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Instagram isn’t just a simple photo sharing platform anymore. According to Statista, it has over 1 billion monthly users—that’s almost one-fourth of all internet users today. It’s no surprise that marketing via Instagram has become the new thing-to-do for gaining a larger clientele. Brands are virtually rolling in major opportunities to showcase their products through advertising and influencer marketing.
And influencers are rarely without vlogs on their content plate. If you’re wondering how vlogger-comedians like Liza Koshy or fashion influencers like Chiara Ferragni are able to manage vlogs and other content for their Instagram feeds, we’re here to help.
We’ve gathered the best Instagram tools for content creation, engagement, advanced automation tools, like Instagram chatbots and more, for anyone starting out (or sprucing up) their IG vlog and feed. These are the tool-types you’ll find:
Content Creation
Management
Analytics
Engagement
Automation Tools
1. Content Creation
Of course, launching an amazing product is the most important factor when creating an effective Instagram presence. But without having engaging visuals to support your product promotion, consumers are less likely to purchase or even look at your product. Correctly communicating your brand’s identity and product worth is a key to success.
Fancy cameras are not always a necessity when wanting to showcase your products in the best light. Great Instagram content can be created on your smartphone, using a few beneficial apps.
• Afterlight 2
Afterlight 2 is an essential Instagram photo editing toolkit that can be localized in 15 languages. With an extensive library of natural and dramatic filters and top editing tools puts the creator in full control of the image design. You can also create your very own custom filters to save and reuse as a default design, as well as working with multiple image formats.
This easy to use smartphone app will help you photos stand out on Instagram and make your images pop.
Price and availability: Afterlight 2 is available for iOS, with previous version Afterlight available for Android and iOS. Afterlight 2 is paid app for a one-time payment of $4.49 or Afterlight 1 (previous version) is free.
• Fotor
Fotor is a useful tool to create images that capture a viewers attention, whether on an Instagram direct upload or stories. The creations are endless, with multi-image layouts, superimpose text and a bottomless range of unique graphics that will capture your audience’s attention.
If you’re stuck for ideas, Fotor also gives you templates to help your imagination thrive. If you are repetitive with the Fotor designs when creating content, followers will start to recognize the theme and identify the company easier.
Price and availability: Fotor is available for iOS and Android, as well as web browser access. Fotor is a free to use program, which also offers a paid upgrade to Fotor Pro.
• VSCO
VSCO is a unique app with part photo editing and part social media network. This top app should always be included in your must have Instagram tools for marketing. Take your smartphone photos to a whole new level with VSCO’s high quality default filters and sensational editing suite.
Although VSCO is a free to use app, they also offer a wide variety of purchasable filters. Giving users all sorts of customizing photo potential.
Price and availability: VSCO is available for iOS and Android. It’s a free-to-use app, with an in-app monthly payment option for exclusive filters and access.
• Photoshop Express
Easily edit and share your photos in no time with the new Adobe Photoshop Express app. Creativity at your fingertips has never been so easy. Photoshop Express allows you to edit files and create collages from your smartphone device, Adobe Creative Cloud, Dropbox, Facebook and Google Photos.
With one touch adjustments to colour, brightness and contrast, simple sliders adjust exposure, brightness and tint and effects makes photo editing extremely easy. You don’t need to be a pro to use this app. Blemish removal is one of the most popular editing tools used within the app, to remove spots, dirt and dust from your photo.
Photoshop Express also has multiple different presets, filters and control options you can’t get anywhere else, such as watermark adding.
Price and availability: Adobe Photoshop Express is available for iOS and Android, for free.
• Clipchamp
Without quality content, the views on your Instagram page could dwindle. That’s why you upload the best-quality photos with aesthetics, appropriate themes and filters in mind. So why not do the same for your video posts?
When it comes to video editing, Clipchamp Create is your tool. Whether you’re on a PC or Mac, laptop or desktop, this in-browser video editing program allows you to easily edit and create videos to immediately share for any occasion.
With hundreds of ready to use Instagram video templates to choose from, gathering inspiration for your Instagram promotional video post or story will not be hard. Create brings you easy to use editing essentials including trimming, cutting, title blocks, speed control, filters and much more.
Clipchamp Create has an easy drag and drop process to use as many videos, imagery and audio as you desire. If you’re wanting some extra content, search through the stock video and audio library with over 100 000 assets to choose from.
Clipchamp Create is exclusive to Google Chrome as an in-browser program. Here are some Instagram promotional video template examples to check out and try to edit yourself:
Visual Flow Lightroom Presets
Visual Flow Presets are one of the most powerful Lightroom Presets on the market. Started by Pye Jirsa, founder of SLR Lounge and DVLOP, a dedicated preset maker, these presets currently offer four different looks that fit the most popular styles. You have the Modern Pack, which is bold and vibrant, the Pastel Pack, which is light and airy, the Crush Pack, which is high contrast and colourful, and the mood pack, which is dark and moody. Altogether, they give you a versatile toolkit that’s hard to beat.
In addition, they created a Lighting Condition Based system of post processing, which is just a fancy way of saying that the user selects the preset based on the lighting condition of the photo. So, if your photo was shot in shade, you select the “soft light” preset. If it was shot in tungsten light, you select the “tungsten” preset and so on. This makes image editing very consistent and easy.
Price and availability: Visual Flow is available for the Lightroom App on both iOS and Android. Pricing information on their website.
2. Management
To keep user engagement, you must regularly update your Instagram page with new, fresh content daily or weekly. Although most of us don’t have the time to take new photos, create detailed captions, and upload to Instagram everyday. That’s why we’ve created a list of management apps which will help you schedule your Instagram posts and keep your profile up to date with relevant content.
• Sked Social
Sked Social is a must-have Instagram tool that allows you to plan and schedule your Instagram posts and stories, so your audience is constantly updated with fresh content. The browser-based scheduling program offers a wide variety of features including, scheduling and automatically upload anywhere, multiple accounts and unlimited users, photo editor, queuing posts, social media calendars and much more.
Seamlessly working in conjunction with Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, Sked Social should be among your go to Instagram management tools. Social media post templates are also available if you’re stuck for ideas or unsure what key information to include in your captions or bio.
Price and availability: Sked Social is an in-browser tool offering monthly and yearly plans ranging from $33/month – $198/month. It also offers a 7-day free trial period.
• ContentStudio
Discover, curate, plan and publish your content across multiple social channels in one click. This tool keeps you updated with the trending content across the web for you to easily choose and post to you channels and increase engagement! Contentstudio serves as all in one tool for content and social media marketing. It is among the fastest-growing social media management tools. Some of the best features of it include scheduling and planning of social media posts and content with insights. You can easily manage your direct messages through the social inbox and assign tasks to your team with approval workflow feature.
• Buffer
Plan, collaborate and publish amazing content that creates meaningful engagement and growth for your brand with Buffer. If you want to have the choice of scheduling posts anytime, anywhere, from your smartphone device or desktop, Buffer is the Instagram management tool for you. Unlike most management tools, Buffer allows you to schedule and plan out videos and multi-image posts as well as the standard single-image posts.
Price and availability: Buffer is available for iOS and Android, and it offers a browser extension. You may select between a basic free plan, as well as more advanced plans ranging between $15/monthly – $99/monthly. Paid plans include a 14-day free trial.
• Later
This number 1 marketing platform for Instagram allows you to visually plan and schedule all your Instagram posts at your fingertips. Later has an extremely wide range of in app features for planning business campaigns, including user generated content and hashtag explorer. Producing a content calendar and being able to preview all posts on your Instagram feed before publishing makes this Instagram management tool extremely beneficial for businesses and influencers.
You can visualize exactly how you want your business strategy to be shown. Relevant hashtags and captions can also be saved for future planning and posting on Instagram. This saves time and repetitive research.
Price and availability: Later is available for iOS, Android and in browser desktop. Later is a free-to-use app, and it offers packages up to $49/monthly.
Social Champ
![Social Champ]()
Social Champ is an Instagram management tool with features that can make your marketing efforts more effective. With the tool, you can create, edit, design, and schedule posts days in advance using the easy-to-use content dashboard and visual integrations, such as GIPHY, Vista Create, and more. Furthermore, you can use the in-app royalty-free images to make your Instagram posts even more enjoyable.
Social Champ offers analytics for Instagram, which tracks your posts with all the essential metrics and downloads reports with beautiful charts and graphs. Moreover, Social Champ provides a unified social media inbox to bring all your Instagram conversations under one roof.
Pricing and availability: Social Champ is available for iOS, Android, and a FREE plan (which includes all the significant features for your Instagram management). It offers more advanced three plans, Champion, Business, and Agency, starting from $29.
• Hootsuite
Hootsuite is a fantastic Instagram management tool if you are pushed for time. This handy tool allows your to post images and videos directly to Instagram. The Hootsuite dashboard is easily compatible with your Instagram Business account, and gives you the ability to monitor your recent posts effectively.
There are also analytic features within the app, measuring the performance of each post you make to Instagram.
Price and availability: Hootsuite is available on iOS and Google Play, with a basic free plan. The paid plans range between $29/monthly – $599/monthly including a 30-day free trial for all plans.
Bookafy
If you are selling a service on your Instagram page, you need a call to action that will allow your customer to subscribe or book a session to get started. There's nothing better than empowering your potential customers to book an intro call straight from Instagram or your website. With Bookafy, you can embed a calendar app to drive more conversations that can lead to sales.
3. Analytics
Instagram Business Account allows users to view their personal analytics. These include how many people have viewed your profile weekly, most popular days for impressions, demographic breakdowns of your followers and many more cool features. This information is vital for any business to have access to as it essentially helps pave the way to success with inside knowledge.
However if the standard Instagram analytics feature isn’t giving you enough detailed information, there are many reliable analytic tools that can let you dig deeper into the data you desire.
• Sprout Social
Sprout Social’s social media management software and solutions help to find, form and deepen real connections with your brands audience. This platform offers more in-depth Instagram analytics, giving businesses detailed reports about recent post performances.
The software tracks engagement, monitors popular hashtags and comments that helps you find new and improved ideas on engagement opportunities. Sprout Social insists on providing the best support and partnership required to delight your customers and clients, achieve personal business goals and transform your company through social media.
Not only is this Instagram analytics tool popular for analytics, they also offer a management feature within the monthly package. Businesses can now efficiently plan and post directly Instagram through the scheduling tools within the program. Sprout Social offers the ability to streamline your posting process, simplify creative development and manage content and campaigns.
Price and availability: Sprout Social offers a free trial period, as well as $99 – $249 per month, per user rate. The app is available for iOS and Google Play.
• Socialbakers
If paying for an analytics app isn’t in the budget, Socialbakers is a free-to-use tool for managing your Instagram Business account. Socialbakers offers beginner-friendly analytics about your Instagram engagement and growth. Offering an overview on your most liked and top commented posts, most tagged users, hashtags, top filters and many more.
This Instagram analytics tool offers a 5 step tool to Instagram business users, giving you an insight to the whole marketing process. Understanding your audience, creating effective, impressionable content and the impact of your business goals.
Price and availability: Socialbakers offers a free analytics tool for iOS and Android, although separate Socialbakers suites come in a variety of prices. A free trial is offered.
• Keyhole
Keyhole is one of the best Social Media Analytics tools for helping brands understand how millions of people engage with their campaigns and influencers across Instagram. The main attraction with Keyhole is the two primary services they offer, hashtag and keyword tracking, as well as account tracking and reporting. The easy-to-use tool measures historical and real-time data, then creates personalized graphs for your business.
Analyzing, reporting and applying strategy has never been so easy with Keyhole. With Instagram being one of the most popular, leading tools for business strategies, Keyhole would most likely be worth investing in.
With the exclusive Influencer Marketing feature, this Instagram analytics tool measures the impact influencers are making on your brand online. As well as connecting you with the most relevant influencers in your brands industry.
Price and availability: Keyhole offers three different monthly plans, as well as a 7-day free trial. This tool is available through your online web browser.
Sotrender
Sotrender is another tool for social media analysis, which you can use to understand your followers' preferences, behaviours, and which content brings you the highest engagement on Instagram.
By using Sotrender you will no longer be limited by expiring Stories, their performance, or the lack of data about the growth of your followers. You will also understand, for example, how many impressions each content type generates you.
Historical data will be at your disposal anytime to help you get a bigger picture of your overall performance over time.
One of Sotrender’s key features is reporting. As it can be fully automated, you’ll save plenty of time each month on collecting and presenting your data.
Price and availability: Sotrender offers a 14-day free trial. After this time you can choose from 4 different plans, with prices starting at $49.
4. Engagement
Have you ever seen an outfit on Instagram and wondered where the person bought it from? Usually, Instagram influencers will tag the company they received the outfit from if a paid promotion is involved, although sometimes it isn’t that easy to find out the details. With the right Instagram management tools, this desire can become a reality for keen shoppers.
• Shopping on Instagram – Through Shopify
A new feature has been created where Shopify merchants in 9 different countries can tag products in their stories and posts, with the new Shopping on Instagram sales channel. Users can complete their entire purchase without even leaving the Instagram app. All you need to do is click the product in the photo and checkout.
The only downfall is that Shopping on Instagram feature can only be used within the USA, UK, Australia, Canada, Germany, Franc, Italy, Spain and Brazil. You must also have an Instagram Business account, as well as an added Facebook channel installed in your Shopify account with an approved Facebook Shop.
Although it sounds easy enough to do, there are a couple of hidden details which makes the process a little harder. Shopping on Instagram is still a vital app for tech savvy business owners looking to create an easier shopping method for their customers. By adding the Instagram sales channel to your Shopify store, enables product tagging on all Instagram posts and stories with no cost involved.
Price and availability: Shopping on Instagram is a free to use app via Shopify. It is available through the Shopify app store.
• InstaFeed – Through Shopify
Now that you know how to tag direct links to your products, it is important to make those products desirable and convenient to purchase. This includes making your Instagram feed aesthetically pleasing to scroll through and catch the viewers attention when clicking the Instagram account. As well as having easy access between website to Instagram account.
Mishkah Fashion uses InstaFeed to showcase their Instagram photos on their own website homepage.
Mishkah Fashions is purely based around seasonal, on-trend fashion products for sale. By having a current, up-to-date Instagram feed shows customers the products on real life people, representing what the items will look like in everyday life. By clicking the fashion item they are interested in, the product price will automatically appear with an active link to purchase.
• Display Purposes
Engagement can come from hashtags as well as photo tags. By including relevant hashtags on your Instagram photos, a wider range of people are more likely to view the post as it will automatically be displayed under the hashtag when searched. Adding appropriate hashtags to all posts and stories should be a must to grow your audience and social media presence.
Wanting more control over the hashtags you choose for your Instagram posts? Display Purposes lets you do just that. By searching a keyword or existing hashtag you use, Display Purposes will recommend additional hashtags to post on your image descriptions.
There is also an option to choose the specific number of hashtags you would like to include within one post. As well as having a manual selection, allowing you to create your own list by choosing between the generated hashtags this tool creates for you.
Price and availability: Display Purposes is available on the web, in-browser tool. This tool is free to use.
• AutoHash
Are you tired of adding hashtags manually to all your business Instagram posts? AutoHash will find you the best possible hashtags with little effort.
This generated hashtag app is possible one of the easiest to navigate. AutoHash creates a relevant list of well known, popular hashtags based on the image you upload to the app. All the work is done for you within the app.
By analyzing the image, AutoHash composes not only a list of relevant hashtags, but also adds tags based on your current location. The app also lets you save your favourite hashtags for future use on all your images.
That is not all AutoHash has to offer. They also pride themselves on their no ad policy while being present in the app.
Price and availability: AutoHash is available on Google Play. It is a free-to-use app, with in-app purchases available.
• Top Tags
Have you ever seen a business post with over 30 irrelevant hashtags in the photo caption? Having overdone the hashtags, usually comes across as a desperate cry for attention or views.
The best app for to-the-point tags is Top Tags. This tool is quite different to AutoHash as you have to select a category which best describes your image. For example, Food, Holiday or Fashion. Top Tags will then generate an extensive list of related items that you can use on your image.
The whole hashtag clipboard can be copied and pasted in the caption section of your Instagram upload.
Price and availability: Top Tags is free and available on Google Play.
5. Automation Tools
Automation tool tend to get lost underneath the many management, analytics and engagement tools for Instagram. In this section, we unearth the best ones to help you grow your followers minus the legwork:
• Social Captain
When it comes to Instagram automation, nothing beats the top app, Social Captain. This Instagram tool for followers has a skyrocketing ability to raise user engagement rates, attracting real life followers. This must have automation app has set targeting features, live analytics and an AI-enhanced boosting module.
Social Captain offers a Turbo plan, which is 10 times faster than the average automation service. It has the maximum speed you can reach safely on the platform. This means your follower count will be majorly increasing with a click of a button.
Price and availability: Social Captain is available on your desktop – MacOS, Windows or Linux. It is a free app with paid packages available.
• Elink.io
Your Instagram bio is a small window of opportunity where you can tell your potential followers and customers about your brand. Adding a link in your Instagram bio is the perfect way to make your target customers learn more about you, your company, and your brand. However, Instagram lets you add just one particular link in your bio. You’ve to keep updating the link every time you want to promote or showcase something new. Bummer, right?
Well, your Insta bio link does not have to be boring anymore, because Elink.io has got you covered. This tool lets you bundle and share multiple visual links on a single webpage and then, you can add the link of this visual webpage to your Instagram bio. This page can be about your other profiles, your blog posts, videos, affiliate products, literally anything on the web. You can also use Elink’s robust Chrome extension to update the links on the go.
Elink.io lets you select from 70+ beautiful layouts to make sure your content pops too. There's a layout for every business, influencer, and brand. These layouts are fully responsive so they look great on all devices.
Price and availability: There's a free version with limited functionality. There are also various options such as Pro Monthly - $15/month, Pro 1 Year - $12/month, and Pro 2 year - $10/month.
• Kicksta
It is very common for automation services to grant you a large following, although the profiles are full of fake and soon-to-be deleted accounts.
Kicksta, a high quality automation service tool, promises all their account interactions are with real people. All you need to do is provide Kicksta with a few accounts that have Instagram followers whom you’d like to attract, then they do the work for you.
They will like photos from each user following those accounts on your behalf, therefore this Instagram tool for followers will generating traffic on your profile. These accounts will most likely check out your profile as they are intrigued by the Instagram like you gave them. Kicksta engages with Instagram followers who have similar interests to your brand, therefore increasing your chances to get a follow.
Price and availability: Kicksta is available on your desktop, with two packages to choose from. $49/month or $99/month.
Appointy
Appointy is an official Instagram booking partner. It can help you get instant bookings for your services directly through your Instagram business profile. You can turn your Instagram page visitors and followers into clients using the book button feature and easily leverage the power of social media. It’s just like any other call-to-action button that prompts the user to take action (in this case, booking an appointment) rather than simply forgetting about your profile after visiting it, and thus increasing your chances of attracting new clients.Appointy can make the booking process faster and simpler for you. You can simply sit back and wait for the bookings to come in.
Price and availability: Appointy has a mobile app available for both iOS and Android, along with web browser access. It offers both free and paid plans with a trial period of 14 days, starting at just $19.99/month. It also offers tailor-made online scheduling software to cater to your custom branding and specific scheduling needs.
• Instamber
If you’re wanting to find an automation service that won’t break the bank, Instamber is the tool for you. This advanced Instagram marketing tool for businesses and influencers will help grow your business faster.
This Instagram tool for followers can help you gain lots of reliable Instagram followers with the click of a button. Found to be an all-in-one marketing platform, using artificial intelligence. Instamber provides services such as automating interaction with the target audience, scheduling posts, sending bulk direct messages and managing your businesses Instagram comments.
Price and availability: Instamber is available on your desktop, with a $10/month package.
Taking advantage of these top 20 management, analytics, engagement, content creation and automation tools for vloggers will be the best way to grow your audience or business in no time.
