Social networks are exposing the potential and benefits of visual content. They create better memories; and it's not just about images. Indeed, we analyze a video 60,000 times faster than a photo.
Does this data help you choose a platform to deploy visual (visual marketing) strategies? The most famous platform for photos: Instagram. Do you know how to take advantage of it? We can help: here are 15 apps for Instagram that take care of your campaigns in detail.
As the digital marketing trends of the year reveal, our ways of communicating are evolving. We no longer share our experiences as we did a few years ago; the video has carved out the lion's share. This format makes it possible to create a more human and warm communication.
Instagram knows this. This platform quickly adapted to the needs of the public. After the successes of Periscope and Facebook Live, she integrated live videos on her app. Given the power of Snapchat, she launched Instagram Stories. Nothing missing?
Content with expiration date, live videos, boomerangs, images, private messages, hashtags, filters... Do you really know how to manage your account? If you haven't relied on the help of an influencer to take care of your profile, you're measuring the workload that all of this represents.
What makes Instagram special?
Instagram currently has more than 500 million active users, and every day more than 60 million photographs are shared. It is one of the most popular and influential social networks. Its popularity and the demand it generates are attracting more and more brands that have decided to conduct marketing campaigns on this platform.
This is not trivial, especially if you want to reach the new generations. Millennials (Generation Y) live on social networks, which are an integral part of their lives: they tell all their adventures and their daily lives (and sometimes live). They are unable to disconnect, even for a day, to keep abreast of what is happening around them.
How did Instagram manage to reach this audience so deeply? Itssuccess is mainly due to its simplicity. It now offers services of all kinds and includes tools to make it easy to use. How did she do it before? Originally, Instagram was quite limited, which led to the emergence of countless complementary apps for, among other things, retouching images, integrating margins or applying filters.
The best apps for Instagram
Since its acquisition by Facebook, the application has been transformed. It is now a powerful advertising and communication channel, used by brands for their customers. What is the main concern of brands today? Have apps that offer statistics, indicate which are the best hashtags and help manage their audiences. Do you know them?
For the management and organization of your account:
Schedules: for community managers, this is one of the thorniest problems. What time of day will I reach the most people? At what time will they be most receptive? How can I be sure that my target audience sees my posts?
Prime is one of the best time analysis apps (day and week) for Instagram. It will give you tips for organizing and planning your publications.
It uses a data processing algorithm to determine the times your users log in, their habits, and their activities related to your account. Prime will then tell you the ideal times so that your content is the most visible.
This application also allows you to schedule your publications and keep track of previous publications. You will have concrete data on the scope of your content and the reactions it generates. Besides, if you download this app in English, you will be able to use it for free.
Crowdfire allows you to track your most loyal followers, i.e. the accounts that still like your posts. This application also informs you about the profiles that have been following you recently and those that have stopped following you.
Crowdfire is one of the best tools to know in detail the relationship you have with your followers. You know if they're active, if they're fans of your brand, or if your strategies should be tweaked to bring back those who no longer follow you.
Many Instagram users follow the accounts that follow them in return. If a user realizes that you are no longer following them, it is likely that they will do the same.
Thanks to its lists, Crowdfire has a good tool to solve this problem. You can whitelist and blacklist your users, which will save you from accidentally stopping tracking the accounts that interest you the most (those of your fans, for example).
Another advantage of this app: you can also manage your Twitter account.
Publish is one of the apps for Instagram that also has a desktop version. Se This app allows you to post to Instagram and Twitter simultaneously.
Its characteristics are close to those of Prime. Publish calculates the best times of the day to publish based on the activity of your followers, so that you collect the maximum number of likes and comments.
It helps you reprogram or republish content that had worked well. Its desktop interface will allow you to:
Have an overview of your publications on two social networks (Instagram and Twitter);
Repost is an app for Instagram to repost the content of other users, indicating the source. It's the equivalent of a retweet on Instagram.
A small banner with the name of the author of the original post will appear on the image you are reposting. On the text of the publication, the name of the user who created the content is automatically mentioned.
This tool is very useful to gain credibility. Users trust other users' recommendations and advice more than brands' self-talk. What better way to gain the trust of your followers than by sharing other users' experiences with your brand?
Your content may be promotional. Users who do not work for your brand will still share them because it is their will, as good defenders of the brand.
Postgrain is an excellent tool for managing multiple accounts; it's a perfect app for managing multiple profiles.
It will allow you to create new content and plan publishing times, both from your laptop and your computer. Instamizer's strong point: you can schedule a month in advance.
Before posting your content, the app provides you with online editing tools to edit your images and add text. Thanks to the geolocation device integrated into the app, you will no longer worry about changing your publication later.
Iconosquare is an excellent tool for analyzing your account, which allows you to have a global management of your content. You'll know if your followers are following you, how many likes you have, which posts have the most reach, or which hashtags are the most popular on Instagram.
It has a wide range of features, including the ability to organize your photos into folders or albums. It is an ideal app to get organized.
Among the multitude of apps for Instagram is INK361, which groups followers in circles. This tool easily segments your targets on Instagram. You can create albums and manage your content by taste and the app is responsible for sorting it by columns.
It is also very useful for analyzing the activity of your competitors on Instagram:
The number of posts they share;
Their number of followers ;
The number of likes per photograph;
The feedback they receive.
INK361 will help you organize your ideas and know how to act with each user group.
Metricool is perfect for analyzing the behavior of your account and that of your followers. In addition to general information specific to your account, this app provides you with very accurate statistics, such as the number of followers you earn per post.
This will let you know which content reaches your audience the most and what the best strategies are. It's one of the few apps for Instagram that sends PDF reports so you can track your profile's growth over time.
You will know very precisely to what extent your profile has grown; you will have evidence of your most successful strategies. However, this feature is only available with the Premium version.
Layout is a tool developed by Instagram to make photo collages. It was launched to meet a need: Instagram spotted a request and created its own app with many features to make the best collages.
You will be able to make montages from your albums or photos taken on the spot, since Layout has a "camera" function to make instant collages, without having to leave the app to take a photo.
Flipagram is the ideal app for those who want to get the most out of their videos and make them original. You can edit your videos in the app or create small movies that look like a slide presentation.
You can also integrate the background music of your choice to bring the nuances you want. Flipagram is free and available on Windows Phone, Android and iOS.
Apps like Quick will appeal to companies that deploy visual-centric strategies. For example, restaurants or gastronomy players who want to publish beautiful photos accompanied by texts.
Here is a good tool for those who use Instagram as a showcase for their products; in particular, they can indicate the rates on their images.
Similar to the previous app, Wordswag is a more complete solution than Quick. It allows you to insert text into photos in just a few seconds. That's not all: you can add important elements like your logo or water mark to avoid plagiarism. If your content is shared, followers will know its original author.
This app has a bank of free and royalty-free photographs that you can use to create new content and build deeper bonds with your followers. How? Wordswag offers quotes, creative phrases or maxims to add to the shots and share automatically.
VSCO is one of the most famous Instagram apps among photography lovers. It has a large number of predetermined filters to modify your photographs and give them a different touch that will appeal to new generations.
You will be able to adjust brightness, sharpness or contrast, among other settings. Several features make it possible to give a vintage look to your photos.
Among the additional functions, it is possible to edit photos from your albums or take them from the application. It's free and available on Android and iOS. That said, a large number of filters can be purchased to add new effects.
Instasave perfectly replaces screenshots. Often, we want to download images of other users but the application does not allow us to do so. We then take a screenshot, but the quality is never equivalent.
From this observation was born Instasave, which allows you to download images and store them on your device. The app for iOS also gives the ability to download and store videos, which was unimaginable just a few years ago, especially on Instagram.
Downloading this app is very simple, just select the content you want to store. You will be able to search for it on your profile and that of other users, thanks to hashtags and likes.
Soldside is the ideal tool to do conversion with Instagram. It turns your profile into a virtual store.
Instagram does not facilitate the insertion of links in captions or in published content, this application was born. By registering your products in the app, the user will have access to a lot of information, such as the price or availability of the product. This app also has the advantage of working on web browsers.
Want to make money from your Instagram account?
If you have an Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook Fan Page account with more than 5,000 followers (or a blog with more than 1,000 visits per month), you can start advertising. One of the easiest ways to attract advertisers and monetize your influence on social networks is through the Coobismarketplace.
