This is interesting – Facebook appears to be testing a new feature within its Creator Studio dashboard which would provide a calendar overview of your Instagram post activity – both past and scheduled.

As you can see in this screenshot posted by Ahmed Ghanem (and shared by Matt Navarra), the new calendar option, if you have it, appears on the left hand side function bar in your Instagram tab in the app. The calendar displays a listing of all of your Instagram posts, with separate icons for single image updates, carousels and more.

That could make it much easier to map out your Instagram strategy – within Creator Studio, you can schedule your Instagram feed and IGTV posts up to six months in advance, and having the capacity to see them planned out like this could help in ensuring optimal coverage ahead of time.

Of course, ideally, you’d be able to schedule your Instagram Stories via Creator Studio as well, but at present, it’s limited to feed and IGTV posts. That does reduce the utility of the option somewhat – but then again, it looks like, based on this example, the calendar does display your Stories updates as well, even though you can’t post them via Creator Studio itself. The posts with a timer icon are Stories posts.

We’ve asked Instagram for more info, and we’ll update if/when we hear, but it could be another handy addition to Creator Studio, which is gradually becoming a more valuable posting tool. I mean, Facebook post scheduling is already re-directed to the app either way, so most Page managers already have some experience with it. Enhanced listings like this could take it to another level, and make it a more important tool in your social media management process. 

You can learn more about Instagram scheduling in Creator Studio here.