How To Use Planoly
One of the things I get asked about the most is how to plan and strategize your Instagram posts ahead and I find myself recommending Planoly’s planning software a hundred times a month. Here’s the thing though, I’m always faced with the follow-up question of, “I got Planoly, now what? How do I use it?” I’ve been saying I would make a walkthrough video for how to use it for way too long and today is your lucky day because I FINALLY did!
Alright without further ado, here’s the video: (if you prefer reading to watching just keep scrolling)
Here are the cliff notes:
First of all, I feel like I should mention that Planoly works on both a computer or a phone. I typically plan on my computer because it’s easier to see all the pieces at once. I’m approaching this tutorial from that perspective.
When you first open up Planoly, it will take you to your dashboard. If you ever need to get back to this page, just click “plan” on the top right menu.
On the right you’ve got a calendar view. You can change this to a weekly or monthly view on the top right menu. I prefer monthly. On the calendar you can see posts that have already gone live and ones that are scheduled. The scheduled posts will be bold.
On the left side of your screen you can see a grid view. This is exactly how your Instagram grid will look once your scheduled posts go live. It gives you a baseline of posts that have already been posted so you can see it all working together. The posts that have already gone live have an icon on them showing how many likes and comments they received. The unscheduled or scheduled posts you’re working on will have either a U or S icon in their top left corner.
To load more photos into your grid view click the + icon at the top middle of the grid. Pick a source, select the images you’d like to add and click open. These photos will populate in a preview screen and you can choose to upload them as one carousel post or individual posts.
Now that your images are populated in your grid you can just click and hold a photo and drag it to arrange your grid to be aesthetically pleasing.
Then to plan your captions and schedule the posts you click on the photo. A pop up box will come up where you can write your caption. Below where you write your caption you’ll see a dialogue box where you can pick a date and time for your post to go live and below that you will see where you can schedule it to go live automatically on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter. Carousel posts can not be scheduled to go live automatically. If you don’t toggle your post to go live automatically, or if you schedule a carousel post and can’t, then Planoly will actually notify you on your phone app via push notifications to go through the motions of posting to Instagram. It’s still pretty easy to do this because it takes you right into Instagram with the photo and a copy of your caption.
There is also a menu on the bottom left of your photo. If you click edit, it gives you options like swapping the photo out for a different one or cropping it, etc. Next on the menu is where you can geotag your location. Planoly can add this to an auto post in Instagram which is great for searchability. Next, you have the option to have Planoly tag another user in your post. Another great feature that I love in this menu is that you can actually have Planoly automatically post your hashtags in the first comment of your post! This is such a nice feature for keeping your posts clean by still using hashtags! When you click on this option you can either type in hashtags or you can click the hashtag symbol on the bottom right to populate groups you’ve planned in advance. More on that in a minute.
Once you’ve written your caption, scheduled and optimized your post, click save and it will take you back to your dashboard where you’ll be able to see the little U icon change to an S icon. If you’ve scheduled your post to go live automatically, you’ll also see a little paper airplane next to the S. If it’s a carousel post you’ll also see a little white square on the top right corner of the photo.
Okay, now back to hashtags. On your dashboard, in the menu above your grid you will find a # symbol all the way to the right. Click on this and you can create groups of hashtags to add to your posts. I highly recommend researching your hashtags in advance and saving strategic groups on them right here. You can access them on your phone app too, for posting on the go.
Lastly, you can even respond to comments through your Planoly dashboard and analyze your posts both via the menu on the top right of your screen. These are both great tools that I hope to talk more about in future posts!