Table of Contents
Since the announcement Instagram made of changing their newsfeed algorithm, business owners and marketers are looking into new ways they can improve their game. Although this is an engaging and influential network, the never ending to do list now has added managing it.
Apps are what can help you to grow your Instagram presence as well as handle some of the items on your to do list. Apps which have been specifically designed to manage Instagram.
Designing Images and Videos
Snapping an image and mindlessly uploading it to Instagram is easy. That however should not be done. No more low quality and sloppy pictures should be posted. Instagram is all about visual content that is powerful, about what will attract more artists to your page. All the content you post must be up to par, or their experience will be ruined as well as your chances of landing a sale.
When it comes to your choice of images as well as their level of quality, be meticulous and mindful. Your overall digital branding should be evaluated and guaranteed that the presence of Instagram fits with it like a glove. All of the settings and filters that are associated with Instagram are things you should take advantage of.
That being said, enough is enough with adding the Lo-Fi filter to everything, it is best to find a unique filter of you own that will provide your Instagram content with a citome and recognizable look. There are filters that will warm the colors in the picture and others that will cool them, having a unified look to your content is important. If colorful imagery is used by your brand, look for a filter such as Lark, Claredon or Juno that will accentuate that colors of your pictures, they are ideal for intense hues. If only a few key colors are what your branding is based on. For accentuating greens and blues, try Perpetua, to enhance yellows go with Valencia.
There are also beautiful VSCO filters, some free others paid that you should definitely check out. They add some individuality and sophistication to your pictures. There is premium and free Canvathat can be used to design a filter for your Instagram photos that is completely unique. Once the ideal balance is brightness, saturation, hue, contrast as well as other options have been found, in the settings window, save the filter code that you get. Now simply by pasting the code, you can apply a filter that is uniformed to all of your images.
If you are into mixing things up a bit, use tools such as PicStitch or Frame Swagg, which are both free and can help you create collages, with Boomerang that is free from Instagram, you can also record short yet fun looped videos.
Planning and Scheduling
Until only recently, the use of Instagram’s API to post automated content was restricted by their Terms of Use, this made it a bit difficult to plan and schedule on this channel. It is also a sort of explains the relative lack of many third party scheduling apps for Instagram. Many of them are still in need of manual postings and only allow for the scheduling reminders to reach you. That being said, it is better than nothing at all.
One of the offers of the CrowdFire app is the TakeOff app that comes in premium and free, when it is time to post, it will send a push notification to your phone. Suggestions of the most effective hashtags to use as well as the best times to post are provided by TakeOff. They also evaluate you captions.
A similar offering is made by Latergramme that is offered in premium or for free, however this one allows you to search for current posts in the universe of Instagram as well as lets you repost them. For those seeking to be active in the IG community as well as engage with other handles, this is a pretty big feature.
And finally, Schedugram that comes in premium is one of the very few apps which are third party and are able to natively post to Instagram. The great thing is that with this app you are able to post updates on both desktop and mobile variations, those of us with fat fingers appreciate the help. Every time a scheduled image is posted, you will also receive alerts guaranteeing an operation that is smooth and hiccup free.
Analyzing Efforts
There are also very few amounts of analytical tool offerings. There are however a few which can provide you with the needed insight.
The number of followers as well as unfollowers are tracked by the premium Iconosquare, stats on popular filters, photos and hashtags are also shown. On top of that, it enters engagement rates which are broken down further into counts of followers and non-followers.
If there are less than 25,000 followers on your instagram handler, you should try a report from SimplyMeasured which is free. You can also add more with a tools such as Vibbi. All you have to do is enter your account name and you will be provided with insights on you average engagement rates, the followers that are most active, the best times to post, top locations and much more.
Those figures can also be compared against the data provided by Union Metrics account which is also a free check-up, this will help you really see what the best performing hashtags as well as most engaging photos are. The types of content that will effectively work for your handle are also suggested by this app.
Although in comparison with the ones from other networks, your choices of Instagram apps is limited, there are still quite a few premium and even free options out there; so there is no longer any reason why you Instagrams marketing strategy should be run ineffectively.
UI/UX Consultant, Photoshop, XD, SketchApp, Product Designer, Website Designer, Mobile App Designer, Expert WordPress Developer. For web/mobile design and wordpress development related projects please contact me at dibakar@themepurpose.com
