Automate posting your Instagram photos on Reddit
Automation is your friend.
If you’re trying to grow your instagram, Reddit is a great way to get your posts in front of more eyes and build your audience. If you try to post manually it can take a large amount of time and effort. This is why I found a way to post to reddit every time you post to Instagram.
The tools I use:
- Later (allows you to schedule Instagram in advance, optional to post to Reddit — free plans available)
- Postpone (the program that publishes to reddit — this costs $10 a month and the link is an affiliate that I earn a small commission on)
- Zapier (the program that links Instagram to postpone — this can be free if you don’t post much on instagram but can cost $25 a month if you post a fair amount)
The set up:
Step 1.
Set up a Zapier account and create a new Zap. Call it something like insta to reddit.
Step 2.
Add the trigger “New Media Posted in My Account in Instagram” and connect your instagram account.
Step 3.
I caption my Instagram posts in such a way that I can extrapolate the first line to use a title on Reddit. To do this add the action “Run Javascript”. Name the input data caption and select the caption from the drop down. Add the following code in the code section:
This will output the first line of the caption and you will use it later on.
Step 4. (Optional)
Add the action “Text” select “Transform” and select Convert to ASCII. Select the input to be the caption that you just processed. Some subreddits have filters that automatically flag your post if your title is not in ASCII so this is a safety step.
Step 5.
Next you have to upload the image to Imgur. To do this you need to register an application on Imgur. Make a note of your Client ID as you’ll need this to upload an image to Imgur. Add another “Run Javascript” action. There’s two input fields here; imageUrl which is the media URL from the instagram action and the imageTitle from caption Run Javascript action. Paste the following code in the code field and replace <IMGUR-CLIENT-ID> with your Client ID.
We upload the image to Imgur to ensure that Reddit displays the full image.
Step 6.
Finally add the “Schedule Reddit Post in Postpone for Reddit” Action (this is invite only from Postpone). Link your postpone account, add a relevant title for the subreddit you’re posting to, for example if you’re posting to r/ITAP they require the caption to be “ITAP of …” in our case it would be “ITAP of <Caption from step 4>”. Fill in the link section with the Data Link from the Imgur upload. Type the name of the subreddit you want to post to and the time you’d like to post e.g. “tomorrow at 1pm”(Postpone has a handy feature which averages when the previous top posts were posted for each subreddit if you need inspiration for when to post).
Step 7.
If the caption fits more than one subreddit then you can crosspost it to each in the above Action. Otherwise, you can add a second “Schedule Reddit Post in Postpone for Reddit” Action.
Using this method my posts have been upvoted 3500 times and have over 100 comments.
This can create a sense of community around your content and a great thing about reddit is that you don’t know what will get a lot of upvotes, there’s always a chance of going viral. If you’re an individual then this method may be slightly expensive however if you’re trying to grow a brand or would like more eyeballs on your work then this is a perfect fit.
