Richard Sunley
Over the last few years, Instagram has taken the social media world by storm. According to Instagram’s press page, the photo based social network now has over 300 million active users per month with 70 million new photos uploaded each day. From friends and family sharing photos of their latest holiday to celebrities giving the public an inside look at their lives behind the scenes and brands sharing photos to boost marketing campaigns, Instagram has managed to quickly resonate with the global social population.
But as with every other social network, to be able use Instagram to its fullest and get a deeper understanding of its impact, external tools can be very helpful. The following list looks at 5 of the most useful Instagram tools currently on the market with comments from Instagram experts and functions ranging from time-saving scheduling to in-depth analytics.
Of course, Talkwalker’s social listening tool also gives you comprehensive Instagram analytics including monitoring the number of likes, tracking the content of comments and identifying key infuencers. To find out more about Talkwalker’s Instagram analytics check out our recent blog.
1. Iconosquare – The Manager
Iconosquare is a veritable playground for the Instagram addict with stats, contest suggestions, ideas for promotion and more. In terms of analytics, you get information about your like rate, comment rate as well as the engagement of your photos beyond just your followers, a handy way to monitor the impact of your influencers. Another helpful function is the promote tab also gives you suggestions on how to improve the reach of your Instagram account by for example embedding a widget on your website or creating a cover for your Instagram account.
“Iconosquare is a helpful, all-in-one desktop application for small to mid-sized businesses. The tool enables you to conduct hashtag and user searches, respond to users’ posts and comments, determine which followers are following you back, and check the analytics of your Instagram account. The “contests” tab also gives you great real-world ideas to inspire your business’ own Instagram contest.”
– Lisa Kalner Williams (@kalnerwilliams) from Sierra Tierra Marketing
2. PicDeck – The Viewing Deck
PicDeck is very much like Tweetdeck for Instagram. You can add multiple Instagram streams to one dashboard giving you columns of people and hashtags that you want to follow. It doesn’t really have any analytics options but the layout is clear and uncomplicated making it a good choice for those who just want see several different streams of photos categories in one place and are less interested in measuring performance.
“Another great option is using Picdeck, which is essentially Tweetdeck for Instagram. You can follow your feed as well as add columns to follow specific users and hashtags for easier monitoring.”
– Jam Kotenko (@MrazGal) on The Daily Dot
3. Latergramme – The Organiser
Latergramme is an instagram post scheduler that you can use both on your browser and from your phone using the app. Although you can post directly using the app, reminders are sent for schedules posts making it easy for avid instagram photographers to manage the frequency of their posting. Latergramme also provides some basic analytics on your top liked and commented posts, giving you an idea of the photos that are engaging your audience.
“Use Latergramme to schedule posts from a browser or use the mobile iOS app. Latergramme sends a reminder at the scheduled time, which you can open and post via Instagram.”
– Chris Karasiwiecz (@ckroks) on Social Media Examiner
4. Ink361 – The One Stop Shop
Ink 361 really seems to combine lots of functions into one tool. There are multiple tabs that can give you: a nice dashboard display of the photos on your feed, a general look at popular posts and a variety of statistics on your feed including engagement rate, post history and your post distribution. There’s also a handy blog looking at Instagram news, celeb pics, tips and even the possibility of printing your photos from the Ink 361 page. It’s really pretty comprehensive and is perhaps best for people who want their tool to do many different things.
“You can browse by #tag, view, and order prints like the other apps above, but you can also join cool photo challenges. There are also multiples in which you can view and organize your photos.”
– Amrik Virdi (@VirdiAmrik) on Shout Me Loud
5. Twtrland – The Benchmarker
Twtrland isn’t just for Instagram, it covers Twitter and Facebook as well but you get a concise view of how any Instagram account is performing, not just your own. This makes it quite a nice tool to compare your performance to that of your competitors. Twtrland also rates any Instagram accounts activity, popularity and responsiveness so you can get an idea of how your performance measures against the industry standard. It comes in a paid version as well which gives you lots more statistics to measure performance.
“Data like most popular photos, average likes and comments per post, and even most-used filters are nicely presented in a tab on their Twtrland profile screen.”
– Martin Bryant (@MartinSFP) on The Next Web
As the old adage goes, “a picture is worth a thousand words” and the popularity of image sharing on social networks seems to be a testament to that. With these handy tools at your disposal you can see exactly what kind of an impact your pictures are having and make sure you posts are the talk of the Instagram world.
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