This should be great news for Social Media managers. Here’s the latest scoop: Meta’s adding Instagram Stories posting capacity into its Instagram Graph API. In layman’s terms, what this means is that third-party tools can soon facilitate Stories posting and scheduling, making it easier to manage your content from a single platform.
The 3rd Party
As a quick refresher, an app’s API is basically the back-end coding that allows it to communicate with other apps or tools, essentially allowing for the continuity of functioning. In short, it’s a way that apps communicate with each other, and, depending on the goal, API access can potentially make or break an app’s operations.
As Meta explains:
“The Instagram Graph API enables Instagram Business accounts to publish up to 25 single images, videos, reels (i.e. single media posts), or posts containing multiple images and videos (carousel posts) per day using third-party developer platforms. This API enhancement will be available for the current version, v16.0, and all previous versions of the Graph API. As there are no new endpoints or permissions, Stories will become automatically available for developers who already have access to the Content Publishing API.”
That being said, hearing that Instagram still gives a hoot about API access is a sigh of relief for some third parties. It could be a big help for those managing Stories posting through apps like Hootsuite, adding another element to your primary dashboard for posting. Some would personally prefer a more accurate reflection of how their post will look in preview, but having more capability to stay active across all aspects of their presence from a single platform, in many ways, continues to be beneficial.
While apps like Twitter tend to start veering away from offering FREE third-party API access, initiatives such as these, from larger players like Instagram, revitalize the spirits of most third-party groups. If anything, it does make Instagram a bit more appealing seeing as how they’re still able to access its API to further fuel their own growth, not that Instagram doesn’t gain anything in return, but the primary highlight is how this indirectly gives more benefit to whoever is granted access. From a Stories perspective, the potential boost in reach and advertising is probably what entices Instagram the most.
The Wrap
On that note, your management platform will now need to integrate the new update before making it available in their apps, which, as Instagram suggests, users should expect some time soon. With Stories now one of the app’s key engagement surfaces, even more so than its main Feed, it’s certainly worth considering if and how this might change your Stories posting strategy.
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