The Best Instagram Marketing Tools to Grow Your Business in 2021
Before I even begin talking about Instagram marketing tools, it’s no news that social media has become an integral part of our lives today.
It is great to connect with loved ones over long distances, reunite with old friends, and meet new people. However, beyond all this, social media can work wonders for your business.
One of the most popular social media platforms in the world today is Instagram.
With over one billion users every month, there are literally a billion opportunities for you to sell your excellent products/services and boost your business.
However, if you must conquer the Instagram market, you need to have certain tools and equipment on your side.
Unfortunately, with a market chock full of marketing tools for Instagram, it is a bit of a challenge choosing which one works best for you.
So, in this article, I’ll be giving you a comprehensive list of the best Instagram marketing tools you can use to boost your business in 2021.
Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links and I may earn a small commission if you make a purchase with my link. Thank you.
5 Best Instagram Marketing Tools for Your Business
Below is a comprehensive list of all the tools you could use for your business this year. Keep in mind that they are not all free marketing tools for Instagram.
Instagram Marketing Tool #1: Shorby
Shorby is, hands down, one of the best Instagram marketing software you’ll find in the market.
It was created with the sole intention of helping you to solve different Instagram marketing problems you’ll likely face as an entrepreneur. Let’s have a look at its features in detail.
Key Features
1. It helps you to create optimized landing pages
As an entrepreneur, the chances are that you have different homes across different parts of the internet. At the very least, you’ll own other social media pages, a blog, a business website for sales, and a few other digital footprints.
One of the biggest problems with Instagram is that it only allows you to showcase one of these digital homes at a time. If you’re going to link to your new website, you can’t link to anything else.
If you’re linking to another social media page, that’s your limit. Sadly, this wouldn’t work well for you because switching those links every single time you upload something new can be a bit of a bother.
Shorby helps to solve this problem with its Instagram link in bio tool that helps create optimized micro-landing pages.
Instead of changing your URL every time you want to make a post, you can create one URL that’ll cater to everything.
Shorby will let you make a landing page where you can neatly organize all your other links.
All you’d have to do is put the Shorby link to your landing page on your bio. When people click on it, they’ll have access to everything you want them to see.
On Shorby’s optimized landing page, you can add the following:
- Your most recent pieces of content
- Your service lists or pricing
- All your other social media accounts
- Special content that you’d like to feature
- Links to supported messenger services
One great thing about Shorby is that its pages are optimized for mobile phones. With half the world browsing the web with their phones, this gives you an edge.
2. It helps you to shorten unnecessarily long URLs
Long URLs are off-putting. They aren’t very nice to look at when you’re copying and pasting to a potential customer.
Apart from that, they can even exceed the character limit of your bio’s link allowance and this may cause your bio link not to work. Shorby makes this annoying problem go away.
Shorby has an Instagram bio link shortener that helps you to shorten your URL to just a few characters. However, this Instagram marketing software doesn’t stop there.
It also helps you to track the performance of your shortened links with analytics. You can get basic click tracking for your links. But, if you want a little more, you can also get more in-depth tracking pixels.
3. It can link directly to your messenger apps
This feature allows people to contact you easily. The links are shortened and can send people directly to your inbox on the supported messenger apps. That way, if a customer needs something, they can reach you pronto.
The links to messengers have tracking pixels that give useful analytics. Apart from that, you can also customize the customer’s opening message to you.
For example, “Hello Doe. Can you give me some more information about your (X)?”
The messengers that Shorby currently supports are:
- Facebook messenger
- Telegram
- Viber
- Skype
You can also link directly to a regular phone call. Feel free to check out my Shorby review if you will like to learn how to make use of all its features.
Sign up for Shorby free trial.
Instagram Marketing Tool #2: Canva
Different social media platforms have their methods of operation. For example, Twitter is a micro-blog of sorts that allows you to share thoughts in a few hundred characters.
Instagram, on the other hand, is a visual social media platform. Of course, you can write what you want to in the comment section or caption area. But, it is essentially a place for what you see.
For this reason, you’ll need social media marketing tools that can help you create stunning visuals. Unfortunately, not everyone is an experienced graphics designer.
Using complex graphic design tools to get your content ideas out there would really slow down work. This is where Canva comes in.
This tool is one of the most popular Instagram marketing tools that allow you to create great visuals for your audience. You don’t need to be a professional graphics designer.
On Canva, other people have already created templates. You merely have to edit them creatively to suit your purpose. You can learn how to get creative with Canva designs.
There’s a template for virtually everything you might want to design. This includes the required size for an Instagram post and Instagram story, among others.
On Canva, you have access to hundreds of quality stock images you can use to spice up your design. You can opt for the paid version that gives you unlimited access to all the features if you want.
Canva’s pricing starts at $12.95 if you choose to pay. Otherwise, you can simply use the unpaid version and make the most of it. You can use Canva on your android, iPhone, or even your laptop.
Instagram Marketing Tool #3: PromoRepublic
If you plan on using Instagram tools for marketing in order to make marketing easier for you, PromoRepulic should be on your tools wishlist.
This is a social media management tool. It puts so much creative power at the tips of your fingers. The tool offers different features.
For example, on PromoRepublic, there’s a place where you can create a content calendar.
This is perfect for you if you’ve always had to struggle with organization and consistency. With the social media calendar, different columns are serving different purposes.
Among others, you’ll have:
- Scheduled posts
- Drafts
- Waiting for approval
- Notes
PromoRepublic also provides you with analytics for your social media page(s). This will help you to properly analyze and understand how you’re performing as is required.
Once understood, you can use PromoRepublic to design posts and uploads for your Instagram. There are several thousand templates at your disposal. All you need to do is choose and use.
Finally, PromoRepublic allows you to work with other people. This makes it one of the best Instagram marketing tools for businesses with different social media managers.
As a solo user, you can get this tool for $9. However, this means you won’t be working with any team members.
Also, you would only be able to add about three social media profiles. Alternately, you can get the standard plan for $49. This opens you up to more possibilities and features.
Sign up for PromoRepublic free trial.
Instagram Marketing Tool #4: All-Hashtag
For as long as Instagram has existed, hashtags have been an important part of its features.
As an average Instagram user, hashtags allow you to explore different types of content. They open you up to a world of new and exciting images for your viewing pleasure.
As an entrepreneur, they help you to get your content out to more people. With a high-performing hashtag, used appropriately, you can easily hit up to five times more viewers than you would normally get.
All-Hashtag helps you to get this done. It does so with four essential features. They are:
1. Hashtag Generator
As the name implies, this feature creates random, live, or top hashtags for you. These three are your filters for hashtag generation.
Live hashtags are those created from the hashtags of other users who used your keywords. Random is as implied. Top hashtags are the popular ones based on the keyword you’ve chosen.
It also shows you the best hashtags among them you can use to get your content out there. Depending on your keyword selection, the hashtag generator can give you up to 30 different hashtags to use.
2. Hashtag Creator
This feature allows you to create your unique hashtag.
3. Top Hashtags
This feature tells you the hashtags that are ranking at the top.
4. Hashtag Analytics
This feature analyzes hashtags of your choice. It then gives you analytic information on the hashtag that’ll be useful for your marketing.
One of the best things about this tool is that it is free to use.
Instagram Marketing Tool #5: Shortstack
As an Instagram business owner, I’m sure you know that giveaways aren’t only for charity, yeah?
They are also an incredibly effective way of gaining traction and increasing your clientele. I mean, why do you think other brands do it so often?
Shortstack is a marketing tool that allows you to create giveaways and contests while gathering leads. To this end, the platform offers different useful features.
They are:
1. Templates
Shortstack has several templates that help you to create social media contests. You don’t necessarily need to be a design guru. Much of the actions you’ll need to perform are fairly easy to wrap your head around.
All you need to do is choose the type of contest it is. Then, you’d customize the elements to your taste.
2. Contest Management Tools
Shortstack doesn’t stop at helping you create contests. It goes the extra mile and helps you to run them efficiently. In this regard, there are three main tools you’ll get the chance to use:
- Winner selection: This tool allows you to select random winners without stress. If your contest isn’t suited for random selection, that’s fine. You can set criteria for selection on Shortstack.
- Rights Management: This helps you to ask for permission before reusing a user’s content.
- Entry and voting restrictions: You can set Shortstack to help enforce restrictions. After all, you don’t want one person voting multiple times.
3. Email Tools
With Shortstack, you can send direct emails to your participants. Of course, this means they must’ve provided their emails initially.
With this tool, you can send a simple “thank you for participating.” It’s excellent for customer care.
4. Analytics and Data Management
Shortstack will give you the most important metrics of your contest. This includes traffic, views, device type, traffic sources, and the likes. The best part is that you can integrate these with your Google Analytics.
Apart from all these, Shortstack can help create landing pages. It also gives you the option of hiring the Shortstack team to help you manage your contest.
This type of service would cost some money, apart from the standard plans the company already offers.
Sign up for ShortStack free trial.
What are the Best Ways to Use Instagram for Marketing?
The five IG marketing tools I’ve just covered are going to help you with a lot of stuff. That includes creating graphics, using hashtags, creating contests, and everything else in between.
However, if you want your Instagram business to be successful, you still need the best Instagram marketing strategy.
In this part of the article, I’ll cover the best Instagram marketing tips for your business. They are:
1. Use a business page
Much like the importance of IG marketing tools, this goes without saying. Using an Instagram business page gives you access to things you wouldn’t get ordinarily.
For starters, you can get access to your page’s analytics. Besides that, it helps you to look much more professional and serious. Finally, it gives you options to include contact information and CTAs.
2. Define your goals
Even if you’re using IG marketing tools, this is still incredibly important. Ask yourself, what do you want to achieve? How soon do you want to achieve it? How do you intend to achieve it?
Remind yourself that your goals must be SMART. That is, they should be specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. Understanding and defining your goals would make it so much easier to attain them.
3. Understand your audience
Instagram has different types of people on its platform. These people are there for different reasons. These people require different types of content to attain satisfaction.
These people are unique in their way. If you’re to succeed, even with your Instagram marketing tools, you must understand your audience.
You can gain valuable insights about the types of people following you from your Instagram business page insights.
There, you’ll see your audience’s age, gender, location, etc. With all these pieces of information at your disposal, you can create content that targets them specifically.
4. Optimize your profile
If you are using Instagram for business, you cannot afford just to leave your profile haphazardly structured. You need to whip it in shape.
For example, your bio must sell exactly what you want to sell to its readers in 150 characters. Besides that, your name, username, category, and contact info should be in order.
Besides all these, you need to pay particular attention to your URL. You can’t have more than one URL on your page.
This is very limiting. But, luckily, it’s where Instagram marketing tools like Shorby come in. Simply use it to create a landing page of multiple links.
5. Create compelling content
Even if your entire purpose is to make money from your audience, you’ll still need to satisfy their need for content. It’s how the internet customer-seller relationship works.
So, get to work and create content that’ll leave your audience in awe.
You can do this by checking out what other people in your niche are doing. Then, you can replicate it in your creative way.
If, however, all this seems a bit overwhelming, you can employ a social media manager and content creator. They’ll assist in that area and help you focus on what really matters — making money.
6. Engage
You cannot be an Instagram business and exist in isolation. You can’t always expect your users to be the ones talking all the time. You have to engage them too.
When a user comments on your post, you should always respond and like it. If your audience uploads a picture related to your brand, you can leave a nice comment underneath.
Now and then, you can like your audience’s pictures. Just make sure that you engage with their posts. It’ll make them more inclined towards you.
In Conclusion
Instagram marketing tools are a great way for you to get ahead on Instagram. But, you should know that they won’t perform any magic if you don’t put in the work.
So, while you’re using these innovative tools, remember to follow our tips for Instagram businesses.
