JANUARY 19, 2022 – Instagram is quickly growing into brands’ favorite social media platform. This is not yet true for all industries, but entertainment, fashion, wellness, and education businesses already rely on Instagram to generate sales and nurture customer loyalty. Making the most of what Instagram has to offer as a business platform is even easier now, thanks to all the useful tools available. Check out the list of the ones to consider this year.
1 Instagram Insights
One of the best tools that any content creator can benefit from is Instagram Insights. It is a very basic yet helpful analytics tool that offers answers to such questions as:
- Who are your followers?
- What content performs the best with them?
- When are they active?
- Where does your post appear in feeds? (alongside many others).
Instagram Insights might not be as elaborate as Hootsuite Analytics and some other alternatives, but its major advantage is that it is free. And the features it has are more than enough for most business and creator accounts.
2 All Hashtag
Another awesome (and free!) Instagram tool is All Hashtag. In a nutshell, it is a hashtag generator that helps account owners come up with hashtags that perform well. And it is also easy to use for hashtag analysis.
Say the goal is to promote a service that assists students in dealing with their homework and writing complicated essays for college. A hashtag that helps them buy essay online on PaperWriter.com would be #professionalpaperwriter or something similar. All Hashtag works no matter what the business is and rarely misses the mark.
3 Iconosquare
Iconosquare offers a much deeper insight into how followers react to the content posted. The metrics it provides are very intuitive and easy to understand, even for someone who is new to Iconosquare. The tool helps creators and businesses see how to up their engagement, when and what to post, and so on.
Granted, Iconosquare is not free. And with the monthly price of at least $49, it is not cheap either. But ask anyone who has recently started to use it—the feedback is overwhelmingly positive.
4 Shorby
Shorby is the app for Instagram bios. One of the main reasons why Instagram is criticized is that an account can only have one link in the bio. Shorby offers a great solution to this problem. Thanks to Shorby, the account owner can create a landing page with all the links featured on it. By recreating the visual branding of their Instagram page, they can also get rid of any possible disconnect.
5 Phlanx
Phlanx is oriented toward brands that work with Instagram influencers. The number one purpose of this tool is to calculate engagement. There are countless bloggers and celebrities out there with millions of followers. But the number alone does not mean anything unless it is backed up by a decent engagement rate.
No one really knows what “high” engagement means, yet the average is about 5%. Anything below this is not a good deal for a business seeking to benefit from influencer marketing.
6 Agorapulse
Everyone who can appreciate a nice shortcut should get Agorapulse—it is like five different Instagram tools in one. Some of the things that Agorapulse can do include:
- Scheduling posts,
- Creating and managing the social inbox (an instrument that presents all inboxes of a user’s or brand’s social media pages in a single dashboard),
- Analyzing engagement and content performance,
- Optimizing collaboration with your entire SMM team, and more.
Agorapulse is definitely on the pricier side for a social media tool ($79 a month for the Pro plan and $159 for the Premium one). But it is still cheaper than paying for everything Agorapulse can do separately.
7 Buffer Publish
Luckily, Instagram account owners do not need to pay that much if the main feature they need is a content calendar. Buffer Publish is an entirely free alternative to paid tools for content scheduling. It cannot do much beyond that, though (unless a user is ready to pay a little).
8 SocialBee
SocialBee is similar to Agorapulse in that it is great for managing one’s entire social inbox. The social media platforms that it works with besides Instagram are Twitter, Facebook, and Pinterest. In addition to keeping track of the social inbox, SocialBee subscribers can use the tool for scheduling content and analyzing how well it performs across platforms.
SocialBee is much cheaper than Agorapulse and most other competitors. So while SocialBee’s functions are limited, $19 a month is a reasonable price to pay for them.
9 Boomerang
Boomerang needs no introduction. Even people who are not Instagram influencers and do not own a business account know what it is and how it works. Boomerang is not a particularly elaborate tool. But the cool feature of super-short videos instead of traditional static pictures is a fun addition to anyone’s stories.
Keep in mind, though, that overusing Boomerang is a bit tacky in 2022. It was quite popular back in the day but should now be used in moderation. Also, it is much more liked among millennial Instagram users than zoomers.
10 Pallyy
Pallyy can do most of the things that Agorapulse can, such as scheduling posts, analyzing post- performance and follower engagement, and researching competitors. It can even be used as a simple alternative to Shorby for links in the bio.
Pallyy is a very popular alternative to Agorapulse, and it is also way, way cheaper ($15 a month for the Premium plan against Agorapulse’s $79). But its abilities do not extend beyond Instagram, so it might not work for brands that rely on multiple social media platforms.
So, which ones to go for?
Which Instagram tools a brand owner or content creator should choose depends on what features they need and how much they are willing to pay. A helpful free set would be Instagram Insights for basic analytics, All Hashtag for hashtag generation, and Buffer Publish for scheduling. In turn, Agorapulse is the most convenient option for SMM professionals because, while expensive, it can do it all. So choose based on your unique needs and wallet.