Instagram is one of the largest social media platforms in existence today. Over 800 million accounts are currently registered, and the number of logged-in users is above 200 million. This makes Instagram a very attractive platform for businesses that want to reach potential customers. Instagram marketing apps can help you improve engagement and increase your followers on Instagram. Instagram needs no introduction. It is one of the leading social media sites with over 700 million monthly users. If you own a business Instagram can be your marketing goldmine.
Where most people see a filter-happy app, marketing professionals see a thriving sales channel. We know that the Instagram audience is young, active, brand-conscious, and almost universally in love with both makeup and music. We’ve also seen that the best marketing campaigns on social media combine sound strategy with organic user-generated content in a way that’s actually beneficial to everyone involved.
Instagram is one of the largest social networks, reaching an audience of more than 700 million people a month and climbing. But even with such a large audience, it can be hard to manage your Instagram account on your own. Thankfully there are many social media marketing apps for Instagram which will make your life easier.
Wishpond Instagram Hashtag Contest App
Running an Instagram contest is one of the best ways to increase engagement, get more followers, spread brand awareness, and promote your business. With the right Instagram marketing t
ools, you can make sure your contest or giveaway does more for your business.
Wishpond’s Instagram Contest App collects Instagram photos and showcases them in a voting gallery on your Facebook Page or website. Fans submit their photos from Instagram and vote on their favorites.
Running contests is a great way to engage your current followers and collect email leads. They’re a win-win for both you and your Instagram followers.
What are some other ways businesses can use Wishpond’s Instagram Contest?
- Library: Get entrants to snap a photo of you and your book of the moment in your favorite reading spot.
- Mall: Set up a photo booth corner somewhere in a mall and tell Instagramers to snap a photo there for a chance to win.
- Radio station: Have your followers take a funny photo (or video) of them belting out their favorite song
Price: Book a demo
Like2buy
We all know it’s a best practice to include a link to your website or blog in your bio, but Like2buy takes this a step further. They provide a simplistic gallery of products that are instantly available for purchase.
Like2buy provides a link that brands put in their bio. Once a user clicks on the link, it will take them to a page of the brand’s featured products. It only takes a few clicks to get from a brand’s Instagram to their Like2Buy product page. Using this social commerce tool can help you create the ultimate user journey and turn any social channel into a shoppable storefront.
Tip: Use Instagram captions to say “shop link in bio” to remind users that they can shop for the products conveniently.
Price: Request a demo for details.
Layout
Layout is Instagram’s collage app, and it’s by far the easiest app of its kind. It allows you to combine 2-9 of your photos into one image.
There are three options from where you can select your photos: camera roll, recent photos, and an interesting “faces” option where Layout compiles the photos you have of people‘s faces.
There are also a lot of creative features included: such as mirroring, flipping, resizing, and rearranging with just a few taps.
Bonus: It has a photo booth feature that includes a countdown where you can snap up to 4 photos in a row.
How can businesses use Layout for Instagram marketing?
- Real estate agent: Make a collage of several different photos of a new property for sale.
- Beauty salon: Compile a collage of the latest hairstyles of the season.
- Tea merchant: Snap photos of 4 loose leaf teas in visually pleasing containers at a high camera angle.
Price: Free
Instasize
Instasize allows you to edit, filter, and resize photos and videos. The app is seriously easy to use, and it allows you to totally transform your Instagram marketing.
Simply access your camera roll and upload the file you want. Then edit your photo or video and use the red icon in the top right-hand corner of the app to export it by opening it on Instagram, saving it in high-resolution to your camera roll, or sharing it on another social network.
Instasize has a lot more features than just image resizing. Check out their unique overlays, borders, collage frames, and stickers. You have the option to download more borders and stickers easily and for free through the app. This is one of the best Instagram marketing tools for both still images and video.
Price: Free
VSCO
It’s been a while since Instagram’s default filters were the bleeding edge of mobile photo editing. In the meantime, VSCO has emerged as the reigning champ of creating beautiful photos on the go. Part photo-editing platform and part social media network, VSCO should be at the heart of every Instagram strategy.
VSCO has an in-depth editing suite and a slew of high-quality default filters that can take your smartphone photos to a completely new level. There’s also a huge library of filters available on the premium plan, giving you endless options for customizing your photos and setting them apart from the pack.
Price: Free for basic presets and standard editing tools; $19.99/year for access to VSCO’s full suite of presets and image/video editing tools.
Snapseed
Snapseed is another photo-editing app that gives you the option to fine-tune your photos. While Instagram’s default filters edit your entire image at once, Snapseed lets you apply effects with a brush so you can perfect the details of each photo.
Snapseed’s Stacks is another great feature, letting you save groups of filters as a template. These Stacks can then be applied to future photos, giving your entire feed a consistent look and saving you time.
Price: Free.
Vimeo Create
Vimeo Create automatically turns your existing product images and text into polished videos. Just answer a few questions about your product and the videos are generated for you — no video experience required.
Price: Free, with options to upgrade for advanced editing tools and templates
Sked
Sked is a scheduling platform with a wide variety of features—including web-browser-based scheduling—for running more effective campaigns.
Sked also comes with extensive photo-editing features. Using its built-in image editing, you can tweak and fine-tune your photos well beyond Instagram’s default filters. Sked also allows for mass uploading, so you can schedule batches of photos at once and shave time off your social media marketing efforts.
Price: From $25/month for the Freelancer plan after a seven-day free trial.
Later
Later is an intuitive social media scheduling platform that comes with a diverse set of features for planning out your campaigns, including the ability to explore hashtags and share user-generated content.
Later lets you organize your posts with a handy content calendar and get a preview of your Instagram feed before publishing, making it simple to visualize exactly how your strategy will unfold.
It also offers Saved Captions, which is handy when planning and implementing your hashtag strategy for Instagram. Save related groups of hashtags together so you never need to type them out again, or reuse your most effective tactics to increase engagement on posts or drive clicks to your website via your Instagram bio.
Price: Free for one user and up to 30 Instagram posts per month; from $9/month for the Plus plan for one user and up to 100 posts per month.
Hootsuite
Hootsuite is a powerful social media management platform that can schedule and publish Instagram posts.
While Hootsuite has made a name for itself by streamlining marketing for platforms like Facebook and Twitter, its Instagram tools take social media management one step further. Hootsuite lets you schedule your Instagram posts in advance, and either notifies you to post with a push notification or posts automatically for you if you have an Instagram Business account.
Price: From $29/month for the Professional plan after a 30-day free trial.
Agorapulse
Agorapulse is the best all-in-one social media tool. You get access to a social inbox, scheduler, social listening, analytics, reporting, and more.
Agorapulse is a little pricier than Pallyy but on the whole, it’s also a much more powerful and flexible social media management solution. It works for Instagram and other popular networks like Facebook and Twitter, which makes it a great choice for social media managers, rather than just Instagram influencers.
Everything you need to manage your campaigns is included right out of the box, including:
- Publishing tools. Plan and schedule content across all social networks from one integrated dashboard. Use powerful features like automated rescheduling to get the most out of your content.
- Collaboration tools. Collaborate with your team members or clients with a shared content calendar, shared files, and shared notes. Assign roles to different team members to help manage workflows.
- Social listening. Listen in on conversations social users are having about your brand or your competitors. Use this data to extract useful insights, measure brand sentiment, respond faster and tackle issues before they damage your brand.
- Unified social inbox. View, manage and respond to all your social media comments and messages in one place to better manage communication.
Pricing: Sign up for a limited free plan (up to 1 user and 3 profiles) or upgrade to Pro from $79/month. A free 30-day trial is also available.
SocialBee
SocialBee is another all-in-one social media management solution that’s suitable for Instagram influencers, SMBs, and agencies.
Like Agorapulse, SocialBee is a cross-platform tool that can help you manage your Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest campaigns, in addition to Instagram. You can use it to organize and schedule your content, share it across platforms, and track performance.
They have a bunch of innovative scheduling features that we liked. For example, the content Categories feature allows you to create different categories for different kinds of posts, which can help you to get a balanced content mix. You can also edit all posts in a category at once using the bulk editor, which is a huge time saver.
You can recycle your top-performing content by creating new variations of your posts and rescheduling them to squeeze out even more value. If you’re publishing time-sensitive posts like limited-time promotional offers, you can set expiration dates for all your posts. Alternatively, you can set them to expire after a certain number of shares, which can come in useful when you’re running social giveaways.
Aside from the above, SocialBee also includes excellent Instagram analytics and reporting features, custom short URLs, URL tracking, and more.
Pricing: SocialBee offers a wide range of paid plans suitable for different budgets. Their entry-level plan currently starts from $13.30/month. Plans suitable for agencies start at $79/month. A 14-day trial is available.
PromoRepublic
PromoRepublic is a leading social media marketing tool with powerful automation features built-in. It’s designed to help businesses and agencies that need an easy way to manage hundreds of social pages at once.
You can leverage PromoRepublic’s powerful automation tools to simplify your workflows and save time. These include:
- Automatic reposting. PromoRepublic can automatically re-queue content that performed well for a later date to maximize engagement
- Done-for-you content templates. Creating great social content takes a lot of time. PromoRepublic can help reduce your teams’ workload by providing you with a wide catalog of ready-made, industry-relevant social content and over 100,000 templates to use in your campaigns, so you don’t have to start from scratch.
- Efficient workflows. Easily send social content to different team members or clients for quick approvals to avoid bottlenecks.
Aside from the above, PromoRepublic also comes with in-depth analytics and reporting features, and an awesome reputation management tool that makes it easy to manage and respond to customer messages, ratings, and more in one centralized location.
Pricing: Paid plans start at $9 per month. You can get started with a free 14-day trial.
Conclusion
Instagram is one of the largest social networks, reaching an audience of more than 700 million people a month and climbing. But even with such a large audience, it can be hard to manage your Instagram account on your own. Thankfully there are many social media marketing apps for Instagram which will make your life Instagram isn’t just for photo sharing. In fact, it’s a great place for social media marketing. If you have a business or blog, Instagram can be a swell way to get in front of potential customers. With its built-in analytics and visual appeal, Instagram can help you to maximize your efforts while working out of a smartphone. It’s never been easier to use the power of Instagram to promote your business on all social media platforms.