Top 11 Instagram Tools Needed in 2021

Like marketing on any social media platform, Instagram marketing is made a lot easier when you’re using Instagram tools. Tools that manage your scheduling, which help you come up with catchy captions, or even tools that help you analyze your campaigns – all of these will make your life a breeze.

The question is, which tools should you be using? Thankfully, this is a very open-ended question. You can mix and match the selection of tools you want to use depending on what you’re looking for. For that reason, we will be showing a bunch of our favorite growth and scheduling tools to use when running an Instagram marketing campaign.

Do You NEED Instagram Tools?

Yes, absolutely. You’ll simply be putting yourself at a disadvantage, as well as inflicting more stress on yourself, by not incorporating Instagram tools as part of your strategy. Whether it’s using Hootsuite to manage your scheduling or using Afterlight to design better creatives, there’s no situation where having tools is irrelevant.

Which type of tools you need is a different story. We recommend trying out some different tools and figuring out which ones are the most useful and that makes managing your campaign easier. Then you can use a combination of tools (some of which may integrate with each other) and generally improve the efficiency of your campaign.

Top Instagram Growth Tools

#1 - Mentionlytics (Top Instagram Tool)

Check out Mentionlytics!

Mentionlytics Top Instagram Tools

Topping our list is Mentionlytics, a key tool that you’ll need to really grow your business’s Instagram presence. The gist of this tool is that it lets you track all of your account’s mentions, as well as monitor the keywords that you’re ranking for and even competitor activity. If you know us, you’ll know we’re big on PPC spy tools.

Mentionlytics can also be used for monitoring this data on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube too. So, if you want to be kept in the loop about who is mentioning your account and get access to some handy data to tweak your marketing strategy, this is the tool to use.

The biggest downside of Mentionlytics is that the pricing is fairly heavy, starting at $99/month. On the other hand, you can get a 14-day free trial without having to enter your credit card details. This allows you to get a good idea of what this tool is and whether it’ll actually be useful to you before committing to a subscription.

#2 - Combin

Check out Combin!

Combin

What appears to be a glorified search tool is so much more. Combin is a combination of several Instagram tools that are all extremely useful. Its search function will help you to find accounts relevant to your industry based on hashtags in their posts, location, and even comments.

Features that are particularly useful for anyone just getting started on Instagram are the bulk following and unfollowing features. Although slightly frowned upon, mass-following is a quick and effective way to get some followers after creating a new Instagram account and you can just as easily unfollow them with Combin too.

As expected there are free and paid versions of Combin. While the free version will give you access to all the tools you need, the paid subscription (starting at $15/month) will remove all limits and gives you more of an advantage.

#3 - Boomerang

Check out Boomerang!

One of the ways you can get people to engage more with your ads is to design better creatives. With the Boomerang app, you can make a single change to your photos before publishing and take them to the next level.

There’s nothing complicated about this free app. You just take a photo like you usually would and the app rapidly captures 10 images, combined to make a short video clip. This is an incredibly simple Instagram tool that will have a significant impact on your ad’s performance.

#4 - Hootsuite (Best Instagram Scheduling Tool)

Check out Hootsuite!

Hootsuite Instagram Scheduling Tool

The most popular of all the Instagram scheduling tools is Hootsuite. With this free tool, you can schedule your posts well in advance so that you don’t have to rely on remembering to post.

Why is this important? Consistent posting is crucial for social media marketing for numerous reasons. First, you want to be able to find out which times to post get you the most engagement. Secondly, it’s easy to forget to post, so having a tool that you can use to prepare a handful of Instagram posts at once is incredibly helpful.

You can enjoy Hootsuite for free without too many limitations. That said, if you want to connect a wider selection of social media accounts and schedule much further into the future than the free plan permits, you can pay for a subscription starting at $50/month.

#5 - Canva

Check out Canva!

Canva

Another Instagram tool that’s going to help you with creatives is Canva. This platform is perfect for designing creatives in any marketing environment. Whether it’s for your Instagram ads, YouTube thumbnails, or even posters, Canva should be at the front of your mind.

As a design tool, Canva provides thousands upon thousands of templates. They understand that not everyone has the creative juice needed to make eye-catching ads and their templates allow plenty of customization options enabling you to create not just an effective creative, but a unique one.

They offer a free plan that most people will happily settle with. This includes access to over 250,000 templates, free images, and 5GB of cloud storage (this is plenty for small campaigns). If you wanted to run a larger campaign then the Pro plan starts at $119/year and expands on everything the free plan offers. Over 420,000 templates are made available alongside over 75,000,000 photos/videos, and a neat 100GB of cloud storage.

Struggling with your creatives? Canva is guaranteed to make your life easier.

#6 - ShortStack

Check out ShortStack!

ShortStack Instagram Giveaway Tool

One of the most common ways we see people trying to grow new Instagram accounts is by running competitions. ShortStack is an Instagram tool developed for this exact purpose.

Basically, ShortStack gives you a new handle for running competitions on any online platform, including Instagram. You start by choosing a template depending on the type of competition you’re having – whether it’s a giveaway, video upload, or a refer-a-friend competition – and they’ll take you through the entire process. Then you will be able to embed your competition however you like (in this case, on Instagram).

You can start off with a free trial however this is more limited than most free trials are, so you’ll only get a very rough idea of what the tool has to offer. That said, it doesn’t require a credit card and this is always a huge bonus. For a paid plan you’ll be looking at $99/month, which allows you to handle competitions with up to 10,000 entries.

#7 - Later

Check out Later!

Later Scheduling Tool

Another of the top Instagram scheduling tools that you can use is Later. Although Hootsuite tends to be more popular, Later has one huge advantage: its free plan. Hootsuite’s free plan limits you to 5 scheduled posts whereas using Later will expand this to 30 scheduled posts.

Obviously, there are other advantages to using Hootsuite but if all that you’re looking for is a scheduling tool, and you don’t want to commit to a monthly subscription, Later is the solution you’ll want to use.

Now, when we look at the subscriptions, Later takes the backseat. Although Later is much cheaper (starting at $15/month countering Hootsuite’s $50/month), you are still limited to just 60 scheduled posts. This isn’t a huge deal because 60 is plenty, although Hootsuite’s plans all offer unlimited scheduling.

#8 - Magic Social

Check out Magic Social!

Magic Social Instagram Growth Tool

Looking for Instagram growth tools that will accelerate your efforts? Look no further because, with Magic Social, you can increase your following by over 50,000 in just one year. That might not seem like a lot, but this is a tremendous amount for new Instagram accounts.

Magic Social requires very little user effort. After you sign up you’ll be asked to enter some details about your brand and account. After that, one of their account managers will get to work on organically growing your account. From there, you can access their social analytics dashboard and monitor how well your brand is growing on Instagram.

In terms of pricing, the only free option you have is a 7-day free trial. After that, you’ll have to consider their packages starting at $29/week. As a weekly bill this can quickly add up, so for those on a tighter budget, this might be impractical.

#9 - Repost: For Instagram

This next app won’t be great for most businesses but for some brands who operate solely on Instagram, it’s a great cheat code.

Repost: For Instagram is an iOS app that lets you republish other accounts’ content. The catch: when doing this, you’ll also be crediting the original publisher (which you should be doing anyway!).

This is an incredibly useful Instagram tool depending on the type of content that you publish. For instance, if you’re running a meme page, grabbing some content from relevant pages will save you a lot of time.

#10 - Linktree

Check out Linktree!

Linktree

Although this won’t really help you to grow on Instagram, Linktree is a fantastic way to forward some attention towards all of the platforms you’re active on. In fact, a lot of social media influencers use it for that exact reason.

This tool is as simple as it gets. All you do is create an account, add all of your brand’s links to your page (which will have a neat custom URL, e.g. Linktr.ee/Konvertlab), and you can then put that link in your Instagram. Whenever someone navigates to your Linktree page, they’ll see a list of your brand’s links.

It’s completely free to use and unless you want access to more customization and analytics, you won’t need to even consider the $6/month Pro plan. If, however, you want to monitor your Linktree page in more depth and have more customization, purchasing a plan would be worthwhile. Whatever your budget, $6 is negligible.

#11 - Photerloo Instagram Hashag Generator

Photerloo Instagram Hashtag Generator

Last up is the Photerloo Instagram Hashtag Generator. This is one of the few Instagram tools that everyone will find a useful addition to their campaign. In short, this tool helps you to come up with suitable hashtags for your post to get maximum exposure.

Although hashtags aren’t the biggest contributor to getting engagement, they still have some relevance and it’s worth taking the time to figure out which hashtags are going to support your efforts the most. You’ll also be given keyword ideas too. Use these in your post’s caption to rank in the best places.

The great news is that you don’t have to pay a penny to use the Photerloo Instagram Hashtag Generator. You just upload your photo and they’ll give you a handful of keywords and hashtags.

Wrapping Up

Regardless of the type of campaign you’re running, you’ll find Instagram tools to be extremely useful. Whether your creatives are slacking or you post too inconsistently, a few of these tools should find their way into your SMM strategy.

Better yet: if you’re running campaigns on other social media platforms then most of these tools can be used for those too. For example, We could also consider Hootsuite a Facebook Ads tool.

Perhaps this was too much for you to take on board and your Instagram marketing campaign suddenly appears to be more work than you expected. Not a problem. Get in touch with KonvertLab today and find out how we can help you grow your business on social media. Just click the button below to book a call and we’ll take care of the rest.

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