If you’re still pushing buttons to manually grow your Instagram account, know that streamlining your social media marketing efforts is crucial. When you can automate even a single process, you save time (which means you're saving money, too). For instance, on Instagram, users want to interact with their favorite brands. A whopping 89% of users follow at least one business on Instagram making it a marketing platform you need to nurture. Luckily, certain companies put a lot of time and effort into creating tools that help you make your business page on Instagram the very best it can be. Check out these ten Instagram tools to help you reach your goals in 2019.
1. Social Captain to grow your followers
Social Captain will generate real followers, likes, and comments with targeted marketing backed by the power of artificial intelligence. There’s less need to manually grow your followers when Social Captain’s automated techniques produce results up to 150 times better.
Once you log into your account, you choose the usernames, hashtags, and locations you want Social Captain to target. By targeting usernames, you’re asking Social Captain to target users who interact with those accounts. Other target settings can be customized in your dashboard like user demographics and the age of posts.
Social Captain will begin interacting with Instagram accounts based on your selected targets. Before long, you’ll see new followers, likes, and comments appear on your account. New followers will be sent a customized message on your behalf.
2. Iconosquare to track your competitors and monitor your brand
Iconosquare offers powerful analytics to track and monitor both you and your competitors’ performances. With this tool, you can see how your performance stacks up to the rest of your industry. Iconosquare also has a built-in content scheduler allowing you to post automatically to Instagram.
The monitoring feature allows you to monitor hashtags – a useful feature for monitoring what people say about your brand.
3. Magisto for easy video creation
If you use Instagram for video marketing, you need Magisto. Effortlessly create quality videos by uploading your content, and Magisto’s AI-powered platform will do the rest. According to Magisto, their service is “visual storytelling as fast as writing a blog post.”
4. Sendible for scheduling posts
Scheduled messages are a staple in social media marketing. Sendible schedules your posts across various social media platforms and provides an all-in-one dashboard to see your results.
If you manage social media accounts for others, or are collaborating with other teams, Sendible seems like an ideal fit for you.
5. Have2HaveIt to increase revenue
Instagram wasn’t built for ecommerce, but Have2HaveIt makes it work.
Have2HaveIt will recreate the look and feel of your Instagram feed as a shoppable page that you can link in your Instagram profile. Your followers can browse products as if they’re navigating your Instagram feed. When they click on something they like, links to your ecommerce website will be shown so they can make a purchase with ease.
6. Boomerang for fun mini-videos
Boomerang is a fun app created by Instagram that compiles a burst of 10 snapshots into a short video. The result is similar to a GIF. Part of the key to Instagram marketing is having your posts match up with the rest of your desired audience's feeds, which are currently full of trendy Boomerangs.
This app is perfect for anyone with a creative spirit, especially those who enjoy making others laugh.
7. Tagboard for the ultimate content finder
Tagboard filters posts on Instagram to identify relevant and popular postings. Search for content by hashtag, and you’ll get a bulletin-board style grid of related posts from Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Flickr. You can also block specific sites and users whose content you don’t want to see.
If you’re a business with an office, use Tagboard to display your followers’ posts on large screens in your lobby, or during conferences.
8. Buffer for post scheduling and account management
Buffer is an app for scheduling posts and analyzing performance for multiple social media accounts. Although Buffer has been around for a while, they recently added Instagram capabilities into their app. This powerful account management tool lets you add multiple team members and assign permissions regarding posting abilities.
Well-known companies that achieved success with Buffer include The Seattle Times, Campaign Monitor, Business Insider, Fortune Magazine, and even the Denver Broncos. Buffer works with Android and iOS, and even has a browser extension.
9. Social Rank for marketing intelligence
Social Rank is a tool for segmenting your Instagram audience. Once you log in, you can search and sort your audience by demographics, number of followers, bio keyword, hashtag, geographic location, and device. Sort your audience by the most engaged followers from highest to lowest. Search results can be saved as a list. This tool feels like a must-have app for anyone looking to segment and target Instagram followers.
10. Boost for effortless ecommerce
Accredited by the Better Business Bureau (BBB), Boost lets your followers buy your products through Instagram comments. Simply create a unique hashtag for each item available for sale, and Boost will generate a 3-digit number to add to the end.
When you post an item for sale, put the purchase code in the description. For instance, “Comment with #CustomCatSticker482 to buy this product.” Followers signed up with the Boost service can comment with the code to make a purchase. They’ll receive a text message to confirm their order, and you’ll be notified of their purchase. It’s that easy. As a plus, it’s free for buyers.