Post to Instagram Business and Creator Accounts From an RSS Feed

PostRSS will publish to Instagram Business and Creator accounts directly through Instagram’s own publishing interface — the integration is built and is currently in testing while Meta reviews it. Once it is live you will connect the account once, and every new item in your RSS or Atom feed will become an Instagram post by itself — no copy-pasting, no notification to tap, no app open on your phone. For the configuration details, our auto-post RSS to Instagram page covers them in full.

Instagram publishing is currently in testing while approval from Meta is pending. Everything described here is built and working; connecting will start working the moment the approval arrives.

What “connecting an account” actually means

Connecting is an authorisation, not a login. PostRSS never sees or stores your Instagram password. You are sent to Instagram, you confirm, and Instagram hands back a token that allows exactly two things:

• instagram_business_basic — read the account’s own name and id, so the account can be shown in your target list.
• instagram_business_content_publish — publish a post.

That is the entire list. PostRSS cannot read your direct messages, your comments, your followers or anyone else’s content. You can withdraw the connection at any time in your Instagram settings, and publishing stops immediately.

Business and Creator accounts only

This is the one requirement that surprises people, so it is worth being blunt about it: Instagram does not allow any tool to publish to a personal account. That is not a PostRSS limitation and no tool can work around it — the publishing interface simply does not exist for personal accounts.

Both professional account types work:

• Business — for companies, shops and organisations.
• Creator — for publishers, authors and individuals who post professionally.

PostRSS reads the account type when you connect and tells you straight away if it is personal, rather than letting you build a target that would never publish anything.

How to switch your account type

Switching is free and takes a few seconds inside the Instagram app:

1. Open your profile and tap the menu, then Settings and privacy.
2. Find Account type and tools.
3. Choose Switch to professional account and pick Business or Creator.

Your posts, followers and username stay exactly as they are. When that is done, connect the account in PostRSS again and the warning disappears.

What happens on every new item

Once the account is connected and a target is created, each new item in your feed goes through the same short pipeline:

• The picture is taken from the feed item, converted to the format Instagram accepts and cropped to a shape it allows.
• A caption is built from your title and link, trimmed to Instagram’s 2,200-character limit.
• The post is created and published through Instagram’s official interface.
• The temporary copy of the picture on our server is deleted.

If something cannot be published — a feed item with no picture, for example — PostRSS tells you the reason instead of failing silently.

Preparing Your Feed Before Instagram Goes Live

Instagram does not accept text-only posts, so the most useful thing you can do now is make sure every item in your feed has a picture. PostRSS looks for it in the feed item first (an enclosure, a media:content tag or the first image in the item) and otherwise in the Open Graph tags of the linked page. Instagram accepts JPEG only and shapes between 4:5 and 1.91:1; PostRSS converts and crops the picture for you, but it helps if the important part of the image sits near the centre, so a crop does not cut it off. Our guide to posting to Instagram with the right picture every time explains the conversion step by step.

Captions deserve a moment of thought too. Links inside Instagram captions are not clickable, so the caption should make sense on its own, with the title doing most of the work. The details are covered in Instagram captions and links from your RSS feed.

Busy Feeds and the Daily Limit

Instagram allows 100 published posts per account in a rolling 24 hours. Most feeds never come close, but news sites and shops with large catalogues can. When a feed produces more than the allowance, PostRSS publishes the remaining items later instead of dropping them, so nothing is lost. You can also use keyword filters to send only selected items to Instagram while the full feed continues to other networks. Read more in posting to Instagram within the 100-posts-a-day limit.

Using the Same Feed Elsewhere While Approval Is Pending

There is no need to wait for Instagram to start automating. The same feed can already post to other targets, each with its own settings, and the Instagram target can be added to that setup the moment publishing opens. A Facebook Page is available on every plan, including Free, and visual networks such as Pinterest boards are included from the Professional plan, while Threads is available from Professional. Because the image and caption work you do for Instagram also improves those posts, preparing your feed now pays off twice. The current plans and networks are listed on the pricing page.

FAQ

Do I need a Facebook Page?

No. PostRSS uses the newer Instagram Login, where a professional Instagram account stands on its own.

Can I connect more than one Instagram account?

Yes. Each account is connected separately and becomes its own target, so different feeds can go to different accounts.

Will PostRSS post to my Stories or Reels?

Feed posts are supported. Stories and Reels are a separate part of Instagram’s interface and are not part of this integration.

What happens if I disconnect the account in Instagram?

Publishing stops and the target is marked inactive, so you can see why rather than wondering where your posts went.

Is my password stored anywhere?

No. PostRSS receives a token from Instagram and never sees your password at any point.

Start automating Instagram

Connect your Instagram Business or Creator account and let your feed do the posting. Create a free PostRSS account and set the first target in a couple of minutes.