Instagram is one of the most popular social media platforms, with over 1 billion monthly users. It’s a great place to build a community and connect with your audience.
Many businesses use Instagram to drive traffic to their website and grow their brand. Instagram allows you to share pictures, videos, stories and more through posts, reels and IGTV. You can also post on other people’s accounts by tagging them in your picture or video.
But how do you make sure people will see your content? Here are some tips for creating great Instagram content that drives traffic back to your site!
1) Post consistently.
2) Use hashtags so people can find your posts easily!
3) Share an image or video every day (at least once per week). This will help keep people engaged with your account as they’ll always have something new to look forward too!
4) Schedule posts ahead of time so they’re ready when you need them- this saves you from having to manually upload them each day which could take up valuable time during work hours!
Instagram Content Creation Tools
1. Canva
Genre: Content Creation
Website: canva.com
Canva is an excellent graphical tool, that makes design easy, even for the “graphically-challenged.” You can quickly make eye-catching graphics for your Instagram posts.
It features drag-and-drop design, multiple pre-configured layouts, fonts, and a plethora of sample photographs and illustrations. You gain access to many more copyrighted graphics for only a $1 fee.
You can efficiently use Canva to crop, enhance, straighten, and edit your images. It allows you to add text to photographs easily, and even create thought or speech bubbles.
It comes with thousands of templates for many uses, including templates to make social media posts at the optimal sizes.
2. CutStory for Instagram Stories
Genre: Instagram Stories Tool
App Store Page: Apple
Instagram Stories has revolutionized the ways that people tell their tales visually using Instagram. And of course one of the best features is that you can include 15-second video clips, as well as still images. But it can be difficult to cut a long video into the short sections that you want for an Instagram Story.
You do have to make a $0.99 in-app purchase to remove a watermark from your videos – an essential purchase for influencer marketing purposes.
It makes splitting a video straightforward – not just the 15-second chunks you need for Instagram apps, but into more extended sections, if you need them as well.
You can use even use CutStory to automatically split a longish video into 15-second chunks and then upload each piece in sequence to make an almost seamless flowing Instagram Story.
3. Gleam Competitions
Genre: Instagram Contests
Website: gleam.io
One way to gain your followers’ attention is to run some form of Instagram contest or giveaway. You can use Gleam Competitions to run a competition embedded in a web page. From here you can set up and operate giveaways, contests, and sweepstakes. These are all designed to help drive user engagement.
Gleam verifies the entries, reducing the number of steps required for people to enter your contests. You can also provide custom viral referral links to encourage people to share your competition.
You aren’t limited to your Instagram account either. You can use Gleam to set up landing pages on a website or your blog, and on Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest as well as Instagram. As always, you cannot include a link directly in an Instagram post, but you get around this limitation by adding a call to action in your Instagram bio, asking users to visit the non-clickable link in your posts.Related Content:
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4. Onlypult
Genre: Post Scheduler
Website: onlypult.com
If you are a power Instagram user, you are going to want a tool to help you schedule your posts. Onlypult allow you to automatically plan your Instagram photos and videos, ready for publication when at the optimal times.
You can make your life much more productive if you schedule a series of Instagram (and other social media) posts at one time, perhaps at a set time once a week. This allows you to create your social media posts without having to ensure you are online at the ideal posting times. You can set and forget.
Onlypult allows you to schedule your posts without having to confirm your posts at delivery time (which can be a problem with some of the opposition apps).
You can upload photos and videos to Instagram via Onlypult directly from your PC, schedule them for the future or publish them in real time.
One nice feature of Onlypult is that it stores your hashtags in a My Tags section, making it easy to reuse them in future posts. It already has many hashtags categorized ready for you to use.
Onlypult offers a range of plans, beginning with the Start plan at $10.50 per month where you can upload to a maximum of three Instagram accounts.
There is an excellent cheaper alternative to Onlypult called Grum. Unfortunately, Grum doesn’t appear to be currently taking on new subscribers.
5. Inshot
Genre: Instagram Stories Tool
App Store Pages: Apple Google Play
Inshot lets you improve the quality of your Instagram Stories with a whole list of ways to edit and enhance your clips.
You can trim your video into the short sections required by Instagram Stories. You can merge videos and adjust the speed if you want a slowed down or sped up effect.
Inshot lets you add music to your videos, and comes with an inbuilt selection of fun sound effects. You can add a voice over if that is what best suits your story. You can even sync sound and video using timeline features.
Inshot allows you to rotate or flip your photos and videos. It also extends standard Instagram Stories functions, like adding emoji and photo/video filters.
6. Keyhole
Genre: Hashtag Tracker
Website: keyhole.co
Instagram relies on hashtag use more than any other social media platform. Indeed, many of the best Instagram influencers use up to 20 hashtags in a single post. If you select your hashtags well you have the chance to widen your audience base dramatically.
However, the holy grail of hashtag usage comes when you create your own hashtag and are able to encourage sufficient other people to use that tag. Many of the best influencer campaigns have a custom hashtag at their core. Influencers use that tag in all their campaign-related posts, and many of their followers share it and search for other posts using the hashtag as well.
Absolut Vodka is one of many brands that focuses their campaigns on particular hashtags. These tend to be a play on their product name, e.g., #AbsolutQuality and #AbsolutNights.
If you are an influencer working on such a campaign, you will want to know how effective your efforts are. Are you succeeding in spreading the critical hashtag? Keyhole provides you with real-time data about how the hashtag is performing. It shows you who the top users of the hashtag are, where they are from, and who is most influential. Clearly, the brand at the heart of a campaign will also want to know whether its custom hashtags are effective.
You can also use Keyhole to give you additional hashtag inspiration for your posts. It provides you with a hashtag cloud of related hashtags commonly used with your main hashtag. You can use Keyhole to find the most popular hashtags related to your campaign.
You can also use Keyhole for Twitter hashtag analysis, as well as with Instagram.
7. Linktr.ee
Genre: Link Optimizer
Website: linktr.ee
As it says on the Linktr.ee home page, “You only get one chance to link in Instagram. Make it do more”. With the sole exception of some Instagram Stories, the only place you can place a link on Instagram is in your bio. This limits your marketing capabilities.
Therefore it makes sense to use your bio link as intelligently as possible. When you use Linktr.ee, you use your bio link to send your followers to a unique screen that offers multiple possible link options.
You can customize your link screen however you want it. All you do is paste in new URLs as you need them, and then you drag and drop them into the order you want.
The free version allows you to get unlimited links on your link tree. You can see the total number of times each link has been clicked.
For $6 per month, you can buy the Pro version which allows you to customize your link buttons, improves your analytics, and provides many more customizations. You can even retarget your Linktr.ee visitors on Facebook and Instagram by adding your Facebook Pixel ID.
8. SquareLovin
Genre: Analytics
Website: squarelovin.com
If you want to know how your Instagram posts perform, SquareLovin can give you detailed analytics to help your understanding. It provides excellent insight into whether your posts succeed in meeting your goals.
Actually, SquareLovin offers much more than just a few pretty graphs of your posts’ analytics. It is useful for brands as well as influencers. You can use it to gather any 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 analyze and track clicks and conversions.
Its free in-depth analytics tools are of most use to influencers, however. SquareLovin provides access to metrics on your recent posts and growth, a monthly analysis, as well as a history of your posts broken down into the year, month, day, and hour. It also gives you insights into your communities’ preferences and interests, and what drives their engagement.
You can manage your Instagram account from within the platform, and can even like and comment on other peoples’ posts.
SquareLovin is highly visual so you can see your accounts’ progress at a glance.
9. VSCO
Genre: Content Creation
Website: vsco.co
VSCO is a photo editing app that helps you create the perfect images for your Instagram posts. You have a choice of the free VSCO app or a $20 per year enhanced version – VSCO X.
One of VSCO’s main points of difference is its enhanced library of filters. There is a basic range of filters in the free version, but VSCO X contains an extensive collection. It even includes filters that give your images the look of a specific film-type. To make your digital images look even more like original film pictures VSCO X includes a “character” slider which allows you to access some of the variants inside a particular film type. You can use it to mimic how a film camera would have reacted in specific conditions.
VSCO includes all of the usual options you would expect in a photo editing program. These include settings for exposure, contrast, straighten, crop, sharpen, clarity, saturation, highlights, shadows, temperature, tint, vignette, grain, fade, shadows tint, highlights tint, and borders. It even gives you two skew crop options and a skin tone slider.
You can apply the VSCO filters to video clips, too. However, there are no video-specific editing features.
instagram tools
One of the most important parts of having an effective Instagram presence is filling your feed with stunning visuals that clearly communicate your brand’s identity and the value of your products.
Even if you aren’t a professional photographer, you can create great images with your smartphone and a few of the best Instagram design apps.
1. VSCO (iOS, Android)
It’s been a while since Instagram’s default filters were the bleeding edge of mobile photo editing. In the meantime, VSCO has emerged as the reigning champ of creating beautiful photos on the go. Part photo-editing platform and part social media network, VSCO should be at the heart of every Instagram strategy.
VSCO has an in-depth editing suite and a slew of high-quality default filters that can take your smartphone photos to a completely new level. There’s also a huge library of filters available on the premium plan, giving you endless options for customizing your photos and setting them apart from the pack.
Price: Free for basic presets and standard editing tools; $19.99/year for access to VSCO’s full suite of presets and image/video editing tools.
2. Snapseed (iOS, Android, macOS, Windows)
Snapseed is another photo-editing app that gives you the option to fine-tune your photos. While Instagram’s default filters edit your entire image at once, Snapseed lets you apply effects with a brush so you can perfect the details of each photo.
Snapseed’s Stacks is another great feature, letting you save groups of filters as a template. These Stacks can then be applied to future photos, giving your entire feed a consistent look and saving you time.
Price: Free.
3. Afterlight (iOS)
Afterlight is a photo-editing app that boasts a default set of dozens of filters, textures, and frames, giving you lots of different options for tweaking your photos right off the bat. You can create and save your very own filters and work with multiple image formats. Afterlight also includes typography tools to help your images stand out.
With its sleek and straightforward design, Afterlight is an easy-to-use, must-have tool for making your Instagram photos pop.
Price: $2.99/month or $17.99/year after a seven-day free trial.
4. Canva (web, iOS, Android)
Canva is an app you can use to create images that stand out, whether it’s in your Instagram feed or in your Stories. You can superimpose text, create multi-image layouts, and pull in a wide range of predesigned graphics to level-up your posts and get your followers’ attention.
It’s especially useful for creating Instagram Stories that stand out, and if you stick to a few consistent image formats and fonts, you can start to make sure your followers always recognize your content.
Price: Free for image design with pay-per-use premium graphics; from $12.95/month for Canva Pro, which includes transparent backgrounds and animation/GIF creation.
5. Photoshop Express (iOS, Android, Windows)
That’s right, you can use Photoshop on your phone.
While the mobile app doesn’t come with every feature of the desktop app, it does offer a powerful image editing experience that gives you a lot of control over your photos. It streamlines the work you’d do on your desktop with handy tools like blemish removal, which can get rid of spots, dirt, and dust from your photo with a single touch.
You also get access to multiple controls, filters, presets, and options you wouldn’t get elsewhere, like the ability to add a watermark to your photos.
Price: Free.
The best Instagram video apps
You don’t need to be a professional videographer to create captivating videos for your business’s Instagram account. These Instagram video apps make it easy for anyone to capture quick videos on their phones and turn them into high-quality professional videos without having to whip out a laptop and fire up their video-editing software.
6. Vimeo Create (iOS, Android)
Vimeo Create automatically turns your existing product images and text into polished videos. Just answer a few questions about your product and the videos are generated for you — no video experience required.
Price: Free, with options to upgrade for advanced editing tools and templates
7. Boomerang from Instagram (iOS, Android)
Boomerang is an app created by Instagram that lets you create a GIF-like looping video from a series of photos. When your video is complete, either publish it to Instagram instantly or save it to post later.
Price: Free.
8. Life Lapse (iOS, Android)
While Boomerang for Instagram is great for creating quick GIF-like videos, Life Lapse is a more feature-rich mobile app for creating longer, stop-motion videos to showcase your products. You can take as many photos as you want, customize the size of your video, adjust the speed between images, and even add royalty-free music.
Price: Free, with optional in-app purchases.
9. HypeType (iOS)
HypeType’s large library of fonts and animations makes it quick and easy to create captions for different sections of a video shot with the app or an uploaded video you’ve already taken. When you’re finished, you can post your video on Instagram without leaving HypeType.
Price: Free with video watermark; in-app purchases are available to remove the watermark or purchase additional fonts.
Turn likes into sales
Ready to take your Instagram to the next level? Learn how Shopify helps you turn likes into sales.
The best Instagram marketing apps
You’re almost ready to hit Post, but to help grow your following and connect with more people, you’re going to want to engage with your followers and use some hashtags. The best Instagram marketing apps help you do just that.
10. Repost for Instagram (Android)
You don’t always need to be the person behind the lens taking the photos. If you have a community of customers who post user-generated content, you can use Repost for Instagram to curate their images and give them credit at the same time.
To share an image from someone else’s Instagram account on your own, just copy the share URL on the post you want to share and open Repost on your phone. It’ll add a credit icon to the image, copy the description, and have you ready to post to your account in seconds.
Price: Free.
11. AutoHash (Android)
AutoHash might be the easiest way to find relevant Instagram hashtags for your images. It uses AI to recognize the objects in your photos and provides you with the best hashtags based on the objects. It will count the hashtags for you so you don’t go over the 30-hashtag limit, and you can save your favorite hashtags in the app.
Once you’re ready to post, AutoHash will save your selected hashtags to your clipboard so all you have to do is paste them into your image description or comments.
Price: Free.
12. Display Purposes (web)
Display Purposes is a web-based tool that gives you a bit more control over the hashtags you select for your post. Start with a keyword or an existing hashtag and it will recommend additional hashtags to use on your image. It’s a nice ally to help get more Instagram followers in your niche.
You can scale up or down the number of hashtags you want to include, and Display Purposes will fill in your hashtags accordingly. If you want to DIY, you can also switch to manual selection and choose from a list that displays each hashtag’s relevance and popularity.
Price: Free.
The best Instagram ecommerce apps
While posting your products on Instagram is a great way to grow your following and increase awareness of your business, at the end of the day, you’re probably posting to Instagram to grow your sales.
These apps make it easy to share your Instagram photos in your Shopify store so visitors can easily find products they saw on Instagram and purchase them from your site.
13. Instagram Shoppable Feed (Shopify)
Hot Shapers uses Instagram Shoppable Feed to showcase its Instagram photos on its homepage.
Your Instagram photos aren’t just a great way to engage potential customers on social media. They can also show your website visitors how your products look in context or how they can work together.
With Instagram Shoppable Feed, you can easily add your Instagram photos to your store and tag the products featured in each image. And if you use it on your store’s homepage, like Hot Shapers, you can promote your products and grow your followers on Instagram at the same time.
Price: $4.99/month after a seven-day free trial.
14. Covet.pics (Shopify)
Like Instagram Shoppable Feed, Covet.pics lets you create galleries on your website from your Instagram photos. But in addition to showcasing the images that your business has posted, Covet.pics also lets you invite your customers to upload their own images of your products to your gallery.
You can tag products in your gallery photos, show pricing, and include a direct Buy button on your popup. Additionally, Covet.pics offers detailed analytics that reveal how your galleries are performing, with metrics like views, engagements, and orders.
Price: Free for one gallery and one product tag per photo; from $14.99/month for the Basic plan, which includes two galleries, multi-product tagging, and uploading custom photos.
The best Instagram management tools
To grow your audience and give your current fans a reason to stick around, you need to be updating your Instagram with fresh content regularly. But let’s face it, constantly updating your profile with new photos takes a lot of time—something most entrepreneurs are already short on.
Thankfully, there are a bunch of great platforms out there that give you the resources you need to schedule your posts in advance and keep your profile well-stocked with great content. Many of these tools also let you post to Instagram from your computer so you don’t need to rely solely on Instagram’s mobile app.
15. Sked (web, iOS, Android)
Sked is a scheduling platform with a wide variety of features—including web-browser-based scheduling—for running more effective campaigns.
Sked also comes with extensive photo-editing features. Using its built-in image editing, you can tweak and fine-tune your photos well beyond Instagram’s default filters. Sked also allows for mass uploading, so you can schedule batches of photos at once and shave time off your social media marketing efforts.
Price: From $25/month for the Freelancer plan after a seven-day free trial.
16. Later (web, iOS, Android)
Later is an intuitive social media scheduling platform that comes with a diverse set of features for planning out your campaigns, including the ability to explore hashtags and share user-generated content.
Later lets you organize your posts with a handy content calendar and get a preview of your Instagram feed before publishing, making it simple to visualize exactly how your strategy will unfold.
It also offers Saved Captions, which is handy when planning and implementing your hashtag strategy for Instagram. Save related groups of hashtags together so you never need to type them out again, or reuse your most effective tactics to increase engagement on posts or drive clicks to your website via your Instagram bio.
Price: Free for one user and up to 30 Instagram posts per month; from $9/month for the Plus plan for one user and up to 100 posts per month.
17. Hootsuite (web, iOS, Android)
Hootsuite is a powerful social media management platform that can schedule and publish Instagram posts.
While Hootsuite has made a name for itself by streamlining marketing for platforms like Facebook and Twitter, its Instagram tools take social media management one step further. Hootsuite lets you schedule your Instagram posts in advance, and either notifies you to post with a push notification or posts automatically for you if you have an Instagram Business account.
Price: From $29/month for the Professional plan after a 30-day free trial.
18. Buffer (web, iOS, Android)
You probably know Buffer as a great tool to schedule your social media posts for Twitter and Facebook, but you can also use it to schedule your Instagram posts.
Prepare your posts from mobile or desktop and Buffer will post directly to Instagram for you. And with a Premium plan, you can also create and schedule Instagram Stories, embed a shoppable Instagram grid on your website, and get detailed analytics on the performance of your Instagram posts.
Price: Free for one user, three social accounts, and 10 scheduled posts; from $15/month for the Pro plan or $65/month for the Premium plan after a seven-day free trial.
Conclusion
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