Posted by Instagram was 100% phone only and slowly things changed. We the Social Media managers have dreamt of managing Instagram from our computers since the day we recognized the immense potential Instagram has as a marketing platform. However, Instagram realised this in 2020. (Better late than never, am I right? or am I right?).
Here’s what Instagram has to say,
”2020 has been an unprecedented year. The global pandemic has pushed the world into remote working and learning, which, along with social distancing measures, forced people to spend an increased amount of their time online. Because of this, products like Instagram Messaging and Instagram Live, became even more important in helping people stay connected with the people and things they love. It was important that we enable users to access those products from their desktop computers.”
Table of Contents
How to edit your Instagram profile on your desktop computer
You can take care of a lot of things on instagram.com. This includes editing your profile.
Go to instagram.com > on your profile > edit profile.
Here you can edit 👇
- Your profile picture
- Your name.
- Your username.
- Your bio.
- Website
- Phone number
- Gender
You can change your password ✅
Edit the permissions you’ve given to the apps and websites ✅
Subscribe to various notifications via email or SMS ✅
Turn on/ off push notifications ✅
Manage contacts ✅
Manage privacy and security settings ✅ This includes account privacy, 2FA, comment settings etc.
You can check your login activity ✅
Check out the list of emails you’ve received from Instagram ✅
NOTE: You cannot edit Instagram action buttons like call, text, email, directions—or additional buttons like order food or gift cards.
Like, comment and share posts and Stories on desktop
When you go to Instagram.com, you will see your timeline and the Stories at the top.
You can like the posts, comment on them and share the posts. The limitation here is that you can’t share a post in your own Stories.
You can watch Stories by clicking on the profile picture that shows up at the top. Here you can react to the Stories and can send a reply. What you can’t do > interact with the stickers. Just like the mobile version, the lives are stacked at the beginning of the Stories and can be watched by clicking on it.
Find Instagram accounts on desktop
Explore feed on desktop Instagram
Instagram Messaging on Desktop
You can also like messages on the desktop version by clicking on the three dots.
So that’s all you can do on Instagram.com on a desktop. There still is the question of posting and checking your analytics. So how do you do that? Well, there are a few tools that can help you with this.
Post on Instagram via desktop
You can use Facebook’s creator studio to schedule your posts or post instantly.
Or you can use Crowdfire to schedule your Instagram posts.
Try Crowdfire for freeRead more about publishing to Instagram using Crowdfire.
Check your analytics on desktop
You can check the post level analytics on Creator studio‘s main page. Click on the post and it will open the insights.
You can see the account level analytics under the insights section on the left menu.
This shows you analytics for 7 days just like your mobile app. Also, you need a professional Instagram account to use Creator studio and to access the analytics.
You can also deep dive into your Instagram analytics on Crowdfire.
You can also download your Instagram analytics using Crowdfire.
You cannot post Instagram Stories or reels using desktop yet. We’ll keep you updated this changes.
That’s all folks! That’s how you use desktop for your end to end Instagram marketing. Did I miss something? Let me know in the comment section. Got a question related to this? Drop that in the comment section as well.
Great!. You can also upload photos to Instagram, from the PC.