No other social media channel drives engagement and builds customer relationships like Instagram marketing.
There are more than 1 billion active users on Instagram every day. Out of this, 90% of accounts follow at least one business.
Clearly, Instagram is no longer just a social platform for posting picture of dogs and cats, food and drink.
Every user, brand, influencer, marketer and agency is growing their Instagram to showcase products, inspire their audience and drive revenue.
But to have a successful Instagram marketing strategy, you need to post creative content at regular intervals, find the best time to post, use the right hashtags, engage with your followers, and measure your Instagram growth metrics.
In this article, you will discover 7+ top Instagram tools to take your Instagram presence to the next level.
Whether you’re a blogger, a family-run business, a startup or a much-loved global brand, this guide will help you find the best Instagram marketing tool for your needs.
Instagram Scheduling Tools
Consistent posting is the key to grow your instagram and keep your followers engaged.
Let’s power your marketing with Instagram scheduling tools.
You can plan, schedule your posts and stories ahead of time and still automatically publish them on Instagram, without having to lift a finger.
The app does the hard work for you, pretty much automatically.
Simply bulk upload content from your computer, it can be carousel, posts, videos, Stories. Add your product tags, location and tag people in your post. If you like, you can use the advanced photos editor to add filter, text and overlays or other effects to create eye-catching visual.
Sked Social will suggest the best time to post. Once you craft the perfect caption and add hashtags to your first comment, you can start scheduling your posts and stories with just one-click.
With Sked Social, you can easily maintain the perfect feed, ensure a consistent flow of on-brand Instagram content to keep your audience engaged, without worrying about missing a post ever again!
Use the Sked Insights analytics and reporting functionality to improve your strategy. You can get deeper insights into your Instagram feed, monitor post engagement, follower growth, likes, performance of Stories and more. Additionally, you can also track your competitors and find out what’s working for them with the Competitor Reports.
Besides Instagram, Sked Social also supports Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook.
What makes Sked Social so different is its free Link in Bio tool, allowing you to add multiple links to your Instagram bio. It’s next on the list, keep reading.
Free Trial: While Sked Social doesn’t offer a free plan, you can take advantage of their 7-day free trial to check out what Sked can do.
Paid Plan: Starts at $25 per month that includes 1 Instagram account and unlimited scheduled posts.
Tailwind is the social media scheduling tool that focused on visual platforms, namely Instagram and Pinterest.
Plus,Tailwind is an official partner of Instagram and Pinterest. So you can be assured that your account and personal information is safe with Tailwind.
Similar to Sked Social, Tailwind for Instagram lets you add videos, posts and Stories to the queue and they will post them directly to Instagram at the right time when your audience is already most engaged to get more engagement out of every post.
Aside from scheduling Instagram posts, Tailwind offers a simple analytics tool to help you analyze what’s working across every post. You can track profile metrics, know which post get the most likes and comments, and receive daily, weekly or monthly summary reports.
Try Tailwind’s Content Plan to customize your content strategy with different types of Instagram Posts: Connect, Educate, Repurpose, Inspire, Promote, or Relate. Based on your business type, you’ll get prompts with inspiring example posts and caption templates to get your creative juices flowing.
The only drawback to this powerful tool is that Tailwind can get quite expensive if you’re going to manage multiple Instagram accounts. Since only one Account is included in each plan, you have to pay additional fee for each account added.
Free Trial: Try Tailwind for free. Sign up for a free account here, you can schedule 30 IG posts and 100 Pinterest Pins for free.
Paid Plan: From $15/month for Tailwind’s Instagram Plus that includes one account, up to 400 posts/month, hashtag finder, auto post and Smart.bio.
Related:
- How to Use Your Instagram Hashtags with Tailwind for Maximum Engagement
- How to Use Tailwind to Boost your Blog Traffic
3. Apphi (It’s back!)
Apphi is one of the world’s best Instagram manager that helps you schedule everything and automatically post them on your Instagram, without any action from your part.
By everything, i mean all types of content, including Instagram Stories, images, carousels, videos, feed-posts and even Story URL links!
This way, you can fully automate your Instagram publishing without having to use a separate app.
Not only that, this tool also gives you the ability to manage unlimited Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn accounts.
The app’s interface is easy to navigate.
With a drag-and-drop post planner, you can visually design your Instagram feed, quickly bulk upload and rearrange posts, easily see how they look in your feed.
Apphi also features a range of dynamic functions that will effectively optimize your Instagram account. It allows you to add location, people, hashtags and products in your post ,just like you would in the Instagram app.
It’s really that simple. Apphi will automatically post the content in the right order, at the optimal time for best engagement.
What’s more…you’ll never run out of ideas of what to share on Instagram. The “Recycle Post” feature lets you reschedule your best content as well as other’s people top-performing content for reposting in just one click.
Instead of cramming your captions with 30 hashtags, Apphi helps you to hide hashtags in the first comment. You can plan your captions and hashtags in advance, Apphi will auto-post your hashtags as your first comment for each post.
To save you more time, you can also save your hashtags and captions and auto-apply them for your future posts, without repeating yourself over and over again.
If you plan to manage multiple Instagram accounts, you can save a lot of money with Apphi. While most Instagram scheduling tools charge you for each connected account, Apphi don’t. All the plans allow you to add and manage as many accounts as you want.
Free Plan: There is a free forever plan with limited that supports up to 10 autopost per month per Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.
Paid Plan: Apphi is a feature-rich platform that is a lot more affordable than some of their competitors. If you want to have advanced features such as suggested #hashtag, advanced analytics, First Comment, it starts at $9/month. (Get 10% OFF here on your First Payment). OR Take Apphi for a Test Drive. It’s free.
Note: I’ve tried a few IG scheduling tools and the best for me now is Apphi. Check out my review and guide on Apphi here.
Instagram Link in Bio tools
Want to get more from your Instagram bio link?
Instagram gives you only a single bio link to post on their platform. Although you can add links within your caption, those links are NOT clickable and will just appear as text.
So don’t waste your Instagram bio link with just one destination.
Use these tools to optimize your link in bio, and send traffic to different web pages every time you publish a post.
Few Instagram scheduling tools offer such a powerful bio link optimization tool as Sked Social.
With help of Sked Social’s link in bio tool, also known as Sked Link, you can easily and quickly add as many links as you want in your Instagram bio.
When someone clicks the link in your IG bio, they’ll see a beautiful landing page with rich links to your best content.
You can add a series of buttons to send your followers to multiple destinations like your website, online store, newsletter signups, popular blog posts, YouTube channel, podcast, free downloadable content and any link you want.
Not only that, you can even add a gallery of your Instagram posts to your Sked Link. This way, your visitors can simply click on any of your Instagram images, and they’ll be taken to that particular page right away
Spend a few minutes to customize your personalized Sked Link. Choose your color, add links and other element to match your brand.
You can also add a mini-bio or welcome message to capture your audience’s attention, show them who you are and how you can help them.
But that’s not all! Sked Link built-in analytics help you to monitor traffic from Instagram, track the performance of your links and see which type of content get the most clicks. So you can focus on creating content that your audience likes.
Since Sked Link works with Sked Social, you schedule posts and links in advance within a single handy Sked app.
If you’re an existing user of their Instagram scheduling tool, Sked Social, you can remove Sked Link branding, for no extra cost.
Free Plan: Forever. Even if you’re not a paying customer of Sked, you can use Sked Link for completely free of charge.
Paid Plan: Get all Sked’s features (IG auto-posting + remove Sked Link’s logo) for just $25 per month.
Related: 7 Smart Ways to Add Clickable Links on Instagram
Shorby is another popular link in bio tool to supercharge your Instagram.
While Shorby aimed primarily at Instagrammers who want to turn a single link into multiple clickable offers, you can also use Shorby links on other social platforms like YouTube videos, Twitter bio, Twitch videos and Snapchat.
When it comes to optimizing Instagram traffic, Shorby has a lot to offer.
Its “Smart Page” allows you to create a mobile responsive, fully customizable Instagram link profile in which you can put all the links you want to share with your audience. You can create a page for giveaways, music albums, online stores, personal business needs and even a page to invite friends to a birthday party.
By showcasing your content and make your photo clickable, you can send your visitors directly to the specific page to buy or read. More links, more traffic.
Another cool feature the Direct messenger buttons. You can add links to WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, email and any regular phone number on your Shorby link. Making it easier for your visitors to contact you, as well as helps you turn leads into customers without any third-party tool.
Not only that, you can track the total numbers of click each link received, know what content works best and retarget your audience to get more sales.
Shorby is perfect for sellers, local businesses, and influencers who’re looking to get more traffic and sales from Instagram.
Free Trial: Take a test drive with their 5-day trial. No code required!
Paid Plan: Starts at $15 per month that includes 5 Smart Pages, unlimited links and click insights.
Instagram Hashtags Tool
Want to get noticed by the right audience? Use the right #hashtags.
Each hashtag creates new opportunities for people to discover your Post, Story and profile. If they like your content, they may even follow your page.
Instagram allows up to 30 hashtags in one post and up to 10 hashtags for each Story. So stop using irrelevant hashtags and take advantage of this hashtags tool to reach more real targeted followers.
Most Instagram scheduling tools will give you recommended hashtags but that’s not their primary focus.
HashtagsforLikes is primarily aimed at growing your following organically through the power of hashtags. It makes finding personalized, high-quality hashtags easy.
Don’t use the same old hashtags. You are taking a short cut and saving a lot of effort, but that can get your account shadowbanned by Instagram.
Simply create an account, enter any #Hashtag or analyze your profile in the seach bar and you’ll get a list of up to date hashtags, analytics and data based on real-time hashtag engagement.
These hashtags are proven to get likes, comments and followers. Copy and paste them on your next post will automatically help you reach a real targeted niche followers that you wouldn’t usually have access to.
HashtagforLikes use Smart Algorithm to detect the most relevant top trending hashtags that you can use to increase your exposure. It will save you time (and frustration) from manually finding, organizing and re-typing the best hastags everytime you post.
Since hashtags are most often overlooked, it’s your opportunity to use better hashtags for more discoverability. Boost your post’s reach, click-through rate, Calls‑To‑Action (CTA) on links and increase your following.
You can use HashtagforLikes for free. But if you’d like to unlock a full suite of tools, then go premium.
If you’re already implementing all of the Instagram best-practices and your account isn’t growing, take a test drive with HashtagforLikes.
Free Plan: Create a free account and get instant hashtag suggestions.
Paid Plan: Starts at $15 per week that includes unlimited search, live analytics, track and follow profiles.
Instagram Growth Tool
You can buy likes and followers to grow your account overnight. But farming temporary likes and followbacks by bot accounts is pointless and it can do more harm than good to your brand.
Only safe and organic Instagram audience growth provides real results that stay for good.
7. Combin Growth
Combin Growth is a desktop tool that helps you manage and grow Instagram safely and organically, without the risk of being temporarily or even permanently banned on Instagram!
Sign up for a free account, and you can start attracting new Instagram followers in 3 simple steps.
- Search: Use Combin in-built search engine to perform search by hashtags + locations to find only relevant to your business users and posts.
- Engage: Leave likes, comments or follow users directly from Combin app. You can decide yourself which posts and accounts will be engaged with.
- Grow: By finding and staying in touch with your community using the engagement activity automation, you can easily drive the right attention to your IG profile and gain more and more attention without taking much of your time. It’s a natural, safe and simple way of growing your Instagram.
So take back your time and get rid of all that manual work by automating the process of targeting, engaging and growing your followers.
Free Plan: It’s free. You can start searching for potential followers and automate your action tasks.
Paid Plan: Starts at $15 per month.
- Use Promo Code: TMAVERICK50 to get 50% off your upgrade!
Instagram Analytics Tool
Each Instagram Business profile comes with its own Analytics section. Some basic information like profile visits, gender and age is available, but it is quite limited. If you’re serious about Instagram marketing, you might want to look for more in-depth analytics.
Analytics tool like Iconosquare can help.
You get actionable engagement insights, advanced analytics, content monitoring and real-time reports.
Iconosquare is a full-featured Instagram management and analytics tools.
On the platform, you have access to an array of services, includes scheduling and auto-publishing, monitoring competitors activity, engaging with your audience. And most importantly, you get in-depth reports on followers, impression, engagement, hashtags, link in bio, performance of Stories and other important metrics.
All these advanced analytics and actionable insights are presented in easy-to-ready graphs which you can implement right away to optimize your Instagram strategy.
On top of that, you can monitor what is being said about your brand and respond to tags and comments in real time, with the click of a button.
Iconosquare also give you the ability to monitor multiple competitor profiles so you understand what type of content is working in your niche, what strategy your competitor is using and use them to better plan your own strategy.
Iconsquare also offers a free Instagram audit for everyone. Simply sign in with Instagram, and you’ll get a FREE performance review full of actionable tips on how to improve your Instagram, straight to your inbox!
Free Trial: Sign-up a free 14-day trial to see if it’s right for you.
Paid Plan: Starts at $29 per month
Conclusion
Instagram offers an incredible opportunity to build a personal brand, engage with your followers and generate revenue for your business.
Regardless of your niche, chances are your specific audience is on Instagram and is ready to consume your content or buy whatever you have to offer.
Simply create a free Instagram account, posting randomly whenever you have something to share works perfectly fine if you’re using it as your personal profile.
But if you want to use Instagram to grow your website, business, or brand, then you’ll need to create an Instagram Business profile and use it with intention.
And don’t forget to use the Instagram tools in this list to help you with feed planning, scheduling, auto-posting, analytics, monitoring, reporting, hashtag research, link in bio optimization, organic follower growth, and more.
What do you think?
Which is your favorite Instagram tool to schedule, manage and grow your Instagram?
Tell me in the comments!
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Related reading:
- 7 Best Time-Saving Instagram Scheduling Tools
- 7 Smart Ways to Add Clickable Links on Instagram
- 7 Best Instagram Link in Bio Tools
- How to Schedule Instagram Posts and Stories (and Make Money)
- 8+ Best Apps For Instagram Stories: Level Up Your Visual Content
- How to Create Animated Instagram Stories in Less Than 1 Minute
- How to Schedule Instagram Posts Like a Boss
- How to Post GIFs on Instagram
- How to Create Instagram Stories images for Business
- How to Create Custom Instagram Highlight Covers in less than 5 minutes
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