Five Easy-to-Use Tools for Instagram

Let’s start with the good news: Instagram has over 1.4 billion users and two thirds of them use it to interact with brands. That could be yours, or one of the other 200 million business accounts on the platform—there’s the challenge. Now more than ever, your content has to stand out, and regardless of the whims of the ever-changing and all-powerful algorithm, visuals are the way to do that.

Ready for more good news? You don’t need an in-house team of graphic designers or an agency at the ready to create beautiful and engaging content. In 2023, there are dozens of powerful social-first editing and design tools available to help brands like yours, and we’ve rounded up five of our favourites. But first, let’s recap a few of the features that make for a scroll-stopping Instagram post.

‍

‍

How Do I Make My Instagram Posts Better?

Creating successful content on Instagram comes down to eyeballs and engagement. Here are a few tips to help you boost reach and get your followers to engage with your content in 2023:

• Use eye-catching illustrations, photos and videos—with today’s tools (more on those later), it’s never been easier
• Write a caption that adds value to the visuals—use this space to show off your personality, engage with your followers and build your brand
• Be smart with your hashtags—a lot, mixing well-known and niche (as long as they’re all relevant), can help you increase your reach, but a few hyper-focused hashtags can help new followers too
• Make your bio URL work for you with link-in-bio tools
• Use analytics tools to make sure you’re getting the most out of your audience insights and optimizing your content to perform better

‍

What Are Instagram Professional Tools?

Officially called Instagram Business Tools, these are features available to business accounts. They include contact information, analytics insights, the ability to promote posts and create ads directly from the app and integrated shopping tools.

‍

‍

Which App is Best for Making Posts on Instagram?

Spoiler: there isn’t one. That’s because content on Instagram can be as creative as you are! And creating posts is a multi-step process, with design, copy and engagement considerations. But depending on your needs and your goals, there are lots of apps available to help you increase reach, boost engagement and build your brand, all while creating beautiful, scroll-stopping visuals.

‍

Which Instagram Tool is Best?

Social media marketing is all about experimentation—there are dozens of Instagram apps available, so you have to find the combination that works for you. Here are five of our favorite tools for boosting reach and beefing up engagement.

‍

1. designstripe: Best Tool for Graphics and Illustrations

People process visual data like Instagram posts in 100 milliseconds, so eye-catching visuals will always be key to any social marketing strategy. But if you don’t have the chops—or the time—to create visuals from scratch, designstripe has a library of customizable content and intuitive tools to get you started. Select from a huge number of styles and scenes and an inclusive, diverse set of characters to create visual assets that tell your brand’s story. Animate your own vector illustrations in just a few clicks using Crayon, while our newest tool, Mockups, lets you create high-quality mockups—think devices, merch and products—easily in your browser, no software necessary.

Plus, designstripe makes it easy to keep your style consistent across mediums, which helps build brand awareness among followers.

‍

‍

2. Copy.ai: Best Caption Tool for Instagram

Staring at a blinking cursor can be daunting for even the most experienced copywriters. Enter: Copy.ai. The app—used by brands like Microsoft, eBay and Nestle—uses AI and machine learning algorithms to generate compelling copy that helps writers turbocharge their creativity.

3.  Influencer Marketing Hub Hashtag Generator: Best Hashtag Tool for Instagram

Despite Instagram’s recent recommendation to only use three to five hashtags, research shows that more hashtags is still the best strategy for increasing reach and engagement. But the algorithm penalizes users that use the same hashtag for every post, so where to start? Influencer Marketing Hub’s Hashtag Generator suggests up to 20 possible keywords per visual, along with a guide to each keyword’s popularity. Just select your favorites to start generating hashtags.

4. LinkFolio: Best Link in Bio Tool for Instagram

Ever come across a great post and try to find out more about it by clicking on the link in bio, as requested by the brand, only to end up on a page that has nothing to do with the original post? Same. Instagram only lets you include one link in your bio, but you can now make that URL do more heavy lifting thanks to link-in-bio tools like LinkFolio. The tool, produced by well-known influencer marketing agency FamePick, offers a totally customizable interface, powerful analytics and—your great content from three months ago will thank you for this—unlimited URLs.

5. Instagram Insights: Best Tool for Instagram Growth

As we mentioned earlier, social media marketing is all about experimentation, and for that you need data. Instagram Insights is a built-in analytics tool you can use to track engagement, monitor follower count, view contact interaction and more. It’s available if you have an Instagram Business account, and it’s great for insight on the go. However, if you’relooking for something more in-depth, Hootsuite Impact could be a good fit. The high-powered tool can help you track, analyze and optimize your results and ROI by connecting your social, ad and analytics accounts in one place.

‍

‍

Learn More or Dive into designstripe’s Instagram Tools Now!

We hope you found this post helpful. To learn more about the best tools for Instagram, check out Hootsuite’s guide to 40 Instagram Tools Marketers Should Use in 2023.

But if you want to get started on creating beautiful content and illustrations for Instagram, designstripe can help. Sign up today!

‍