Social media is a natural marketing platform because it creates communities and a perfect example of this is Instagram (IG). As it is a visual medium, it performs exceptionally well among the top social channels in terms of engagement. If you own an online business that caters to people between 18 and 34 years old of either gender, IG is the platform for you.
However, it’s not enough to have an IG account. You need to make your presence felt over the more than 200 million businesses Instagram claims are on its platform. And, it will take more than just using the right hashtags.
Fortunately, the popularity of the platform has not gone unnoticed. Many Instagram tools are now available to help your marketing efforts go swimmingly. The trick is to choose the best Instagram tool for different aspects of your marketing strategy.
Why Use Instagram for Marketing?
The Instagram network is a large one and quite engaged. About 90% follow brands, and nearly 60% check the site every day. Users in the US spend an average of 29 minutes a day on the IG app connecting with friends or looking up their favorite influencers.
Moreover, at least 80% of consumers use an Instagram feed or hashtag to do product research, discover new products, or decide to buy a product. Why is that?
People tend to positively perceive brands with a presence on Instagram as having the so-called "halo effect." What does that mean? According to Facebook, if you use IG to promote your business, people think your brand is popular, creative, entertaining, relevant, and community building.
The main advantage of Instagram marketing is the use of visual media. It can transcend language barriers and appeal to a broad range of audiences.
If you are promoting a brand, using images and videos for IG posts typically has a more significant and lasting impact. It stands to reason that if you have a product with any visual appeal, you must use Instagram for social media marketing.
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How Can You Create an Effective Instagram Content Strategy
Best practices for social media management depend on the platform, but common principles remain valid. Creating an effective content strategy on Instagram and any other social network requires a thorough knowledge of the app’s many features. Instagram might have started as a photo-sharing platform, but you can do more now.
For example, did you know that carousel posts have the highest engagement at 3.11% among Instagram feed posts in 2022, but Reels are rapidly gaining ground? Do you know what they are? Do you know what Stories are?
Aside from knowing what to post, you also need to know how much is just right regarding frequency. Post too infrequently, and your audience will lose track of you. Post too often, and you can get annoying or risk diluting the impact of your posts.
So keep the following in mind when creating your Instagram content strategy:
Determine Post Schedule and Frequency
Create a schedule for your posts to keep them consistent without being overwhelming. The rule of thumb is to publish a feed post up to three times a week (from Tuesday to Friday between 10 am and noon) and a Story or Reel once a day. However, that is not a hard and fast rule.
You must determine your brand's best time and frequency by doing split testing, also known as A/B testing. Essentially, you’ll be posting at different days, times, and intervals and comparing the response from your target audience and other metrics. Once you find the right combination of schedule and frequency, stick to it.
Create a Good Mix for Your Content Calendar
Creating exciting and relevant content for your target audience is vital to keep them engaged, and that can take many forms. Strive to have a good mix of feed posts, Reels, and Stories in your content calendar to keep your audience coming back for more. Contests, polls, and promotions can also help attract more followers and create buzz around your brand. Check this article for some suggestions to get you started.
Create Your Style
While your personal and business Instagram accounts can undoubtedly have similar styles, you must be careful that you're staying true to the image and voice of your brand. Your business post can still be playful and fun, but in most cases, that came about after careful thought and preparation. If you plan to use influencer marketing, you should also go by business expedience rather than personal liking when choosing a brand ambassador.
The truth is you need to be deliberate when running a business page on Instagram. You can't afford to be spontaneous when establishing a style for your brand, or you might confuse and alienate your target audience. Remember your brand identity and keep it in mind when delivering your message.
Establish Rules of Engagement
The purpose of having a business profile on Instagram is to engage with your community of users and other brands. Before you make your first posts, decide how you plan to interact with others on the platform as a brand.
Remember that this is not your personal account, so you should be engaging and friendly but still professional. As you probably know, not all comments will be positive, so you should be ready to handle them and not take them personally.
Use the Right Instagram Tools
You can accomplish many things when you create an effective Instagram marketing strategy manually. But why should you? You can do so much more if you use Instagram marketing tools and get more accurate results. It's simply a matter of choosing the right management tools for your needs.
Brand success requires the creation of a deliberate marketing plan specific to Instagram. If you wish to build an active community and see actual results for your brand, you should be mindful about everything you do on the platform.
Types of Instagram Tools You Will Need
Your Instagram content strategy is essentially about curating and sharing content. In most cases, the right tools can provide you with shortcuts, saving you time and money and yielding excellent results.
However, before delving into the specific apps you should have in your marketing toolbox, you should consider the different types of Instagram tools you will need. While the recommendations here are solid, you can check other apps available for each type.
Instagram Planning Tools
Effective social media management depends heavily on automation. Scheduling and planning tools such as Hootsuite can help you create a content calendar and automate publishing, saving time in manually posting your content.
In most cases, you can schedule Instagram posts all in one go, so you don’t ever forget to share. Scheduling apps can also help you get a big-picture view of your posts to ensure consistency and balance in the look and style of the photos and captions.
Instagram Tools for Taking and Editing Pictures
While taking photos with your smartphone and posting them unedited might work with a personal account, that’s a risk when posting on your brand’s feed. After all, Instagram is a visual platform.
As a business, you can establish credibility and increase conversions by using image capture and editing apps such as Snapseed. These editing tools will allow you to create high-res, stunning images that represent the quality of your business, especially for product shots. Editing and designing apps for an Instagram business account can also go a long way towards covering up any lack of skills you have as a photographer.
Instagram Tools for Design
Stunning photos and videos are great, but like with most things, presentation is everything. If you want to make a splash on Instagram, you need an excellent design for your feed and videos. Design tools such as Canva make it easy with their ready-made and customizable templates, designs, and layouts.
Instagram Tools for Video and GIF Editing for Reels and Stories
Videos are becoming more popular on Instagram every day, so you want to get on that bandwagon. IG video editing apps such as Animoto allow anyone with a smartphone to take and edit quick videos in the appropriate formats to kick your engagement rate up on the platform.
Instagram Quote Apps
Quote maker apps are nifty tools for content creation, on or off social media. They are particularly helpful with Instagram because you can add your quote on top of an image. The trick is finding or coming up with a memorable or quotable quote to keep your followers coming back for more. Quote maker apps such as Pablo can make this as easy as pie.
Instagram Analytics Tools
Since creating content for your Instagram feed requires significant resources, you want to make sure they reverberate with your target market. Instagram analytics tools will measure the engagement and other metrics to tell if your business profile is getting the attention you want.
Analytics can also reveal which posts are performing well and which are not. The insights you get will inform future campaigns and content creation.
Instagram Social Listening Tools
Social listening tools will take you out of your bubble and help you understand what's happening in the outside world. Brand mention and user-generated content (UGC) curating tools, like Archive App, provide insights into who is talking about you on Instagram and TikTok. You can use that knowledge to give them more of what they want and address any issues users might have with your brand.
Pro Tip: Using the right Instagram tools can make your marketing efforts easier. You can even publish attention-grabbing posts and see how they fare among their target audience.
Essential Instagram Tools You Need to Know
Did we say essential? As we said earlier, you can make do without Instagram tools to manage your business profile. However, think of it this way: you don't have to take a car to the supermarket a few miles away. If you walk, you'll still get there. The question is, why waste time and effort when there is an easier and quicker way to do something.
These seven Instagram tools are some of the most popular or useful for marketers among the many apps available for Instagram specifically or social media in general. Check them out and see if you agree. Most are free to use or have a free version.
Instagram Tool #1: Hootsuite Publish
With Hootsuite Publish, you can view your posts and get an overview of all your content, published and scheduled, across your social media accounts. You can plan campaigns, find gaps in your content, and collaborate with other content creators on your team in real-time.
Hootsuite Publish gives you complete control and automation over all your publishing tasks, including suspending scheduled posts when something unexpected comes up. It has a free plan you can use with your Instagram, and one other social media account limited to five posts scheduled at any given time for one user. Subscribe to their paid plans starting from $49/month to schedule unlimited posts.
Instagram Tool #2: Snapseed
Snapseed lets you take and edit photos extensively. A free app for iOS and Android devices, it has many features typically found in paid photo editing software such as Lightroom and Photoshop but with much less trouble. You can crop, blur, fine-tune white balance, add filters, remove red-eye, and many more editing features with one click. It also comes with filter presets associated with Instagram.
This app is easy to use for most people on mobile devices, although some users say it has a bit of a learning curve. It also doesn't save automatically, so make sure to click the export button to save changes. Nevertheless, it is a valuable tool in your marketing arsenal once you get the hang of it.
Instagram Tool #3: Canva
Canva has a particular set of tools for editing and designing posts for Instagram with many font combos, elements, and color schemes. It also has a bunch of templates, layouts, and designs for creating IG feed posts and Stories to give them that professional feel appropriate for a business account. It even has a Canva Stories app you can download to your phone to create stories, videos, and highlights.
The Canva drag-and-drop interface is easy for anyone to understand and use. It has a free plan appropriate for solopreneurs and small teams with 250,000 templates, hundreds of free photos and designs, and 5GB of cloud storage. Paid plans start from $12.99/month.
Instagram Tool #4: Animoto
Animoto for Instagram is one of the best Instagram tools for video editing if you have little or no video editing experience. The app is super easy to use with its drag-and-drop interface, allowing you to create videos and GIFs quickly with hardly any effort.
Customize your video, set it to music, and tell your Story (or Reel) to a captivated audience. It has a stock library of Getty images and videos and thousands of royalty-free music. You can also upload your video and music if you want.
Animoto has a free forever plan for iOS and desktop for creating an unlimited number of 720p videos up to 10 minutes in length. However, it comes with Animoto branding. Sign up for a paid plan starting from $8/month to remove the branding and access features not available with the free plan.
Instagram Tool #5: Pablo
Pablo by Buffer is a free and simple online tool to create and design beautiful images with quotes for Instagram and select social media platforms. You can upload your image or choose from 600,000 free images, specify the canvas, choose a filter, and add your logo. You can then select one of the pre-installed quotes or type your own.
You can share directly to Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook, and Twitter or schedule through Buffer when you're done. You can also download the finished image to your device.
Pablo has some limitations, but it has so many beautiful images and is so ludicrously easy to use that you won't even notice. Unless you only upload quotes to Instagram, Pablo does the job well enough for marketing work. Did we mention it was free?
Instagram Tool #6: Instagram Insights
What better tool to provide analytics for your Instagram business account than its free in-house tool Insights? Once you create an Instagram business account, you get access to Instagram Insights, where you can get data on your followers, profile views, and content you've posted in the previous seven days, including impressions, reach, website clicks, and CTA clicks. If you have paid promotions, it will also provide you with data on those.
Instagram Tool #7: Archive App
Archive App is the mobile tool provided by Archive, specializing in building digital communities. It automatically saves mentions and tags of your brand from TikTok and Instagram posts and Stories. You can see the saved posts on your Archive App account, listed with the most recent posts first. You can also choose to filter it by keyword.
You can use the insights from brand mentions to help you improve your marketing strategies. However, Archive App’s most critical function is the curation of UGC. You can repurpose curated UGC to populate your profile with testimonials, reviews, and other content provided by real people. The effect on your credibility as a brand can be epic.
You can use the free plan of Archive App if you are a Shopify subscriber to save up to 100 posts. This will give you a chance to test its capabilities and decide if it adds value to your business. Paid plans start at $9.99/month.
Ready to Build Your Instagram Marketing Strategy? Check Out Archive App Today!
Social media marketing is a tough gig, so marketers need all the help they can get. The tools on this list can significantly help you achieve your marketing goals on Instagram. You can gain traction with your IG business profile with the right management tools.
While there are many other Instagram marketing tool options, Archive App is a whole new ballgame altogether. Its uniqueness lies in how it saves Stories and other UGC on Instagram and TikTok in the account, not only links. This makes it very helpful in creating content and an effective marketing strategy. You can optimize your Instagram presence based on insights of brand mentions and create high-quality social proof from curated UGC.
Do you want to know more about Archive App? The proof of the pudding is in the eating, so why not try it free now? You get up to 100 posts without spending a dime, and you find out for yourself how effective it is as an Instagram marketing tool.
An Instagram content strategy can spell the difference in your Instagram success. Check out Archive App and discover how you can use it to your advantage!
FAQs on Instagram Tool
What is user-generated content on Instagram?
User-generated content (UGC) is an asset such as a social media post, article, image, or video created by individuals specifying a brand, service, or product. UGC on Instagram can take the form of a tag, mention, or content shared with you.
How can you create high-quality Instagram content to increase your account following?
The best way to create content to get more followers is to have an effective content strategy. It won't do to wing it. You need to take deliberate steps to understand your audience, source or create relevant content, and share content consistently.
How do I make my Instagram Shoppable?
If you have an Instagram Business account, you can make any of your posts shoppable by doing the following:
1. Connect your Instagram account with your Facebook page through
- Facebook: Click on Select Pages > Choose Settings > Instagram. Tap Connect Account and input your Instagram credentials. Tap Done.
- Instagram Business Profile: Select Edit Profile > Select Page. Choose the Facebook page to connect to Instagram. Click on Done.
2. Create a product catalog on Facebook and upload products.
3. Submit your Instagram Business account for review by going to Settings > Business > Shopping. Click on Done.
4. Enable the Shopping feature on your Instagram Business account by going to Settings > Business > Shopping. Choose the product catalog you want. Click on Done.
5. Use product tags to make your Instagram posts shoppable by clicking on Add photos/video > Add note. Select Tag Products > Photos/video > Search products. Select the products you want to tag for your post. Click on Done, then Share.
