With over 300 million users worldwide and 86% of top brands out there, Instagram is a hot place to market your business. Instagram focuses on visual marketing, which makes storytelling easier for brands and bloggers. If you are already on the platform, here are some of the must-have tools to keep your Instagram marketing topped up.
The Instagram app usually has good photo editing features, but when it comes to add oomph to your images, it falls flat. Third-party Instagram apps make it easy for storytelling and even scheduling content.
#1. Flipagram
Do you find it difficult to showcase your products in one single photo? Flipagram is here to your rescue. It creates a slide show of your images and converts it to a video.
These photo video series (that’s what they call the final product) are a great way to showcase multiple products in a quick and stylish manner. Check here for an example.
How can you use Flipagram?
Instagram marketers that market multiple products in one single post can creatively use Flipagram. Here is how.
- Clothing lines and lifestyle products can have all their products in a single range under one post.
- Food bloggers and restaurant owners can display their menu to awaken the senses of their visitors.
- Content marketers can create separate images for each step of their how-to tutorials and then unite all these images using Flipagram to form one complete photo guide.
Price: FREE
#2. Superimpose
Sometimes just having a product photo isn’t what would get you likes on Instagram. You’ve to process your images, modify their colors and change the background and blend images to get that masterpiece.
Through Superimpose, you can change the background of your images and you don’t need to be a Photoshop expert for that. It can allow you to swap faces too.
You can erase unwanted parts of the image to give your message a clear, unhindered feel.
How can you use Superimpose?
Superimpose can be used by Instagram marketers in the following ways.
- Big brands can use it to exhibit their meets and events on Instagram. They can use Superimpose to remove the unwanted fluff from those outdoor trips (by even using a Smartphone).
- Show fun moments of behind the scenes of product development.
- Give your product or message in the image a royal importance by removing distraction in the background.
Price: FREE
Other notable photo editing apps for Instagram include,
- Pixlr: The all-in-one photo-editing app for all marketers.
- Over: App that helps you add beautiful text overlays to your Instagram graphics. It’s perfect for posting quotes and visually appealing graphics.
#3. Iconosquare
If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it. This is true for any marketing campaign. Your Instagram marketing campaign is useless unless you measure your progress, track conversions, monitor engagement.
Iconosquare just makes your task easy and smooth. It provides in-depth analytics of your Instagram account.
How can you use Iconosquare?
You can use Iconosquare to:
- Track the comments on the posts of your competitors.
- Show you the list of your unfollowers.
- Statistics of your campaign and helps you to strategies your future campaign to grow your followers.
#4. Latergram
With online marketing keeping us busy to the Tee, we hardly have time to manage our social media accounts.
It’s even worse if we have to be present on multiple social media platforms. To add to that most of our followers and customers are from different time zones. So, the need for a scheduling app is utmost if you want your brand to be visible on Instagram.
Latergram lets you schedule Instagram posts directly from your phone and through the web browser. The free version allows 2 accounts, 1 team member and 30 posts in total every month. You can use the premium version to get more allowances.
A similar app is Takeoff that allows you to schedule Instagram updates by analyzing your best time to post. It helps you to increase your instagram likes and comments by showing you the popular hashtags used in your industry. The free version allows 10 schedules per day but supports only one account and no team members.
NOTE: Instagram does not allow third-party apps to directly post scheduled posts into your account so both these scheduling tools will notify you when it’s time to post updates. As everything else is ready, you just need to click yes.
Schedugram is the only app (web-based) that allows you to directly post scheduled updates to Instagram. It costs $20 per month.
#5. Crowdfire
Crowdfire is an app that lets you manage your relationships on Instagram. You can use it to focus on followers that have engagement on your account. You can remove inactive users and find relevant people to follow in your niche. This way you can use it to gain more instagram followers.
It also has a chrome extension that offers you to share and even schedule a line of post to your Instagram account.
#6. Inselly
Do you have products to sell on Instagram? Inselly can help you sell products directly on Instagram. Unlike other shopping tools, Inselly doesn’t require buyers to download or integrate it with their Instagram, hence it is safe and easy to use.
Inselly has a lot of products from the lifestyle category to baby products so you can easily promote these items on Instagram.
While using Inselly, you have to use your profile link as your store link and promote products with the hashtags #inselly. The hashtag makes it easier for potential buyers to search sellable products and it serves as a sort of notice that the particular instagram post is associated with monetary transactions.
The payment transactions occur through PayPal.
#7. PicStitch
Sometimes, a single image cannot tell the story of your business ethics. This is when you need a photo collage to tell your part of the story. Photo collages have great potential of getting conversions in instagram marketing.
How can you use PicStitch?
Picstitch can be used to:
- Show your fans the unboxing of your product
- Tutorial on a recipe (if you have a food blog)
- Different pictures of your business team and give a sneak peek of your work model. (Sharing sneak peeks build trust.)
Over to you,
These top apps will power up your instagram marketing. I have handpicked apps that will help you to make better images for Instagram marketing, create photo collages and even make video animations out of text quotes.
Make sure to check your Instagram statistics and schedule content as and when your fans are most active.
Images “Author’s Own”
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