Publish Instagram Reels

Reels can be scheduled from the same calendar as the rest of your content, so you do not need to open Instagram to post short video.

Account requirements

Connect an Instagram Business or Creator account, using either the direct login or the Facebook-linked method. Personal accounts cannot publish Reels from Social Planner.

Video requirements

• One video per Reel (images and multiple clips are not supported).
• MOV or MP4 format.
• 9:16 vertical ratio recommended.
• Length from 3 seconds up to 15 minutes.
• File size up to 300 MB.
• Optional cover thumbnail up to 8 MB.

Create a Reel

1. Go to Marketing > Social Planner, click + New Post, then Create New Post.
2. In Post to, choose your Instagram account. If it is missing, connect it under settings first.
3. Set the Instagram content type to Reel.
4. Upload your video and, if you like, a custom thumbnail.
5. Write the caption and add other supported details.
6. Choose Post now or Schedule for later, or save it as a draft. Scheduled Reels appear in the Scheduled tab.

By default a Reel shows in both the Feed and the Reels tab. Switch off the feed-sharing option in the composer to publish to the Reels tab only.

Why a Reel might fail

• The video is outside the size or length limits.
• The account connection has expired.
• The caption is too long. Instagram counts some emojis and special characters as several characters, so a caption near the 2,200 limit can still be rejected.

Good to know: Keep captions comfortably below 2,000 characters when you use many emojis.