With the rapid rise of social media in the past few years, it’s become an integral part of marketing. However, with the limitation of time and manpower, it can be difficult to keep up with all these platforms. If you’re finding your Instagram account isn’t getting as much traffic as you’d like and you need better Instagram management software, this article is for you.
Instagram management tools are the best tools for people who want to manage their Instagram accounts effectively. These tools help you in scheduling your posts, posting individual or bulk content, reporting, analytics and many other features. There is a wide list of social media management tools available but they are not always free. Some of them also have a free trial period which you can use on your Instagram account to decide if you like the tool or not.
Whether you are a practicing social media manager or looking forward to taking on Instagram social media marketing yourself, here are a few tips to get started:
Identify Your Audience
The very first to social media management in Instagram is understanding your audience. Determine whether the majority of the people on an Instagram account are children, couples, elderly, or young people.
After you’re done with identifying your audience, the next step is to focus on your account leads. Use Instagram insights to find impressions, reach, follower activity, video views, website clicks, saves, and more.
Though Instagram provides built-in insight checking, it can also go for a third-party social media management tool.
Talk to Your audience
It’s not a good practice if everything you share on Instagram is sales material. To keep the potential audience engaged in the long-run, make sure to post trending, attractive, and engaging posts. Think from the audience’s perspective and try to solve their problems beforehand.
For example, a health niche Instagram account can share health, exercise, and diet tips while their products now and then. It adds value to an Instagram handle.
Grow Instagram Account
This is by far the most asked questions among Instagram users. It’s crucial to grow your business Instagram account at a good pace. If all you’re doing is posting content and neglecting the growth of your social following, you’re doing it wrong.
Besides all organic methods to increase followers, likes, comments, and reach, using third-party promotion tools like Insta Growing can also help. It is rare to find platforms that provide real likes but Insta growing is one of them.
Post Quality & Trendy Visuals
Posting quality & trendy visuals will make the audience search your account now and then and look for something useful. It increases engagement, leads, and can also derive more traffic to the relevant business website.
Repost for Instagram
Platform: Android
Purpose: Reposting
Price: Free (with in-app purchases)
If you want to repost content shared by your followers and credit them for the post, Repost for Instagram is the app for you. The posts it generates are free from watermarks. You can save them to your mobile devices and schedule for posting later.
Reposting has never been easier. You’ll just need to click the three dots below the comments section and you’ll get a URL to the reposted post. You can post instantly or queue up for later. You can even share the URL with other apps or networks.
You can add preset signatures and watermarks as needed. The app keeps the appearance and content of posts intact. This helps consolidate your authenticity among your followers.
Iconosquare
Platform: iOS, Android, web
Purpose: Analytics
Price: $29/month
To check the pulse of your audience, you need to have data-driven analytics at your fingertips. Iconosquare is a powerful app that provides detailed reports about multiple social accounts. You can even track your promoted posts in some selected plans.
The dashboard is fully customizable and easy to read. The app lets you publish posts using geolocation and tagging. Your posts get maximum visibility as they’re posted at the best times.
Find out how you stack up to competition. Iconoquare measures industry benchmarks and compares them with your engagement, reach, and community growth. You get a 14-day free full-featured trial after which you can start with their Pro plan for $29 monthly.
Snapseed
Platform: Android, iOS, macOS
Purpose: Photo editing
Price: Free
Snapseed is a photo editing app that you can download free of cost from the Google or Apple app stores. The power-packed app consumes just 22MB storage and comes in 40+ languages.
The app saves your photos without distorting colors and resolution. It has features such as contrast, crop, and rotate. You can annotate images and add vignettes. To retouch old photos, you can use its Brush, Lens, and White Balance features.
Fashion bloggers will love its Glamour Glow feature. Its Face Enhance capability diminishes facial imperfections. You can save your favorite effects and apply them on new images instantly.
VSCO
Platform: iOS, Android
Purpose: Photo/video editing
Price: Free and Membership
Instagram filters are passé. You need professional-grade tools to create stunning imagery that your followers will love. VSCO is a reputable photo editing app for Instagram with a full-featured free version.
The free edition of VSCO comes with 10+ original presets and standard editing tools to modulate contrast, grain, and saturation. You also get to connect with other content creators and learn from their valuable input.
If you need advanced features such as HSL and borders and video editing, you can opt for a VSCO membership, which costs $19.99 a year. For that price, you get 200+ presets and film emulation presets to recreate the vintage look.
Life Lapse
Platform: iOS, Android
Purpose: Video editing
Price: Free
If you want to create Boomerang-type videos of longer duration, Life Lapse is the app you should download. From a single interface, you can import or capture videos, add effects, and post to Instagram or queue for later. The icing on the cake is that the app is completely free.
You can create stop videos, which are a series of pictures arranged end to end, to give the look and feel of a video. The app lets you add effects to the pictures, adjust video speed, and even add royalty-free music clips from their gallery.
Life Lapse is ridiculously simple to operate. Its image overlay technology creates stop videos in a jiffy. You won’t have to spend hours manually arranging pictures, or invest in costly video editing software.
InShot
Platform: iOS, Android
Purpose: Video editing
Price: Free
InShot has an edge over other free video editors owing to its remarkable features and user-friendly interface. Its GLITCH video effect was nominated for the #googleplaybestof awards in 2019.
It lets you trim, merge, and splice videos. You can add voice overs to your vlogs or pick free clips from their library. You get a rich lineup of animated stickers that can be added to videos. You can caption and sync text snippets to accompany your video content.
FilmoraGo
Platform: iOS, Android, macOS
Purpose: Video editing
Price: Free + optional in-app purchases
Wondershare’s FilmoraGo app is great for beginners who are testing the waters. It lets you preview edited videos in real time. You can merge videos and stills, apply transitions to frames, and add themes and filters.
It lets you delay or speed up videos, and create videos that run in reverse. It gives you the option of adjusting the screen ratio to 1:1 (suitable for Instagram) or 16:9. Without spending a penny, you can download several transitions, overlays, music, and elements.
Their support center has comprehensive step-by-step tutorials in multiple languages. You can also hobnob with the community and learn new editing hacks.
Layout from Instagram
Platform: iOS, Android
Purpose: Layout designing
Price: Free
If you’re in the mood for making collages, Layout from Instagram lets you make some cool ones. You can combine up to 9 pictures from your gallery and arrange them in innovative grid layouts. You can capture varied moods by clicking the Phone Booth feature.
To search pictures quickly, you can use the Faces tab. Mirror, duplicate, resize, flip, replace, and zoom images as you need. To up your editing game, add Instagram’s filters to your collage. Save the collage in your gallery and upload to your account.
Spark Post
Platform: iOS, Android
Purpose: Graphics designing
Price: Free (with in-app purchases)
Adobe’s Spark Post is a feature-rich app you can use for creating crazy layouts and animated pictures. It’s replete with amazing design filters and typography styles. Auto recolor and resize can transform the look of your images instantly.
Render your photos with cut-out, outline, shadow effects to make them even more breathtaking. If you run out of post ideas, go through the tons of professionally-designed design templates. You can also access their free stock pictures and curated fonts and shapes.
You can brand your designs if you buy Adobe’s Creative Cloud subscription. All your artwork is auto backed up on the cloud so that you can edit across devices. Their Starter pack is free and offers limited features. They also have a paid plan that costs $19.99 monthly.
SproutSocial
Platform: iOS, Android, web
Purpose: Analytics
Price: $99/user/month
While Instagram has a number of free analytics tools, you won’t have access to them unless you have a Business account. SproutSocial has no such constraints. It can schedule your posts in optimal periods and track each post’s performance.
It also monitors your hashtags and comments. If you own multiple accounts, SproutSocial provides you a unified inbox from where you can respond to comments. You can even publish via the app and line up posts for the future.
In the high-end plans, you get a social CRM toolset where you get a panoramic view of each contact’s engagement. Its smart monitoring never lets you miss any comment or @mention. You can repost your followers’ content and strengthen your relationships.
Command for Instagram
Platform: iOS
Purpose: Analytics
Price: Free (with in-app purchases)
To survive and thrive in the competition-ridden influencer domain, you need to keep an eye on your work as well as of your competitors. Command for Instagram offers insightful reports about other influencers on your radar.
It gives hourly stats about your latest posts. It also scans the network for like-minded influencers with whom you can collaborate. You can get report cards about your account’s health and intelligent suggestions for improvement.
Panoramiq Insights
Platform: iOS and Android
Purpose: Analytics
Price: $7.99/month
Panoramiq Insights is an Instagram analytics tool from Hootsuite. It works only with Business accounts. Its social listening capability keeps you abreast of trending topics in your niche. It analyses your follower demographics and highlights areas where you have a strong foothold.
The app scans the performance of all your posts and identifies the best ones. Then, you can derive algorithms for what’s clicking with your community and replicate the same approach.
It even analyses your Instagram Stories and gives detailed reports that you can export to CSV or PDF formats. For such a robust platform, Panoramiq Insights is reasonably priced.
Conclusion:
Whether you’re a beauty blogger, a photographer, or simply want to share your everyday life with others, Instagram is the perfect platform for you. Unfortunately, running even one Instagram account can be time consuming and stressful (do I sound familiar?).