With more than a billion global users within reach , Instagram has opened up many opportunities for brands and creators to widen their reach and advertise their products. While all the new features do help the brands online, without the right tools, the potential for their reach is constricted and results in a lot of missed opportunities.
Instagram is the ideal platform to market your audience and drive engagement, as long as you have the right tools for it. So we have compiled a list of the best Instagram tools to edit images online for free, trim videos, schedule your content and more for a smooth user experience.
Table of Contents
Instagram Business Tools
Instagram Business Tools enable you to add contact information, view insights about your posts and followers, promote posts from within the Instagram app, and even shop on Instagram. Before you use these tools, ensure that –
- Account approval for the Instagram shopping feature
- Set up product tagging on your business account
- Update the latest version of Instagram
Business Profiles
Only a few public figures, celebrities, and brands verified badges. Follow the steps below to request a verification badge. However, submitting a request does not guarantee that Instagram will verify your account.
- Go to your profile and click on the three lines at the right top corner.
- Tap Settings.
- Tap on Account and ‘Request Verification’.
- Fill out the info and submit the form.
These verifications require a lot of checks and will take time. Even if your brand doesn’t get verified, you can use other features such as bio, behind the scenes stories, customer story highlights to portray their authenticity.
Shopping on Instagram
Instagram shopping feature allows people to access stores through posts and videos on the feed and even checkout on the spot. The shopping feature is only available in a few countries, for now. However, it provides an immersive storefront for customers to check their products. This tool includes:
- Shops: A resizable storefront allows customers to purchase directly from business profiles.
- Shopping tags: They are tags that feature products from your catalogue and direct customers to buy those products from your website or app.
- Shop in Explore: A Explore tab that allows users to browse tagged shoppable content from brands and creators.
- Collections: A group of products that a company can curate for their store to help customers find the products they want.
- Product information page: A product-focused page displays pertinent information about a product, such as pricing and product descriptions. These specifics are from your product catalogue.
- Product-tagging advertisements: Businesses can increase the reach of their shoppable content by boosting new or existing shopping posts in Ads Manager and Instagram.
Very few countries have access to this feature, so you might have to wait for your request to be approved and only attach product tags in posts.
Access Insights
When you have a public business profile, you can tap on view insights below your post to see the insights of your post. You can filter your top posts through metrics.
- Navigate to your business profile.
- In the top right-hand corner, tap (insert insights icon).
- You can find more information in the Posts section.
- Tap the next page’s header.
- You can now sort posts with tagged products by metric.
Note: These features are available in very few countries when Instagram approves the shopping feature for a business account.
Instagram Scheduling Tools
HootSuite Composer
HootSuite is a robust social media management platform that allows you to schedule and publish Instagram posts. Using Hootsuite’s Composer, you can create Instagram posts on the fly or prepare them for later. The Composer is an influential publisher with an easy-to-use interface that comes packed with features that will get you the most out of your Instagram posts, such as editing, customising, and the best time to post features.
HootSuite Bulk Scheduler
Use HootSuite’s bulk scheduling tool to save time and resources. Bulk scheduling Instagram posts allows you to streamline your social media campaigns, allowing you to focus on other aspects of your business. The bulk scheduler in HootSuite will enable you to post up to 350 posts ahead of time across multiple channels, not just Instagram.
You can connect your HootSuite account to your Instagram by adding your Instagram Business account merged into your Facebook account.
Sked
Sked is a scheduling platform that offers a wide range of features, including web-browser-based scheduling, to help you run more effective campaigns.
Sked also includes powerful photo-editing tools. You can use its built-in image editing to tweak and fine-tune your photos in ways that go beyond Instagram’s default filters. Sked also supports mass uploading, allowing you to schedule multiple images at once and save time on your social media marketing efforts.
All the above tools have a free version from a timeline of one week to one month. After that, they have starter and premium plans, according to which your audits are processed by the scheduling and management tool.
Instagram Analytics Tools
Sprout Social
Sprout Social is a social media management platform that includes advanced content scheduling and publishing tools. Sprout Social also provides in-depth Instagram analytics, providing you with detailed reports on how your most recent posts have performed.
You’ll be able to track engagement and compare the success of your store’s account to the success of other accounts you manage using Sprout Social’s analytics.
Iconosquare
This tool is compatible with web, ios and android devices. Iconosquare will audit your Instagram business account for free. The audit assesses your last 30 days of posts, overall profile performance, and suggestions for improvement areas. Iconosquare’s tools, in addition to the audit, include analytics and scheduling, but only on Instagram and Facebook.
SquareLovin
SquareLovin provides a detailed understanding of your metrics and success rate in meeting your analytics goals. It is beneficial to both brands and influencers. It allows you to collect all user-generated content that mentions your brand in one place, obtain media usage rights to user-generated copy, link posts to products, publish content, and analyse and track clicks and conversions.
Instagram Advertising Tools
Instagram Ads Manager
Instagram Ads Manager is a platform for creating and tracking ads shared by Facebook and Instagram. Advertisers can use this Instagram business tool to access Facebook’s targeting capabilities and run campaigns across both platforms. Following the launch of a campaign, you can make changes, respond to comments, and track performance.
Instagram Branded Content Tools
The branded content tools are helpful for all creators, brands and influencers. Knowing the tool’s information would help your account boost and trend your content to many places. These tools include tags that allow creators to label branded content and a disclaimer required by Instagram policy and many governments. When a business account is tagged, they can approve partners and view the reach and engagement of their posts or Stories in Insights.
For a starter on Instagram branding, we suggest Hootsuite for the best management tools, Combin for getting followers on Instagram through comments and hashtags and VSCO for design and videos.
Instagram Influencers Tools
Brand Collabs Manager
Instagram business and creator accounts can now use Facebook’s Brand Collabs Manager. The platform intends to make it easier for compatible brands and influencers to collaborate on campaigns. Brands can search for lists of creators based on previous collaborations, creators who like their accounts, and audience matches. This brand also enables the post to appear in both the influencer’s feeds by tagging each other on the posts. Not just products but even growing a personal blog using Instagram is super easy.
Keyhole
As an influencer, the individuality and social media account become your brand, and to keep the account relevant, it is necessary to form your trends and keep them viral. Keyhole helps in keeping track of hashtags‘ virality. Keyhole provides you with real-time data on the performance of the hashtag. It displays who the top hashtag users are, where they are from, and the most influential. The brand at the centre of a campaign will want to know if its custom hashtags are effective.
Linktree
Linktree, a popular app among influencers and brands alike, turns your bio into a one-of-a-kind landing page that links to relevant promotions. The platform includes templates for various goals, including social selling, content marketing, traffic, publicity and audience growth. Linktree can assist you in directing people to where you want them to go.
Instagram Stories Tools
InShot
With a plethora of editing and enhancement tools, InShot allows you to improve the quality of your Instagram Stories. You can rotate and flip your photos and videos with InShot, and it also enhances standard Instagram Stories features, such as the addition of emoji and photo/video filters.
You can cut your video into the required short sections for Instagram Stories. You can merge videos and adjust the speed if you want a slowed down or sped up effect. It provides a free version as well with all these features.
Vixer
Vixer, which is exclusive to Apple, is a simple tool that can help you create more stylish Instagram Reels. The app’s filters, slideshows, voiceovers, and custom text significantly improve standard Reels editing. It’s also simple to cross-post and share your Reels to TikTok using the platform.
InstaSize
InstaSize is a simple, powerful photo/video editing toolkit for creatives that includes layers, filters, text, editing, borders, overlays, touch-ups, and anything else you need to improve your appearance. If you’re a business creative or a solo entrepreneur, this is the best tool for your stories and videos. Five dollars a month can give you access to premium features of advanced tools such as auto-fill, touch up, brush up etc.
All the above tools are the best provided to improve the business efficiency on Instagram and gain followers through authentic content. Instagram is the only app to manage your social presence and brand with real-time data and have fun together. Now that you have the list of Instagram tools, go on and create your stunning content and grow your business with more brands!
