Best Instagram Advertising Tools and Why You Need Them

Step down Mark Zuckerberg and make room for… Well, ultimately Mark Zuckerberg.

In case you didn’t know, the Instagram app was primarily a project developed by a duo of entrepreneurs, called Mike Krieger and Kevin Systrom. However, it was soon acquired by Facebook in April 2012. At that moment, Instagram users were signing up in flocks, and just before Zuckerberg bought the app – there were already 40 million active users using Instagram to share their photos and stories online.

In 2013 alone, Instagram has grown by 23%. Today, the estimated worth of this company is somewhere in the range of 30 to 40 billion dollars. With more than 500 million users on Instagram at this very moment, it is evident that this application is loved by all. Celebrities use it to promote brands and maintain contact with their fans, users love sharing details from their lives with their followers, and then, there are cats. A picture of a cat in a funny pose can generate more likes than Kim K with a new haircut.

Advertisers love Instagram as well. In fact, it is estimated that this platform will generate more than 2.8 billion dollars in ad revenue alone. This is why more and more users are thinking about marketing their business on Instagram.

This is, of course, easier said than done. With so many users and such a fierce competition investing heavily in this social media channel, you have to find the time to master this application if you want to get the best out of its potential. That is why we wanted to do the research for you, and present the best Instagram tools that you need, if you want to keep your campaigns profitable.

1) Social Rank

Stalking is back in style! Well, not really, but customer segmentation is and the Social Rank application has the ability to keep track of your followers for you. If identification, organization, and management of Instagram followers is a service you need, look no further. This great tool helps marketers navigate through a sea of followers and identify the most valuable ones, from prospects to top industry influencers.

Not only does Social Rank offer Instagram users a way to gather data, it also provides them with a selection of options for splicing it. In that way, you can get the most valuable information, and apply it in your Instagram marketing campaign in a matter of minutes. Additionally, you can search followers by hashtags, so you can see which ones drive better user engagement. Not to mention that you can even select users by location, and improve your locally driven campaigns.

Key Features of Social Rank include:

• Identification of followers and their profiles.
• Organization of followers and their profiles that are already in Social Rank – providing users with the ability to sort and filter them.
• Management of followers – with Social Rank, you can create custom lists of your followers, save them and export them to Twitter or as a CSV file.

2) Instamize.me

This app works like Buffer for Instagram, with a few cool additional features that will make you fall in love with it instantly. Not only can you schedule your updates, you can upload photos directly from this app and enhance the image with their custom made editor. However, one of the best features of this app is that you can make hashtag templates and save time on searching for the perfect combination. You can also subscribe to your potential clients, and your account will automatically like their posts and attract their attention.

Instamize.me also offers users a rich filtering system. You can choose which accounts you want to subscribe to, based on language, keywords, hashtags, minimum/maximum follower count, media count and many other filters. For those brands that have a set number of tags that they love using, Instamize.me provides the option of creating tag templates and adding all the tags to their images in just one click.

Key Features of Instamize.me include:

• Adding tags to your Instagram images
• Scheduling postings
• Automatic subscriptions/un-subscriptions
• Subscription filters and history

3) Soldsie

Since you’re thinking about selling stuff via Instagram, you could also start thinking about actually selling the product via Instagram. The Soldsie app allows you to do just that. Instagram followers are able to purchase an item from your feed without even leaving the platform. You can post an image of your product to Instagram, and your customer can purchase this product by simply commenting “sold” under that photo. The next step includes a mobile-friendly invoice sent to your customer in order for the purchase to be completed.

Another great aspect of the Soldsie tool is that it can be used to collect specific information, like the color of the purchased item or its size, in the form of hashtags. There are several other benefits of using this tool! The first is the fact that customers are always more motivated to buy products they really want when they are presented with limited quantities. This makes the purchase feel like an experience similar to that of an auction. Secondly, Soldsie actually utilizes your bio link in order to showcase your content, making your photos link to the content your customers are looking for.

Key Features of Soldsie include:

• Conversion tracking – users are able to get conversion reports from their Instagram bio link.
• The option of managing inventory for e-commerce – users are able to access a ready-to-use cart which is synchronized with their Instagram product post.

4) Yotpo

A poor followers/engagement ratio can be a real downer. This is why Yotpo is aimed at engaging your company’s Instagram followers. Great photos sell products, but there is even a better hack which Yotpo enables you to utilize: promoting your product through user generated content (UGC). Yotpo actually lets you curate UGC, thus communicating to your followers the quality of your brand.

This great Instagram tool permits brands and marketers to find images which they consider relevant for the promotion of their brand, and ask the image owners for permission to add their posts to your Instagram selection.

Key Features of Yotpo include:

• User-generated photos – you are able to collect and showcase user-generated photos, thus boosting your visual marketing approach.
• Full social integration – enables you and your customers to share service/product reviews on top social networks.
• Smart promotion – with this tool you can choose the products to promote and up-sell in order to increase customer lifetime value.

The usefulness of these particular tools can be applied to other social networks, like Facebook or Twitter, thus maximizing the reach of the messages that you want to send to your respectful customers.

So, if you are looking for friends online, Instagram is the right app. However, if you are looking to make a buck out of those connections as well – try utilizing your app with the tools that we suggested here. With the right use of the above-mentioned tools, you can boost your conversions, reach a much broader audience, and present your product or service in the best way possible.