8 Instagram Marketing Tools To Help Manage Your IG Presence

Instagram has plenty of in-app tools that make social media marketing for creators more exciting, such as a cool Reels editor, fun Story stickers, and a plethora of content formats. There’s so much on IG to help you get as creative as possible. But sadly, those creative tools aren’t enough. 

As a creator, you must also manage and market your brand’s online presence. Thankfully, there are plenty of Instagram marketing tools that can help. 

The Instagram app may be a fantastic marketing weapon, but it can’t do everything. The world of digital marketing is more than the limited features of your favorite social media platform. 

To efficiently manage your content and craft solid strategies, you should utilize some third-party marketing tools for Instagram. In this guide, we’re diving into the best ones.

Is Instagram a Good Marketing Tool?

Yes, Instagram is without a doubt an excellent tool for marketing online. It has a huge base of active users—two billion every month, to be exact. This gives creators access to diverse audiences that they can convert to loyal fans who consistently engage with their content.

The platform is also known for its high engagement rates, thanks to its thriving communities. You can converse with others through comments, repost user-generated content by fans, and share posts with your besties through DMs. If you want to deeply and emotionally connect with your target audience, Instagram is the place.

Instagram’s biggest strength is that it’s a visual platform. It’s the perfect channel to show off anything beautiful you love, from clothes to art.

But what about commercial brands—is Instagram a good marketing tool for those, too? Absolutely! Plenty of businesses use the platform to sell products, too. Again, it’s a visual platform. Brands use this as an opportunity to push stunning, product-centric content out to potential customers.

How To Use Instagram as a Marketing Tool

There are some quick and easy Instagram marketing strategies even fledgling influencers can implement on their page.

Here’s how to use Instagram as a marketing tool:

• Create a content calendar to keep track of what you need to post on any given day. Make sure your content buckets and key topics are well-distributed in this calendar.
• Mix up the creative formats you use. Experiment with photos, carousels, and Reels to see which ones your followers enjoy best. Diversifying your content types also allows you to appear in more parts of the platform, increasing discoverability.
• Collaborate with other influencers. Borrow each other’s influence and work on a collaborative post together. This allows you to reach their fanbase and vice versa for them, creating a mutually beneficial relationship.
• Use relevant, popular hashtags in your content. This gives your posts a chance to appear on the Explore page and those tags’ “top posts” section, boosting visibility.

The 8 Best Instagram Marketing Tools to Aid Your IG Strategy

Although Instagram is awesome on its own for marketing your brand, oftentimes, it can’t do it alone. Sometimes, to thoroughly and efficiently manage and create content, you need to enlist the help of third-party Instagram marketing services.

Fortunately, there are many tools you can use to make your life as an Instagram creator way easier. Here are eight of the best Instagram marketing tools you should consider incorporating into your social media content strategies.

1. Instagram Ads

Instagram ads are paid promotional posts that target your specific intended audience. This tool is amazing for reaching as many people as you can and making relevant noise about your page.

What’s cool about the in-app Instagram advertising tool is that it allows you to customize everything about your ad campaigns. You set your own budget, choose your ad placements, define your target audience, limit the ad’s run time, and more.

You even get to choose your ad’s campaign objective, from boosting brand awareness to driving website traffic. Instagram’s algorithm then works to deliver your ads in a way that will help you reach that goal.

2. Analytics Tools

Another of the most important Instagram tools for marketers is analytics tools. These tools allow creators to see how their content is performing through metrics like reach, engagement, impressions, views, and more. From there, you can use what you have learned to improve and optimize your creative content moving forward.

The most popular tool for IG analytics is probably Instagram Insights—the in-app analytics feature for professional accounts. It’s where you can see your growth trends, follower demographics, accounts reached, post interactions, and more in a single dashboard.

3. Content Scheduling Tools

Are you too busy to upload content exactly when you should? Try scheduling posts in advance with third-party content scheduling tools.

These tools allow you to line up your Instagram posts for publishing on the specific times and dates you want. But it doesn’t stop there. They also typically analyze your follower base and recommend the most optimal posting time for your account.

A scheduling tool lets you set up your content for posting in bulk once. You don’t have to stress over manually uploading content multiple times over the course of a week or month.

4. Social Listening Tools

Social listening tools monitor conversations across the social media world. They can provide real-time trending topics and insights into what people are talking about for any niche or brand.

There are many ways these tools become invaluable to creators everywhere. First, they can show you people’s sentiments about your online persona. Do people love you or hate you? Do they enjoy your content, or are they comparing you with other influencers? You can learn all that and more.

Social listening also gives you a chance to see what hot topics and interests your target audience currently loves. From these insights, you can glean content ideas you know will be relevant to them.

5. Hashtag Generators

Never know what hashtags to use in your posts? Enlist the help of a hashtag generator to tell you exactly which ones to add to your caption.

Hashtag generators are exactly what they sound like—tools that generate the best hashtags for a given topic. They can help you find niche-specific tags, as well as tags you didn’t even know were trending. It’s perfect if you have no time to conduct proper hashtag research.

One tool you can use for this is the Path Social Hashtag Generator. Just type in a hashtag, and you’ll see pertinent info about it, like how many posts use it per day. The generator will also provide a list of related hashtags you can use for your content. You can simply copy and paste it straight to your Instagram post!

6. Content Creation Tools

Not the best at creating visual content? Don’t worry. You can always use third-party content creation tools to help you out. These tools allow you to easily make attention-grabbing, captivating, stunning content. Popular ones include Canva, which has thousands of templates for infographics and posters, and SCRL for aesthetic Stories.

These tools allow you to make clean, professional-looking content even if you have zero graphic design and layout skills. While most of them provide templates for beginners, you can customize the content you make any way you like. It’s perfect for creators who want to wow crowds with high-quality content, even if they can’t produce it from scratch.

7. AI-Powered Creative Content Generators

This one’s a little controversial but stay with me. Today, slowly but surely, plenty of AI-powered IG marketing tools are making their way to the market.

These tools help creators produce content in mere seconds, whether it’s engaging captions or stunning photos. It’s perfect for influencers who often struggle with writer’s block or don’t have a knack for Photoshop. There are even AI bio tools that can help you write the perfect witty bio for your profile!

Many big brands are embracing this digital marketing trend. Toys R Us, for example, has proudly launched a poignant brand film produced by Sora, a text-to-video AI tool.

That said, creators should still be careful about using too much AI in their content. Google has already cracked down on AI-generated content, cleaning them out of its search results in favor of human-made content. It wouldn’t be surprising if other social media platforms followed suit.

8. Visual Content Planners

Are you a perfectionist when it comes to planning out your Instagram feed? If so, channel the perfectionist in you and use a visual content planner like Plann or Planoly.

These tools allow you to create a mock-up of what your Instagram grid will look like after publishing specific posts. That way, you can plan in what order you want to post your content to make the feed look fantastic.

Previewing your grid also shows whether your upcoming content will mesh well with your current feed’s aesthetic. If not, make small tweaks to your content plan to ensure your look and feel stays consistent.

Paid vs Free Instagram Marketing Tools: Which Are Better?

Whether you should use paid or free tools online depends on what exactly you’re looking for. If you want advanced features and scalability for your marketing tools, paying for premium tools is worth it. However, if you’re okay with basic features and need something more cost-effective, free tools are fine, too.

But if you’re wise, you’ll know there’s no such thing as a free lunch. Those free Instagram marketing tools that promise too much and ask for nothing in return? They might not deliver. If you want high-quality, accurate results, opt for a trusted tool, even if it’s paid. Remember, boosting your Instagram presence is an investment, so don’t skimp on it.

Frequently Asked Questions

Want a Marketing Service That Gives You Fast IG Growth? Check Out Path Social!

All the marketing tools listed above are absolutely genius for managing and creating content on Instagram. From ads to content scheduling tools to social listening, these services will take your Instagram presence to the next level.

But if you want a tool to aid in rapid IG growth, go for a growth service—like Path Social. While the Instagram marketing tools above manage content and collaborations, we’re in the business of targeted page promotion. 

With our tried-and-tested organic strategies, we can promote your content straight to your niche audience. That means more visibility for your page, which results in more followers and higher engagement.

With these strategies, we’ve helped pages like the Beauty of Baking gain almost 20,000 followers and 394% more engagement. Want us to catapult you to fame, too? Let’s go! Grow your community of authentic fans with Path Social today.