When it comes to online marketing, Instagram is giving its parent company Facebook a run for its money. Everyone from a micro influencer to huge brands have realised the importance of marketing on Instagram.
Most people think that all you need to do is buy Instagram followers to gain more engagement for your Instagram posts – but that’s not the case. To gain followers and create more engagement you’ll need a proper marketing strategy that will help you promote your brand and its products. So here are some tools that will aid your marketing strategy on Instagram.
Buffer
Buffer is a social media marketing tool that is on the professional side of things.You can use it to schedule your posts on a number of social media platforms like Twitter, Pinterest and LinkedIn. You can publish the same or different posts across different platforms supported by Buffer. But that’s not all, Buffer also lets you check how your posts are doing in terms of likes, comments, shares and clicks and reply to followers on multiple platforms. It can be used by up to 25 people and you can assign them different levels of access according to their requirement, thus making it a great choice for small and mid-sized businesses.
Iconosquare
Iconosquare is one of the most popular Instagram marketing tools available in the online market due to the host of features it brings to the table. You can use it to schedule posts, monitor tags and comments about your account and get metrics on your followers as well as the performance and engagement of your content. It will help you understand your followers better and know when your post grabs the most attention, so you can optimise and plan your posts accordingly to increase engagement for your Instagram account. Iconosquare also has support for Facebook making it the best of both worlds!
Social Insight
Apart from common marketing features like scheduling and posting your posts, Social Insight provides you the ability to identify and organise your followers while analysing your followers’ growth, interaction and engagement. It also provides you with a subscriber list statistics that will help you find the best influencers for collaboration as well as promotion. You can add other people to the team without sharing your account’s login details, thus providing additional security. If you’re looking for an Instagram marketing tool that provides advanced analytics then Social Insight might be a great tool to keep an eye on your account’s performance.
Awario
Awario is a social media marketing tool that works with multiple social media platforms, including Instagram. You can use it to find mentions of your brand or any other keyword across the web, which ensures that you are the first one to know about conversations even remotely related to you or your brand! It also tracks the growth of your mentions, their reach and sorts them by positive, negative and neutral with sentimental analysis. All these insights now only assist you in picking appropriate influencers and brands to collaborate with, but also help you in generating leads and increase your reach at a faster rate!
MailChimp
Sometime back, MailChimp was a tool that only dealt with mail lists but now they are trying to expand by providing users with features to manage their Instagram advertising campaigns. It lets you segment your audience, set your budget and perform all the tasks related to promotions. You can use MailChimp contact lists to run targeted campaigns that will only be shown to your current followers and accounts you have worked with. It also features advanced analytics that will help you decide what kind of advertising works for you and what doesn’t. If you are a user of MailChimp then you can make use of all these features without paying anything extra.
Facebook Power Editor
Facebook currently owns Instagram and you can use this nifty marketing tool to control your ad campaigns on both the platforms. Power Editor is a bulk ads creation and management tool with advanced analytics features that will help you analyse how your ads are performing in real time. It is one of those tools that you need to master before moving on to others, in order to make your Instagram marketing efforts worth it. If you don’t, your ads will reach the wrong audience and will result in an ad campaign which will lose money instead of making some.
Grum
Grum doesn’t have the advanced features offered by others in this list but it is one of the best tools that allows you to schedule your posts (both photos and videos) and publish them on Instagram. It lets you upload posts in large quantities and that too to multiple accounts. If you are looking for an affordable scheduling tool for your Instagram then do check this one out. Pair it with other analytical tools and you have a perfect recipe for good Instagram marketing.
The above mentioned tools are just the tip of the iceberg, as there are several other tools that you can use to step up your social media marketing game so you are not forced to buy Instagram followers to gain more engagement for your Instagram posts. If you’re a beginner, don’t hesitate to go for free trials to get acquainted with the tool before investing your hard earned cash on it!