studio can publish for this brand. |
| Connection error | The link broke. Press Reconnect. |
| Messaging delivery off | Posting still works, but Studio cannot see new direct messages. Press Repair. |
Disconnect unlinks the account. If your workspace has not been set up for Instagram connections at all, the button is disabled and Studio says so: posts are tracked manually, which works fine.
What each content type publishes as
The item’s type decides which Instagram surface it goes to:
| Type | Publishes as | What it takes |
|---|---|---|
| Post | Feed | One photo, one video, or a carousel of 2 to 10 items, photos and videos mixed. |
| Story | Story | 1 to 10 frames, each a photo or a video. |
| Reel | Reel | Exactly one video. A reel will not take a photo. |
| Event | Feed | Same as a post. |
| Nowhere | Never published. | |
| Photo shoot | Nowhere | Never published. |
A type your admin adds publishes to the feed unless it is set otherwise.
The media gallery
The task drawer holds a gallery rather than a single image. Attach several items, drag to reorder them, and the counter reads how many you have against the limit for that type.
The gallery tells you as you go what the set will become: “Publishes as a carousel, 5 items, the cover first” for a feed post, or “Posts 5 frames one after another, in this order” for a story. The first slot matters, and the note under it says how: the first one is the cover on a feed post, the first frame posts first on a story.
If the set cannot publish yet, the drawer says exactly what is wrong, and it says it quietly at the point you are working rather than as an alarm:
- “A reel needs a video. Attach one to publish this.”
- “A story needs at least one frame. Attach a photo or a video to publish this.”
- “A feed post carries up to 10 items, this has 12. Remove 2, or change the type.”
- “A reel takes a video, this has 2 photos. Swap it out, or change the type.”
Stories go out one frame at a time
A 10-frame story is 10 separate stories, posted one after another in the order your gallery shows. Instagram has no multi-frame story to publish in one go, so Studio walks the sequence.
That has three consequences worth knowing:
- Each frame is acknowledged on its own. A frame that has gone out wears a Posted chip on its tile, links to the live story where Instagram gave one back, and can no longer be removed.
- Nothing can be reordered across a posted frame. A story that is already live cannot be unpublished, so its place in the sequence is fixed.
- If the run stops halfway, the frames that went out are genuinely live and the item stays short of posted. The drawer says so: “3 of 5 frames posted. The rest go out on the next attempt, in this order.” Trying again resumes from the first frame that has not posted, rather than posting the whole story a second time.
Publishing now
From the Pipeline board, the Schedule board or the task drawer, move the item from Approved to Posted. A confirmation opens first.
On a connected brand the dialog says Publish to Instagram, tells you the item goes live now, and its button reads Publish now. There is still a link field, labelled “Already posted by hand? Paste the link”, for the case where somebody beat Studio to it.
On a brand with no connection the dialog says Mark posted, the item simply moves to posted, and the link field is an optional Instagram link.
Either way the item then carries a Posted by stamp with the name and time, everywhere it appears.
Reels are slower. Instagram takes a reel away to transcode it, so a reel publish does not come back with an immediate result. Studio leaves the item at Approved and passes Instagram’s own wording through rather than claiming the reel is live.
Posting automatically at the scheduled time
The drawer has a checkbox reading Post automatically at the scheduled time. It appears only on a type that publishes somewhere, and it cannot be switched on until the item has both a date and a time.
Once armed, the line under it reads back what will happen, for example “Posts automatically on 31 Aug, 4 pm”, and it changes to “Posting now…” when the moment arrives. If the attempt fails, the drawer shows the reason Instagram gave and a Try again button, and the failure stays on the record rather than disappearing.
Clearing the date or the time disarms it, and Studio tells you it has: “Auto posting switched off. This item no longer has a date and time.”
Un-publishing
Posted is the end of the board, and the one move back out of it is posted → approved. It is a quiet action rather than a stage button, and it is restricted.
It clears the posted record in Studio and returns the item to Approved. It cannot pull a live story frame back, because a published story cannot be unpublished, so treat it as a correction to your own record rather than a way to take something off Instagram.