10 Best Apps for Instagram Business and Ads

There are tons of reasons why brands choose to be on Instagram, engagement with the audience being the important one. Instagram allows users to create and publish unique content, and in a quest to shine in the crowd, brands and ad agencies have been tweaking and bending its default features like never before. Likewise, there is a myriad of tools and apps available to choose from when creating catchy content that aligns with your brand. Whatever way they decide to make the content, the goal remains the same: interest existing customers and attract potential ones.

Here’s a compilation of the 10 best apps for Instagram Business that brands can use to make their Instagram game stronger. The list includes scheduling tools, analytics tools, photo, and video editors, and ad managers.

Prerequisites

• Understanding of Business Profiles on Social Media

Introduction to Instagram Business

Instagram Business is a category of profile that allows companies to sell products, garner insights into engagements, advertise and connect with customers with ease. An Instagram Business profile also allows companies to streamline their content management, automate replies, collaborate with other brands, and more. Over the years, the photo-sharing application has become a crucial social media platform for any business to showcase their brand through appealing content and gain users’ attention.

To get started with a profitable Instagram strategy, you need to have a deeper understanding of your audience. Surf through the audience demographics on Instagram, to understand who uses the platform. For instance, 25-34-year-olds represent the largest chunk of ad audience on Instagram. So the first step should be to identify the key segments that overlap with your target audience, or you could start with active niches.

Here’s a checklist to help you define your target market:

• Find out the people who already buy from you.
• Assess the analytics on your other social media channels to see who follows you there.
• Lastly, you need to conduct competitor research and compare how your audiences vary.

By having an idea about who’s in your audience, you can better plan and create content catering to them. Study the type of content your customers post and engage with, and use these insights to tweak your creative strategy.

You need to be clear about what you hope to achieve before you jump into the strategy. Start with your business objectives and understand how Instagram can help you achieve them. It is recommended to go with the SMART framework to ensure your goals are Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Timely.

Understanding the best Instagram Business Apps

Here is a list of apps that brands can leverage to get the best out of their Instagram Marketing strategy:

• Hootsuite 
• Sprout Social
• Iconosquare
• AdEspresso
• Instagram Insight
• Canva
• VSCO
• Snapseed
• Square Fit Size
• Boomerang by Instagram

Hootsuite

Hootsuite is probably the most seamless scheduling tool that substantially reduces brand managers’ efforts to post on Instagram. It contains a seamless dashboard that can run on both mobile and desktop versions. It can also store and publish images, videos, and stories, as and when required. Users have access to a content library, post composure, image editor, and a built-in planner that cuts down the fuss out of managing posts. Post-publishing, users can check analytics to track performance and respond to comments without having to enter the Instagram app. Hootsuite has unique features, making it a perfect blend of performance and monitoring units.

Hootsuite offers a 30-day free trial for its professional and team plans but for businesses, the plan starts from ₹45000 per month. Check the detailed pricing of Hootsuite.

Sprout Social

Sprout Social is basically an intelligent box of Instagram management tools. It allows a range of activities such as scheduling posts, managing comments, monitoring brand presence through hashtags, and running performance reports. It enables brands to effortlessly manage multiple Instagram accounts through a single platform without logging in and out. Its robust CRM toolset can be used to strengthen brand loyalty and connect with the followers with just a click. It has several unique features, one being Landscape—an inbuilt social media image resizing tool. With this feature, users don’t need to rush to another application to get a right-sized picture for their Instagram page.

Sprout Social offers a 30-day free trial for all its models — standard, professional, and advanced. However, to unlock advanced features like multiple social media profiles, alerts, and more, Sprout Social premium plans start from $89 per month.

Iconosquare

Iconosquare offers data-driven analytics to keep track of business performance. It allows brands to make insightful data-driven decisions to boost their business with content planning. It has a customizable dashboard to keep track of the metrics that are most important for your business. Beyond the analytics, Iconosquare offers a free audit for Instagram Business accounts. The audit gauges the posts from the last 30 days and profile performance, which can be further used to understand any room for improvement. For instance, businesses can use this data to pin the right time for postings and gain maximum audience exposure. This tool can track trending content and compare them with your content to enhance engagement, reach, and audience growth.

Iconosquare follows a 14-day free trial post which its pricing starts from $49 per month if billed annually. 

AdEspresso

AdEspresso comes with tools that allow businesses to create Instagram ads within their budget. A singular place to create all campaigns, this platform has split testing and optimization features that can connect businesses to their right audience effectively. Businesses mainly use this platform to create, manage, analyze, collaborate and learn ad business (if you are a start-up). It essentially aids social media managers to stick to essential metrics that align with their advertising goals. This is achieved by customizing the main graph and sieving critical metrics from the miscellaneous load. This way, businesses can improve their social media campaigns by gaining actionable tips from the platform.

You can get started with AdEspresso for free, but after 14 days, you will have to opt for premium plans that start from $49 per month when billed annually.

Instagram Insight

Business accounts on Instagram have access to a unique in-built tool called Insight. It is essentially an analytical tool. From this tab, businesses can track important metrics such as audience traffic, traffic source, popular content, and the time when the targeted audience is most active. This tool can be a game-changer while creating a social media strategy to boost your business, especially for budding businesses starting to learn the platform basics. The metric categorization is an added bonus, while the sorting feature based on the post-performance allows brands to derive insights that run best or worst for their businesses.

Instagram Insights is a free feature offered by Instagram for businesses profiles.

Canva

This is probably the best graphic design tool that any business can lay its hands on. It contains several free and premium features to create buzzing and unique graphics. It has an array of templates to create tailor-made content for several media platforms, but the Instagram story template is a place where it really shines. It features a library that offers more than 60,000 templates, with updates happening more so often. It allows brands to create graphics from scratch, allowing them to modify visuals according to their brand image. An easy interface makes this application the most popular among graphic designers.

Canva has several premium features like background removal social media scheduling, and more that starts from ₹741.66 per month when billed annually. However, its free version has no limit and can be used for graphic designing.

VSCO

With the ever-increasing competition, influencers need more than just Instagram filters to shine in the crowd. VSCO offers a lot of free features to create unique professional-level imagery. It comes with presets carrying standard editing tools to customize contrast, grain, and saturation images. However, it is more than just a photo and video editing tool. It is a community of influencers who sign up for weekly challenges such as VSCO hashtags and memes. It allows influencers to connect with their contemporaries, aiding a value exchange. Premium features include HSL (Hue, saturation, lightness, borders, and captivating video editing that can help businesses to up their marketing game.

Highly popular on mobile devices, VSCO offers a 7-day free trial post which the premium plan costs you ₹1700 per year when billed annually.

Snapseed

Owned by Google, Snapseed has secured a particular space with the graphic designer community. Its ability to fine-tune images sets it apart from Instagram’s default filters. It allows brands to pick the most relevant element in a picture and highlight it to the audience. This is unlike the Instagram filters that edit the entire image. Snapseed stack is another excellent feature that has made it a favorite with influencers. It allows users to save a number of filters as a template. This can be used to create a consistent profile as well as save time otherwise spent to search and find the mostly-used filters time after time.

Developed by Google, Snapseed is completely free for all users.

Square Fit Size

The struggle for finding the right size and fit for images on Instagram is real. Influencers are seen taking immense pain to find the right application to crop and trim images at their will. Square Fit Size enables users to import photos from phone galleries or personal albums to edit and export directly to social media platforms. Additionally, it comes with several filter options and image tuning functionalities.

Build using open-source software, Twitter Emoji, the Square Fit Size app is free.

Boomerang by Instagram

Who doesn’t like looping effects on photos? They are fun and lively. Boomerang brings this effect to live pictures. Brands have been thriving on Boomerang since its inception to create a buzz on their Instagram pages. It is a standalone application created by Instagram used to make super bite-sized videos that mostly look like GIFs. It is an excellent way of storytelling in the feed as well as the story section on Instagram.

Boomerang is a free application that comes without any hidden charges.

Conclusion

Instagram Marketing can get tricky, especially in this competitive time. However, it is worth taking all the sweat as Instagram is and shall remain an essential platform for marketing in coming years. With features such as Instagram reels, brands will continue finding ways to feature new products or share their work culture. The ultimate goal is to stay relevant and connect easily with the audience. It might seem hard but isn’t non-achievable, and creativity never ceases to happen.

With this list of absolute tools and apps in your arsenal, you will establish your brand influence in no time. You can use them all or a few based on the shape and size of your business. These tools can assist you in building the right marketing strategy to promote your products and services, boost your brand, and eventually increase sales on this social media platform. Most of these tools/apps come with a non-obligatory free trial period. See if the product fits your brand and reasons with your business goals, in which case you can opt to buy the premium features.

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Tell us about your experience with the Best Apps for Instagram Business. Share your thoughts in the comments section below!