Autogrammer puts social media posts on autopilot

Gizmo Editor Review

I thought I was doing pretty well using social media channels to promote my “brand” but it turns out I was missing a significant opportunity. While I was paying attention to Twitter, Facebook and a couple of lesser channels, it seems that a boatload of people were focusing on Instagram.

According to a site called DMR, Instagram has more than 400 million active users and more than 75 million use the service every day. And an article posted on Patrice Press outlines some of the ways companies and individuals are using the vast reach of Instagram to promote their products and services.

Clearly, I needed to get in that game and to do it right, I needed to do more than post an occasional image or item. I needed a way to schedule and even bulk upload my posts.

That’s what led me to Autogrammer, a new platform that lets users schedule Instagram posts along with content for other social media channels. In addition to Instagram, Autogrammer also supports Pages, Groups and Profiles on Facebook as well as the ubiquitous Twitter.

Users can set up a new account with a username and password or log in using their current Twitter, Facebook or Google+ account. Once inside, they’re presented with a dashboard to manage their posts on multiple platforms.

With just a couple of clicks, I added my Instagram account and my Facebook account along with Facebook Pages and Groups. Instagram required that I verify my account, but that was a simple process that didn’t slow me down. More details and a set of helpful walk-through instructions from Autogrammer arrived in an email.

Now I was ready to post some photos to Instagram. I clicked the link to my account from my media account list in the dashboard’s left panel, then clicked a “Add post” in the main screen to bring up Autogrammer’s posting window.

The window let me select which channels I want to post to, a date and time for the post to appear, the image I wanted to upload and any text that would appear with it, including a web link. An Edit button brought up a full palette of photo editing tools, including frames, contrast adjustment and tools to crop, resize or change orientation. Some of the photos I’ve seen on Instagram of parties, kids and pets would have benefitted greatly had their owners made use of Autogrammer's redeye removal tool.

Once a posting is saved, it appears on the dashboard with a calendar icon to show that it is scheduled for a future time or a checkmark to denote that it has been sent to Instagram. You can open a scheduled post to make revisions such as changing the time or text, but you can’t go back in time and change one that’s already been posted.

One of the most useful features of Autogrammer is the bulk upload option. I was able to upload several photos at once, then edit each one in the dashboard and set a publication date and time. That sure beat slogging through them one at a time in Instagram.

A trial account on Autogrammer is free. Upgrade packages that support multiple social media accounts start at $19 a month.  

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Written by Ric Manning

Follow me on Twitter @ricmanning and read my technology columns at My Well Being.