Instagram is one of the most popular social media platforms. It is a great tool for businesses to connect with customers and potential customers. As a business owner or marketer, you want to make sure that you are maximizing your Instagram potential. You can do this by using free tools and apps to help you grow your following and engagement on Instagram.
In this blog post, we will talk about some free social media tools that you can use to manage your Instagram account more effectively.
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Free Social Media Tools Instagram
Instagram is way more than just a social media platform. It’s a full-fledged marketing channel that small business owners can harness to drive traffic, boost revenue, and generate new leads.
Along with being one of the top social media domains, Instagram is also the preferred platform by Gen Z, millennials, and Gen X alike—which means your content can get in front of millions of people — everyone from community members to potential customers.
There are hundreds of apps you can use to support your marketing strategy, but we’ll show you the 20 best Instagram tools. These tools will help you maximize engagement with your audience, from creating content that inspires to pulling powerful insights from analytics—plus, everything on this list is free!
Free tools for creating Instagram content
Even the best creators need design help. These content creation tools will help you stay inspired, keep you up to date with current trends, and give you access to free, easy-to-use templates for your feed, Reels, and Stories.
- Canva
Canva
Use Canva to create awesome photos
Canva is a graphic design platform that’s wildly popular with busy creators for its versatility.
The website features templates that come in every format you need, including your Instagram feed and Stories. It also has easy-to-use drag-and-drop features, so you don’t have to be a graphic designer to make quality assets.
Canva also comes with a stock library with photos, animations, music, and videos that are helpful to create ads and Reels.
Canva is free to use, but its paid plan unlocks even more design features, like the ability to create a brand tool kit and access to the best designs.
- Unfold
Unfold
Unfold provides hundreds of premade story templates
The Unfold app is a Squarespace product with over 200 templates to create beautiful Instagram Stories.
Unfold comes with built-in fonts (so you’re not limited by Instagram’s selections) and photo-editing tools.
Unfold is free to use, but its paid plan unlocks even more design templates and features.
- Adobe Creative Cloud Express (formerly Adobe Spark)
Adobe Creative Cloud
Resize and convert images with Creative Cloud Express
Anyone familiar with Adobe Spark will be thrilled to learn that it’s been improved and rebranded as Creative Cloud Express.
This tool is Adobe’s solution to well-designed social media templates with easy-to-use, drag-and-drop features. It’s also a good alternative to expensive photo-editing apps thanks to its basic editing features like resizing, background removal, and file conversion — go from JPG to PNG or from PNG to JPG in a snap.
There are thousands of templates available in Adobe’s library, in addition to fonts, stock music, and a limited selection of stock images from Adobe’s library.
Adobe Creative Cloud Express is free, but the paid plan gives you access to even more assets, music, and design features
- UNUM
UNUM
Envision your IG feed with UNUM
UNUM is a visual planner app that allows you to see what your profile grid will look like after you post your next few photos. You can also edit your photos and videos, draft your caption and hashtags, and schedule your posts with the app.
UNUM has Instagram analytics tools and scheduling capabilities, but we like it for its design templates.
With its free plan, you get 18 grids to plan your posts and 500 photo and video uploads per month. There are paid options available, which gives you access to more planning grids and a higher upload limit.
- StoriesAds
Stories Ads
Make quality content with Stories Ads
StoriesAds is a tool specifically designed to help you make high-quality Instagram Stories (along with vertical videos in general).
It provides several templates so that you don’t have to create a video from scratch. The intuitive video editor also prompts you to customize the video.
Its website states that the tool is “Free for a limited time,” so you might have to pay to use its marketing tools in the future.
- Buffer Stories Creator
Buffer’s Stories Creator
Craft aesthetically pleasing posts with Stories Creator
Buffer’s Stories Creator is a powerful tool to create high-quality, eye-catching Stories.
It features a user-friendly interface for creators who are short on time or have limited design experience. Start by uploading an image you want to use. Alternatively, you can choose a solid background color. You also have the option to upload your logo or any other branded assets. Then, type a message using any of Buffer’s fonts—letting you move away from Instagram’s limited choices.
If you need inspiration or don’t know where to start, Buffer has created a handful of gorgeous templates to jumpstart your design work.
- Buffer Remix
Buffer Remix
Easily transforms tweets into graphics with Buffer Remix
Buffer Remix lets you easily transform content from a link, tweet, or Shopify product into beautiful Instagram graphics.
Imagine your customers tag you in tweets about how amazing your products are. Buffer Remix lets you grab those tweets, turn them into well-designed image assets, and post them on your Instagram feed. This means you can share positive customer feedback on multiple social media platforms at once.
Plus, it’s a free and simple tool to use. All you need to do is download the app and paste in the link you want to share. The tool does the work for you, creating a well-designed asset. Then, you can customize the design to fit your brand identity.
Free tools to increase engagement and get new followers
Take control of your Instagram presence to increase post engagement, drive traffic to your website, and widen your customer base. These tools will help you do it.
- Buffer
Buffer
Plan out your social media content with Buffer
Buffer is an all-encompassing social media management app designed to help marketers and small business owners schedule posts for their social media accounts across multiple platforms.
The tool lets you plan and monitor social media campaigns, and respond to user comments and DMs through the tool. It also gives you customized recommendations to improve your Instagram marketing strategy.
The best part about Buffer is that it’s simple and easy to use — plus, it’s the most affordable third-party Instagram scheduling tool out there.
- Buffer Start Page
Buffer Start Page
Create a homepage for your brand in minutes with Start Page
Buffer Start Page is a new tool from Buffer to provide small businesses with an easy, flexible mobile landing page.
If you want to optimize your link-in-bio for a mobile-first experience, Start Page is perfect for businesses on Instagram that don’t have a website yet. It’s also a great solution for businesses that are in the process of rebranding or updating their website, so you don’t lose out on valuable traffic while your main site is down.
- Creator Studio
Creator Studio
Manage your digital content with Creator Studio
Creator Studio is a content management tool available to any business account in Meta (Instagram’s parent company). It’s a straightforward space to create posts, schedule and manage them, and find monetization opportunities from existing content.
That being said, there are some limitations to Creator Studio:
It just recently rolled out the ability to schedule Instagram Stories, so the process is still a little clunky.
You aren’t able to schedule Instagram Reels.
There is no dynamic asset control, so Creator Studio doesn’t automatically compress incorrectly sized images to fit the platform (unlike other tools for Instagram management and posting directly in the app).
These limitations may disappear over time, but for now, Creator Studio remains a good solution for managing in-feed, photo-based digital marketing content.
- Ads Manager
Ads Manager
Review your social campaigns with Ads Manager
Ads Manager is the central portal for managing paid advertising campaigns across Meta (including Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and Audience Network).
This tool lets you create ads, build campaigns, manage campaigns, and monitor the results with all the usual metrics. It also lets you experiment with A/B testing, dynamic creative, and audience segmentation in order to refine your advertising strategy.
You don’t have to pay to use this tool or configure it for your Instagram, but you’ll need to pay to run ad campaigns.
- Hashtag Expert
Hashtag Expert
Hashtag Expert finds you the most relevant hashtags for your content
Hashtag Expert uses AI to find the best hashtags for your audience.
Start by entering one hashtag, and the software will generate a group of similar high-performing Instagram hashtags you can use in your posts. You can copy multiple hashtags at once to batch upload in a post’s caption.
- Gleam
Gleam
Thinking of hosting a giveaway on your page? Gleam is for you
Gleam is a marketing app designed to help you manage contests and giveaways online.
We like this app because it offers a free plan to host an unlimited number of contests.
Gleam has paid plans for any Instagram business account that wants access to more features.
Free tools for finding Instagram influencers and UGC
Influencer marketing expands the reach of your content marketing efforts by placing your products and services in front of more eyes. The problem is, identifying the right influencers for your audience can be a challenge. These tools will help you find influencers, manage tagged content, and connect you with content creators who love your brand.
- Brand Collab Manager
Brand Collab Manager
Find the perfect influencer for your business through Brand Collab Manager
Brand Collab Manager is a native Meta tool that helps connect brands with influencers.
It’s free for Instagram and Facebook users, but there are criteria in order to qualify:
You must comply with Facebook’s Branded Content Policies
You must meet Facebook’s Partner Monetization Policies
You must have 1,000 followers and at least one of the following:
15,000 post engagements in the last 60 days
180,000 minutes viewed in the last 60 days
30,000 one-minute views for three-minute videos in the last 60 days
In addition, you must be the page admin for the page you are submitting, and your page must be located in an eligible country.
One of the biggest benefits of the Brand Collab Manager is that brands can easily research influencers and creators that fit their audience. The tool also lets brands manage influencer contracts and payments, along with campaign performance.
- ShortStack
ShortStack
Locate great user-generated content with ShortStack
ShortStack is an app designed to help businesses manage contests on social media — particularly Instagram.
But what makes ShortStack stand out is its tool to manage user-generated content (UGC). Once you run a contest, the app will log every time a user tags you across the platform, so it’s easy to find photos and videos from users that hype your brand instead of relying on the Instagram algorithm.
Its free plan lets you host an unlimited number of contests and collect up to 100 entries. ShortStack also has paid plans if you want to collect more entries and get more advanced features.
- Repost for Instagram
Repost for Instagram
Share Instagram content easily with Repost
Repost for Instagram lets you repost an Instagram post on your Instagram account with just a few taps while also giving credit to the post owner.
Before you repost any photos or videos, remember to get permission from the post owner and give them credit in your caption. Not only is this required by Instagram’s terms of use, but it’s also doing right by the amazing creators and businesses on Instagram.
To get permission for reposting, you can send the post owner a DM, comment on the post, or connect via email.
If you are using the Buffer mobile app — Android or iOS — you can also easily add a repost into your Buffer queue.
- squarelovin
squarelovin
Turn user posts into shoppable content with Squarelovin
squarelovin is a social media marketing app designed specifically to help e-commerce brands.
The app has some analytics capabilities, but we love it for its user-generated content (UGC) solutions. Not only will the app comb through Instagram to find any posts and videos your brand is tagged in, but it also helps you turn UGC into shoppable content on your feed.
Free tools for monitoring your Instagram analytics
Analytics are the secret sauce to refine your marketing strategy. These tools help you see trends in user engagement with your content so you can see what’s working, what’s not working, and where you need to shift resources.
- Instagram Insights
Instagram Insights
Instagram insights provides detailed analytics for your IG account
Instagram Insights is an in-app analytics feature for anyone with an Instagram business account.
It shows you important metrics, like engagement rates, audience growth, and follower demographics.
Here’s how to access your Instagram Insights:
Log in to (or create) your Instagram for Business account.
Go to your profile.
Tap the Insights button.
Note that you’ll only be able to see insights for the period of time you’ve had a business account. For example, if you’ve had a personal account for five years but just made the switch to a business account one month ago, Instagram Insights will only have information from the past month.
- Buffer Analyze
Buffer Analyze
Track key metrics with Buffer Analyze
Buffer is a free app to plan and schedule social media content, but it also comes with an in-depth analytics tool to help you monitor your content’s performance.
The tool organizes every key metric you want to measure—including likes, comments, shares, tags, clicks, reach, and more—into one clean and simple to use dashboard. Insights are presented in beautiful graphics that you can screenshot and use in your reporting. It’s also one of the only free options on the market to offer insights on Instagram Stories.
- Keyhole
Keyhole
Keep tabs on important data with Keyhole
Keyhole is an analytics tool that lets you automate your reporting process.
You can also customize a dashboard to show the information that’s most important to you and your stakeholders.
Keyhole is free with a 7-day trial (but you don’t need to put down a credit card). We recommend using the time to conduct a comprehensive audit of your Instagram, finding out exactly what’s working and what could be refined.
- Iconosquare
Iconsquare
Monitor your Instagram account’s growth with Iconosquare
Iconosquare is primarily used to monitor channel growth and track the performance of your Instagram content.
This app features a clean and simple dashboard that automatically calculates engagement rates (impressions, likes, comments, reach, etc.) and percentage of change over time.
You can enjoy a free version of Iconosquare for 14 days. After that, you will be offered a paid version of the app. Use the first 14 days to pull as much information as possible, like best times to post, audience demographics, and top content.
Make the most of free Instagram tools and watch your audience grow
Any of the tools in this list will add a tremendous amount of support for your marketing team. Here’s how to pick the right ones for your small business:
Determine your goals. Do you want to drive traffic to your website? You may want to focus on ads and include a call-to-action to click the link in your bio. Do you want to grow your follower count? Focus on analytics and creating engaging content.
Track your progress. Monitor your Instagram’s performance and follower growth over time using analytics.
free social media management tools 2022
Ready to supercharge your digital marketing with free social media management tools?
We’ve compiled a list of powerful online tools to help you level up your online presence. Each of these tools provide unique functions that help you get more out of social media with less effort.
That’s right. We’re talking expert reporting, publishing, management, automations, audience insights, graphic design, and more.
Without further ado, here are 12 free social media management tools to help you grow your business in 2022:
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- Social Champ
- SocialBee
- Agorapulse
- Later
- Planoly
- SocialOomph
- Canva
- FollowerWonk
- Friends+Me
- A Design Kit
- Over
- Photoshop Express
- Sparktoro
- Social Champ
Social Champ homepage
Social Champ is a social media management tool with some next-level automation features supporting the six major social platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Google My Business.
With features, such as Auto RSS feed, Bulk Upload, Social Media Calendar, Analytics, Team Collaboration, Recycle, Repeat, and others, you can fully automate the processes.
Social Champ also has integrations for Canva, bit.ly, UTM tracking, and a royalty-free image library. All-in-all, Social Champ allows you to perform all social media tasks, ranging from creating and scheduling to analyzing and tracking.
Screenshot of Social Champ
Use the content dashboard to create, edit, design, and schedule posts. View all the scheduled/published posts in a calendar view and reschedule them using drag/drop features. Analytics and reports allow you to track the progress of different socials with platform-centric metrics.
- SocialBee
SocialBee Posting Calendar
SocialBee is a social media management tool that allows you to easily schedule your posts in a calendar-like view and customize them for each social media platform (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Pinterest, Google My Business, and TikTok).
With affordable plans, an intuitive interface, and a set of impressive features, SocialBee can work wonders for both your content strategy and your social media workflow.
Along with multiple other integrations for tracking and shortening your links, SocialBee also has a Canva integration inside the post editor.
SocialBee Canva
Not only does SocialBee allow the recycling of evergreen posts, expiring of time-sensitive content, and analyzing the performance of your accounts.
- Agorapulse
Source: Agorapulse
If you’re looking for one tool to easily schedule, engage, and report on social media for all your profiles, Agorapulse is the tool for you. Agorapulse boasts powerful features to make social media management that much easier.
Plus, Agorapulse’s 14-day free trial allows you to try all aspects of the tool, including flexible scheduling options, ad comments management, automatic report scheduling, and world-class customer support.
- Later
Free social media management tools – Later
Source: Later
Ready to spruce up your Instagram feed? Later is a tool that helps you customize your feed to create an intentional, powerful presence when people click to your channel. Setting up an Instagram profile is 100% free, so you can launch your influencer career by creating (instead of paying). Get analytics for your IG profile as well.
Free social media management tools – Later’s platform
Source: Later
Check this out: Later also gives you Linkin.bio, a way to drive traffic to your ecommerce store right from Instagram. Later’s free plan does give you access to Linkin.bio lite, so you may want to consider making your posts clickable for increased conversions.
- Planoly
Free social media management tools – Planoly
Source: Planoly
Alternative to Later, you can use Planoly to plan and schedule your Instagram posts. The free plan includes 2 social profiles for scheduled posts. So you can automate your Pinterest posts in the same go — up to 30 posts per month. Planoly’s latest launch of Linkit also let you link to products, resources, websites, etc. using the link in their bio.
Free social media management tools – Planoly to schedule automate Pinterest post
Pro tip: A blogger might use this tool to double down on visual lead gen. If you love creating graphics, sharing images, and posting other visual content, Planoly can let you take the set-and-forget approach. Simply schedule your Pinterest and Instagram posts in the calendar and then engage with followers and see the analytics of your posts after they’ve published.
- SocialOomph
Free social media management tools – SocialOomph
Source: SocialOomph
Tools like Hootesuite and Buffer are helpful for scheduling posts. But if you don’t want to pay for social media scheduling, you’ve still got options. SocialOoomph is a freemium tool that lets you schedule posts to your favorite social channel.
The free version gives you one profile, unlimited scheduled posts, and up to three posts per hour. Yes, if you want to post across multiple social feeds, you’ll need to purchase a premium membership. But if you just want to double down on one channel, this is an easy option.
Free social media management tools – Social post by Alexander Lewis
Many B2B businesses like to double down on LinkedIn. With SocialOomph, you can schedule posts to publish multiple times per day, every day of the week, so that you can sit back while your content works behind the scenes for your business.
- Canva
Free social media management tools – Canva
Source: Canva
One of the most popular ways to create fast, stylish graphics is Canva. While there are some great Canva alternatives out there now, we wanted to highlight the OG online graphic editor.
The power of Canva is its simplicity. It provides a robust suite of free tools and templates to help you level up your visual social media posts in almost no time. But that’s just the beginning. Canva has added tons of tools over the years. They now even offer ways to create logos, business cards, flyers, book covers, Instagram stories, and almost any graphic you can come up with—with pre-made sizes to help you nail those technical specs.
Free social media management tools – Canva create image
Source: Canva
A small business owner might use Canva for all their design needs. Instead of jumping through the hoops of paying for and learning a complex tool like Photoshop, most business owners can create the graphics they need for free using Canva. They even offer hundreds of thousands of free images—so you don’t even have to buy stock photography.
- FollowerWonk
Free social media management tools – FollowerWonk
Source: FollowerWonk
When it comes to pitching, Twitter is a goldmine of information. Journalists often have their email information in their Twitter handle to make it easy for potential sources to contact them, celebrities tweet with fans every day, and when someone’s DMs are open, you can spark conversations with them.
But Twitter is also a giant social media platform. It can be hard to search for the people you want to follow or connect with. That’s where FollowerWonk comes in. It is a Twitter profile search engine to help you find and connect with the people you’re interested in.
Free social media management tools – FollowerWonk with Twitter profile search
My husband Alex has used FollowerWork many times of the years to connect with journalists for publicity purposes. He has helped clients get featured in Dallas Morning News, Entrepreneur, and other business publications by using FollowerWonk to find the right journalists to pitch.
- Friends+Me
Free social media management tools – Friends+Me
Source: Friends+Me
Another social media scheduling tool: Friends+Me lets you schedule content for up to two social profiles. But what really stands out here is that you can add an additional user. In most of the free scheduling tools examples in this post, you can only have one person scheduling content. Friends+Me lets you share a subscription with one other team member.
The free version also offers link shortening, Zapier integrations, and a browser extension to make posting even faster.
Free social media management tools – create post at Friends+Me
Source: Friends+Me
A solopreneur might give publishing and scheduling access to their assistant, for example. Instead of giving them your personal login information, you can simply set your assistant up as the second team member.
- A Design Kit
Want to take your Instagram stories to the next level? A Design Kit from the whimsical team at A Color Story wants to help you do just that. A Design Kit is a free mobile app that lets you add design, fonts, gradient and metallic brushes, stickers, and more. If you’re looking to let your creative flag fly, this is the app for you.
Free social media management tools – A Design Kit
Source: A Design Kit
This app will add that extra bit of pizzazz to your Instagram stories, so you can promote your business, grow your following, and stand out from the status quo. Those brushes though.
Free social media management tools – Graphic design by Sarabeth
Don’t judge my graphic design skills, y’all.
- Over
Meet Over, the social media graphic design app of the future. This app is the most graphic-design forward tool on this list. #trending
Free social media management tools – Over
Source: Over
With 500+ premium fonts, 8K+ editable templates, plus live graphics, Over makes you look like a bold, graphic design trendsetter born at the crossroads of millennial and Gen Z. But the secret power is how simple and easy it is to use.
After 5 minutes in the app, here’s an Instagram story I created from a template:
Free social media management tools – image create at A Design Kit
Ok, a bit more foolproof.
Not bad, right? Over allows you to edit design layers extremely well right on your phone. It also pre-curates layouts, colors, and fonts to really jive with today’s graphic design trends. If you’re looking to mix your Instagram stories, ads, or Facebook posts up, I’d definitely recommend you give this app a try.
- Photoshop Express
While we’ve done our share of complaining about the high monthly price of Adobe products (read about them here and here ), did you know they actually offer the PS Express mobile app free? Yes, of course they’ll try to get you to upgrade for $2.92/month to get all the features, but if you’re looking to edit photos on the go, this could be a great app for you.
Free social media management tools – Photoshop Express
Not a ton of settings, but a selection of crisp, powerful ones.
- Sparktoro
From Rand Fishkin, founder of Moz, comes Sparktoro, a tool that helps you get an insider’s look into what your audience frequently talks about, as well as their most-used hashtags, websites, and follows. Sparktoro’s free plan includes 10 searches/month.
Free social media management tools – SparkToro
For example: a food blogger might use Sparktoro to explore the search term, “frittata.”
As you can see below, by entering this term, you can determine audience size, social accounts they follow, websites they visit, podcasts and YouTube channels they promote, and so much more. Dive into audience insights like the hashtags used in shared content, as well as frequently used words/phrases in content or bios—so you can connect with that audience on their terms and reflect their world back to them.
Free social media management tools – SparkToro review
Level up your social media game
Boom! Hope some of these tools can really up your social media game.
You may also want to check out these related posts:
17+ of the Best Buffer Alternatives for Social Media Automation
Social Media Tools: 8 AppSumo Deals to Level Up Your Organic Content
Also, while you’re here, keep in mind you can always hop over to the AppSumo store, click the dropdown for “Categories” and select “Social Media” to see the current lifetime deals on social media tools!
Conclusion
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