Instagram business accounts have access to various native tools on Instagram, such as analytics and Insights. Additional tools such as Canva can assist in designing and planning the profile grid while Phlanx provides competitor and influencer data that can inspire high-performing content ideas.
Buffer provides robust scheduling and Instagram-specific engagement tools, while Sprout Social’s built-in social inbox combines public comments, tags and mentions but does not collect direct messages (DMs).
Hashtags
Hashtags can be an effective way to expand your Instagram presence and expand its audience reach. To maximize likes and followers for each post on Instagram, use hashtags that relate directly to them as this will ensure consistency with your strategy and prevent overloading of tags on the feed.
A good hashtag tool like naz tricks will enable you to easily generate a list of tags relevant to your content and identify which are most popular, while providing insight into which ones may best suit your business – for instance, fitness brands would want to utilize niche hashtags rather than general ones in order to stay at the top of search results pages and remain within recent sections.
Sprout’s Keyword Tool will assist in discovering keywords and hashtags for various platforms, including Instagram. Filter by location to easily discover popular hashtags near you; this feature is particularly beneficial for local brick-and-mortar businesses. Follow a hashtag to keep up-to-date on its usage by other users; that way you’ll always have an eye on any emerging trends or movements.
Inflact’s AI-powered hashtag generator is another effective method for finding hashtags. This tool will analyze photos or existing posts and suggest a list of relevant hashtags; its free account offers limited results, yet provides an effective place to begin searching for tags.
Editing
Instagram provides a built-in photo editing tool to make your photos stand out, offering tools such as brightness, contrast, saturation and sharpness adjustments for images uploaded directly from a camera phone or computer. In addition, filters and textures provide ways to further personalize photos. Highlights and shadows tools help address exposure issues by brightening or darkening lightest parts of pictures; but be mindful not to overdo this feature, as excessive highlighting could leave photos looking washed-out.
If you want to add text to your photo, consider Instagram’s native text tool as it is simple and works well on mobile devices – plus it’s completely free! Alternatively, desktop text editors such as Canva may help create posts for both Instagram feed and Stories.
If you come across Instagram user-generated content or competitor posts that inspire you, save them by tapping the ribbon icon on your mobile phone. Doing this allows you to repost them with crediting caption and share on other social networks such as Facebook and Twitter. Squarelovin makes reposting Instagram posts even simpler but requires a premium subscription; before reposting anything it is always best to obtain permission from its original creator before reposting.
Scheduling
Instagram’s scheduling feature makes saving time easy by pre-planning and scheduling posts ahead of time, helping to save you time for engaging with followers and expanding your brand. There are various free and paid scheduling tools available on Instagram; when choosing one it is essential that it fits with your needs.
Some tools only schedule Instagram posts while others provide more comprehensive solutions with multiple features and functionalities – from photo-editing capabilities, drag & drop grids, caption templates and multiple post scheduling at once to analytics integrations that let you track engagement rates.
If you own an Instagram business or creator account, you can now schedule photos, Reels and carousels directly through the app. Unfortunately this feature has yet to be made available to regular accounts; however it could become available soon.
An effective Instagram scheduling tool must be fast and user-friendly, helping you gain new followers with relevant hashtag suggestions that match your brand. Furthermore, it should allow you to set content out ahead of time so as to not miss any events or holidays; apps like Sprout Schedule even offer functionality to pause posts during times of high public interest or when it would be inappropriate – for instance following tragedies.
Analytics
Instagram provides some decent analytics, but in order to fully optimize your strategy you need a tool that provides deeper analysis. Iconosquare and Sprout both offer comprehensive social media account analytics while others specialize in certain metrics – Iconosquare in particular focuses on Instagram growth tracking by showing daily follower gains or losses and also providing gender and geographic insight analysis capabilities.
Utilizing these tools can help you identify patterns and understand your audience better. They can also give insight into when Instagram activity peaks during the day – which will give you a good indication as to when and what kind of posts will resonate most with followers. Finally, these tools can help improve content creation by showing what type of posts resonate most strongly with them.
Instagram’s native analytics can give a lot of insight, yet they are only accessible by creator and business accounts. To use them, log in and click your profile image before finding the story you wish to analyze and swiping up for metrics tab. A high back tap count could indicate users enjoyed it enough that they want to watch it again!
Sprout’s Instagram analytics offer more comprehensive results than native Instagram, such as engagement rates, reach, average post likes and daily reporting features that provide customized reports of past performance. In addition, it helps track hashtag campaigns’ performance by identifying influencers as well as helping create social contests with random entry selectors for contests with built-in ROI calculators and more!