5 Instagram Tools Every Entrepreneur Needs
Life moves fast and, now that everyone’s online, trends move faster. As a new business, it’s important to create a market and raise awareness about your brand. The easiest way to do this is by utilizing social media. When used properly, social media allows companies to grow faster than ever and at a lower cost. Instagram is a key player for businesses. With over 800 million active users, Instagram is the perfect place to attract customers, investors, and attention for your business. Instagram management tools are more than just schedulers. There are money-making features, crowd engagement platforms, and organic ways to grow your following. To make sure that you’re at the top of your social media game, here’s a list of 5 Instagram management tools that will get you to where you need to be.
Later
What is it?
Later is a great visual post scheduling tool and is used by many large companies. What sets Later apart from the crowd is its function that allows users to visualize content before they post it. With a drag-and-drop calendar feature similar to that provided by apps such as UNUM, Later makes it easier to visualize a cohesive aesthetic for Instagram pages. The calendar is easy to navigate and allows you to schedule posts down to the minute. You can also filter your queued posts based on labels you can customize. It provides analytics, comment monitoring, engagement advice, and a great calendar view for post scheduling. Later also has a Linkin.bio integration that allows users to shop an accounts posts. By creating a unique link and adding it to your posts, you can track how frequently people click your shop links. The Linkin.bio integration is $16/month for 2 Instagram accounts. All in all, Later is a highly visual application that is a great option if you’re looking for something cheaper but still highly effective. Later is also an Instagram partner, so you don’t have to stress about safety and security when using the application.
Get it here: https://later.com/
What Did I Think?
From the first click, I liked Later. While the free option is fairly sparse — very basic analytics and the ability to schedule one-photo posts — it is still visually appealing and useful. Being able to view content on a calendar is a good way to see how your content is spaced out and whether you need to change your schedule. In addition to this, you can add photos to your Instagram grid to see how they’ll look on your feed, an enticing feature for anyone intent on maintaining a strong aesthetic. Later really delivers, even in the free version, and the site is designed to make your life easier.
What’s the Price?
Later has two separate pricing sets, with 2 options for individuals and 3 options for businesses. The two Individual plans are:
- Free: 1 user, 1 social profile (ie Instagram, Facebook, Twitter). Post limits differ from platform to platform, Instagram has a 30 post limit. The free plan allows you to schedule photo posts and store unlimited media. In terms of analytics, it affords you basic analytic abilities, the ability to search and repost content, and create 1 group to message. Support is email only. The free account does not allow Instagram hashtag analytics.
- Plus: $9/month. 1 user, 1 social profile, 100 posts for Instagram. Greater planning and scheduling abilities — able to schedule photos, videos, stories, multi-photo posts; able to tag locations and users, and able to store unlimited media. Analytic wise, you are afforded basic and pro Instagram analytics, the ability to search and repost, the ability to create and message one group, and email and chat support.
Shortstack
What is it?
Shortstack is an innovative contest creation tool — something that is often forgotten but proves to be very effective when promoting a brand. Everyone has seen brand contests circulate. Whether it’s about winning a trip, a shopping spree, or a meal, everyone loves a contest. Shortstack allows brands to garner online clout by hosting quick, user-generated contests (UGC) that boost account engagement. Shortstack provides the ability to run form-based contests that involve users uploading their photos (ie. upload your best vacation selfie) and then referring friends, branded hashtag contests directly on Instagram, or voting galleries with the submitted pictures. On top of this, Shortstack also provides users with analytics to keep you up to date on how your campaign is performing in real time.
Get it here: https://www.shortstack.com/
What Did I Think?
Signing up for the site took under a minute and didn’t require any credit card information. It was an incredibly easy site to use and took me 5 minutes to create a photo contest form. Upon publishing, you can either create a landing page or embed the link in your Instagram account to drive more traffic to the page, however the latter requires a paid plan. If you have a paid subscription, you also have the option of creating a custom URL for your page. The forms are highly customizable and you are able to add widgets such as polls, newsletter sign ups, and social media links. For a free program, you have access to plenty of templates for all of their available campaigns, including giveaways, voting contests, hashtag campaigns, quizzes, and multi-stage UGCs. Shortstack is a great tool and a viable option for small businesses and entrepreneurs.
What’s the Price?
Shortstack has 2 low-cost plans and 3 large business to agency plans ranging from $99/month to $499/month.
- Free Plan: $0/month. Allows unlimited campaigns and emails, customizable forms, and 5,000 views + 100 entries per month.
- Starter Plan: $29/month. Allows unlimited campaigns and emails, customizable forms, the ability to export images and data, and 10,000 views + 2,000 entries per month.
Postcart
What is it?
If you’re looking for a way to increase your revenue based off of your Instagram feed, Postcart is a must-have tool. Instagram only allows one link on your profile, so it can be difficult to drive traffic to specific items that you’re posting. Postcart allows you to put a single link in your bio and then makes it easy for clients to shop for products in your posts by directing you to that particular item’s link. For users, it displays pictures directly from your Instagram feed and allows you to shop for items shown in the pictures. Streamlined for mobile shopping, Postcart is perfect for small businesses. It has low service fees, is fuss-free, and does not have a huge subscription fee.
Get it here: https://www.postcart.co/
What Did I Think?
To begin with Postcart, you have to link your account to an Instagram account. Because I didn’t set up Stripe, the payment authorization program, I cannot comment on the ease of transactions. Overall, Postcart is fairly straightforward and easy to personalize. You can create pages for your shop, set parameters for shipping fees, and create policies — such as terms and conditions, return policies, and a privacy policy. Setting up a shop is quick and can be done in under an hour. For any startup, this is a simple way to post your product and streamline the purchasing process for your customers.
What’s the Price?
Postcart has three pricing plans, all of which are affordable and more competitive than many market sites. I have listed the monthly costs, but there is a slight discount if you choose to be billed annually.
- Free Forever: $0/month. This plan allows you to post and sell an unlimited number of items each month. It has built-in Search Engine Optimization, shipment tracking and real time rates, accepts PayPal and all major credit cards, and has a card rate of 2.9% + 30 cents per payment. The only downside to the free plan is a 5.5% sales transaction fee.
- Simple Plan: $16/month. This has all the same features as the Free Forever plan, however there is no sales transaction fee.
- Power Plan: $25/month. This builds upon the simple plan by also providing options for product variations, coupon codes, and discounts.
Crowdfire
What is it?
While Crowdfire is not an Instagram specific tool, it is great for new companies trying to attract a target audience. Of course, it has solid social media management tools, including post scheduling, a queue meter that checks whether you have enough content for the week, performance and engagement metrics, and the ability to track mentions and reply. What Crowdfire brings to the table that is very exciting is its content curation feature. Crowdfire pulls images and articles from the web based on your preset interests to suggest content that your audience will find engaging. This noteworthy capability is a great way to pique interest on Instagram as it draws in the audience you want to attract. It also lightens the burden of constantly posting unique content. Crowdfire is a good way to stay on top of posting and is a unique way to attract a target market.
Get it here: https://web.crowdfireapp.com/
What Did I Think?
Crowdfire is great. It’s easy to navigate, and the content curation feature is efficient and effective. Because I was using the free version, there were some features that weren’t available to me, including the calendar view for scheduled posts which they offer as a 14 day free trial. The content curation pulled plenty of articles from around the world and refreshed them regularly. It also allowed you to customize the caption on articles prior to sharing and post at the “best time” or customize the day and time for posting. Crowdfire’s best program is certainly the content pulling and sharing, a feature that I have not seen before, and is an easy way to put content out that you know your audience will enjoy.
What’s the Price?
The Plus subscription certainly has better features, so if you know that you won’t have time to churn out fresh content then Plus is probably the plan for you.
- Free: 1 account per social network. 10 scheduled posts per account, Chrome article sharing extension, unlimited article and image curation, hashtag recommendations, and 1 day of analytics.
- Plus: $9.99/month. 2 accounts per social network. 100 scheduled posts per account, Chrome article sharing extension, custom post schedule, video post support, unlimited article and image curation, hashtag recommendations, post analytics, 30 days of social analytics, and 90 days of advanced analytics.
Buffer
What is it?
Buffer is similar to Hootsuite and Iconosquare, but is cheaper and doesn’t require verification. It’s a multi-platform social media management tool with options that are better suited to individuals and small businesses. Buffer Publish is its main service, allowing you to schedule posts in advance and upload videos and GIFS (a feature that few other platforms allow with the free account). The one downside of the Buffer free account is that it does not provide analytics as most other free accounts do. Buffer also has a product called Buffer Reply that helps businesses better interact with their followers, however the accounts start at $50/month for one account so I would recommend this feature for more established businesses.
Get it here: https://buffer.com/
What Did I Think?
If what you’re looking for is a very basic post scheduler, Buffer is for you. It’s a no fuss program that you can access from online or using the app so you can upload photos and content on the go. While it isn’t as fancy as many media managing platforms, it gets the job done quickly and I was happy with the layout on both the site and the app. The queue feature is a great way to clearly see what you have coming up and move content around.
What’s the Price?
Buffer has two starter plans which I will focus on.
- Free: 3 social accounts, 1 user, 10 scheduled posts at a time, browser and mobile options, image creator, video and GIF uploader, link tracking.
- Pro: $15/month, 8 social accounts, 1 user, 100 scheduled posts at a time. Same features as the Free plan, plus RSS feed, calendar view, and social analytics.
Scheduler Feature Comparison
In this post, I discussed two schedulers — Later and Buffer. Here’s a quick comparison of the free versions for both sites to see which is better for your needs.
Number of accounts
Later: 1 per platform
Buffer: 3 total
Number of users
Later: 1
Buffer: 1
Scheduled posts allowed
Later: 30/month
Buffer: 10 per account (not monthly)
Schedule photos
Later: Yes
Buffer: Yes
Schedule videos
Later: No
Buffer: Yes
Unlimited media storage
Later: Yes
Buffer: No
Analytics
Later: Yes
Buffer: No
Groups
Later: Yes (1)
Buffer: No
Review
All of these sources are great ways to build your Instagram account to the point where you’re a certified #BOSS and your business is booming. I made a quick video below outlining some basic features of each service so that you know what you’re getting in to!
