Whether you’re a Fortune 500 company or a content creator hoping to make a name for yourself, Instagram is an excellent way for brands to engage with and expand their audience. The problem with Instagram is that it is primarily a mobile app designed only to allow people to upload content from their mobile phones. That’s where the Creator Studio comes in. A platform that enables you to upload and post to Instagram from a computer.
To upload to Instagram from a computer, first convert your Instagram account to either a business or creator account. Then open the Creator Studio and link your Instagram account to a Facebook Page. Finally, click on Create New Post in the Creator Studio to begin uploading content and posting to Instagram.
In this tutorial, I’ll demonstrate how you can access the Facebook and Instagram Creator Studio which is where you can post videos and photos to Instagram from your computer.
I’ll then walk through posting one of my videos so you can see the whole process from start to finish. This tutorial will follow Facebook’s official guide.
And in case you are wondering why Facebook is tied to this process, this is because Facebook is the parent company of Instagram.
Step 1
Convert Account to Business or Creator
To begin, as the guide stipulates, in order to access the Creator Studio, we first need to convert our Instagram account to either a business or creator account.
Which one should you go for? Well, a Business Account is more for established companies. You get additional features such as being able to sell directly from your Instagram account and allow customers to book appointments, and so on.
Creator accounts, on the other hand, are more for people like me. Individuals looking to make a name for themselves by creating content and growing a fan base. Unless you are an established company, you’ll probably want to opt for a creator account.
Switching to either account is completely free. It doesn’t affect anything you’ve done previously on Instagram, and both accounts get access to the Creator Studio, which is what you need to upload from your computer.
If you are worried about making permanent changes to you account, be assured that you can switch back to a personal account at any time. I’ve included instructions on how to do this at the bottom.
To make the switch, click on your profile icon in the bottom right corner of your Instagram app, followed by the hamburger menu in the top right of the page.
You then want to choose Settings, followed by Account and, if you scroll down slightly, you’ll see the option to Switch to a Professional Account.
Click continue to skip through the screens and you’ll arrive at a screen where you’ll be asked to select a Category for your account. I’ll choose Digital Creator and enable the option to Display on Profile.
We then get the choice of a Creator or Business account, so I’ll go with Creator, and then you have the option to go through 5 additional steps. They’re not compulsory, but you may wish to complete them anyway. I’ll also add a Bio to my Profile.
Step 2
Create a Facebook Page
The next step is to create a Page for your Facebook account.
Click on the Facebook icon in the top left of the screen and choose Pages, followed by Create New Page. Give your page a name and a category. I’ll call mine Wilson’s Wall Art and, as before, I’ll be a Digital Creator.
You can add Bio details if you wish and, when you’re ready, click Create Page.
At this point, you can take the time to develop your page by adding a profile picture, banner image, and all that kind of stuff. But for now, we’ll skip this and just hit save.
Step 3
Link Page to Instagram account
The final step in the process is to link our new Facebook page with our Instagram account, which we can do from the creator studio.
To access the app, browse to business.facebook.com/creatorstudio, or if you have the help guide open you can access it from there.
From this page, you can create posts for both Instagram and your new Facebook page, simply by clicking on either icon on top.
To link your Instagram account, click the icon and choose Connect Account. You’ll then be prompted to log into Instagram, which I do using my Facebook account.
Click continue and we’re then prompted to complete a few more steps in the Instagram app. So switch back over to your phone, click on your profile icon again in the bottom right corner of the screen and this time choose Edit Profile.
And in our profile settings, we’ll click on Page followed by Connect To An Existing Page. Choose the one you want to connect to and click done.
Back on our computer, click OK and it should open your Instagram creator studio page. If it doesn’t or nothing happens, instead you can click Try Again, reconnect to Instagram, and this time you should be fine.
Step 4
Post to Instagram
From here, we can now post directly to your Instagram account.
Start by clicking on Create Post, and then you can click on Add Content to add either a video or image.
Select the video, and enter text into the caption window.
You can choose to add your location and if we scroll down slightly, you also have the option to publish the post on your Facebook page at the same time.
Instagram will use a still from the video as a cover image unless you have something else prepared. And finally, in advanced settings you have the option to turn off comments.
When you’re ready, you can click Publish or click on the little down arrow to schedule your post to be published at a later time. You can separately amend the Facebook version of the post if you wish, otherwise, you’re all done.
If we switch back over to Instagram on our phone, there is our new video post in our timeline.
So that is how to upload a video to Instagram from your computer using the Creator Studio.
If you change your mind in the future, you can undo these changes through the following steps.
How to switch back to a personal account
If you have converted your account to a business or creator account, you can switch back to a personal account at any time.
Here are the steps:
1 – Go to your profile.
2 – Tap Settings, then Account.
3 – Tap Switch Account Type.
4 – Tap Switch to Personal Account and confirm.
How to unlink an Instagram account
To unlink or remove an Instagram account from your Facebook page, do the following:
1 – Open the Facebook page.
2 – Select settings from the left menu.
3 – Select Instagram.
4 – Select Disconnect and confirm.
Hope that was helpful! And for more tips like this, please check out my YouTube playlist of Instagram Tips. See you there!
