One of the most common question I am often asked How do I schedule posts on Instagram? How can I get more followers on Instagram. This post is all about how to optimize your Instagram platform.
Instagram Network is fast becoming the largest and most followed social media platforms among all. This 400+ Million user network has proven to be beneficial for marketers who don’t only rely on Facebook and LinkedIn for their business. You cannot particularly ignore Instagram if your business requires promoting visual content. Yet, people are hesitant about this network and even after creating their own Instagram they lose hope because of low followers list.
Here are some 15 simple ways to gain Instagram Followers:
- Pick a Niche you are passionate about
- Keep posting (twice in a day) both high quality photos and videos
- Follow your competitor’s followers.
- Follow them, like their instagram posts, comment on them – This is the old world charm of Social Media. The more you engage better it is for your brand.
- Use content in images, it works.
- Always come up with creative and catchy outline
- Give no room for negative content in your account
- Over posting may hurt
- Of course don’t forget Hashtags. Hashtags like: #Follow #PhotoOftheDay #FoodPorn #TagForLikes #InstaDay #InstaPic #Followme #Love #Cute #Follow4Follow are some hashtags that can help you get followers (Quality followers not guaranteed though ;))
- Use a specific hashtag to search for people and follow them – especially the local ones. For example: #Chennai, #MarinaBeach #Goa #Janisim #Temple #JainTemple etc.
- Communicate with users/followers
- Have influencers? Reward them with money or gifts
- Use Emojis to express better
- Search for similar accounts and ask them to follow you for best results
- Allow to handle your instagram account to an influencer (with all the branding guidelines) – h/she knows the magic and value proposition.
Once you become a credible instagramer with great followers list, it’s time to automate your Instagram efforts. There are some extremely good tools that can help to schedule and automate the Instagram posting. And beauty of these automations is that they are rather inexpensive to create and comes with a great capacity to save enormous amount of time.
Here are 10 tools to Automate Instagram
Schedugram
Schedugram is one of the best tools available that not only schedule and automate posting but also manages multiple Instagram accounts. You can upload multiple images and schedule it to publish later to multiple accounts. If you are a social media manager and looking to simplify entire posting process for client and brands, then having Schedugram is must.
Cool Features of Schedugram
- Web Uploading
- Supports multiple accounts/multiple users
- Bulk upload
- Scheduling and Posting
- Advance photo editor
- Hastags and first comment
- 7 days free trial
Pricing starts at $20/month
Hootsuite
Hootsuite is a popular tool to manage, monitor and schedule social media activity. All this can be done not only on Instagram but also other networks such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and more. You need to have Instagram app and Hootsuit mobile app to publish the scheduled post.
Cool Features of Hootsuite
- Scheduling posts
- One dashboard for all networks
- Access sharing without password sharing
- Monitor own Instagram posts
- Locate specific user or hashtags
- Free for 3 social media accounts
Pricing starts at $9/month
Later
Later is great for planning, managing, and scheduling your visual social media posts and marketing campaigns. It let you upload individual images and schedule them but doesn’t take care of posting them. You will get a reminder from Later on the schedule time and you can post it by logging in to Instagram.
Cool Features of Later
- Scheduling and organize posts
- Manage multiple accounts
- Post Collaboration
- Manage accounts with team
- Free account
Pricing starts with $19/month
Gettakeoff – Gettakeoff is little different from other tools, it works smartly and automatically schedule your instagram posts for times when they see most engaged followers. This tool is developed by Crowfire, a social media management tool that works great for managing Twitter and Instagram accounts.
Cool Features of Gettakeoff
- Best time scheduling
- Hashtag and relevant tags suggestion
- Advance photo search
- Team collaboration
- Companion App for mobile
- Free plan for one account
Pricing starts at $10/per month
Viraltag – Not just Instagram, if you have your presence on Pinterest, Tumbler, Facebook and other social network then Viraltag can do some amazing work for you. It lets you schedule your posts on Instagram and all other networks. You can also customize your Instagram posts according to brands using Viraltag.
Cool Features of Viraltag
- Schedule Pins and Posts
- Bulk uploads
- Multiple product links in single photo
- Post Cloning and advance image editor
- Best time post suggestion
- Free trial
Pricing starts at $24/month
Intragrate
If you have a WordPress site they you will totally love Intragrate app, which is actually a WordPress plugin that automatically publish images and videos created on Instagram. It would pick the name along with image posted and will publish on WordPress like a new post.
Cool Features of Intragrate
- Scheduling posts
- Unlimited Instagram Accounts
- Multiple streams and bulk image posting
- Hashtag filtering
- Video and comments intergration
- Full support and documentation
Pricing starts at $35/month
Onlypult
Onlypult is not just a scheduling tool but a perfect Social Media Management tool for working with Instagram. It comes with number of added features like analytics that other tool lack to offer.
Cool Features of Onlypult
- Schedule Posts
- Photo filter
- Manage 1 to 40 accounts at once
- Access sharing without password sharing
- Detailed Analytics report
- Track competitions
- 7 days free trial
Pricing starts from $12/month
Getskippr
Getskippr is more of an Instagram Marketing tool that also allow you to schedule posting using web, IOS and Android. You can even re-post images and caption on the go using Skippr mobile app.
Cool Features of Getskippr
- Scheduling posts
- Powerful Analytics
- Re-post images and caption
- Store in Cloud
- 24/7 customer support
- Free plan
Pricing starts at $10/month
Autogrammer – Autogrammer is more like Schedugram who does not just schedule and remind you of posting at the schedule time, but also takes care of publishing them. You can upload, edit and schedule posts and manage multiple Instagram account at once.
Cool Features of Autogrammer
- Scheduling and posting
- Manage multiple accounts
- Powerful photo editor
- Bulk image uploads
- 7 days free trial
Pricing starts at $19/month
Massplanner – Massplanner is not only takes care of Instagram scheduling but also helps to automate Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and Pinterest. Kindly note that Massplanner is Window based software and requires Windows running computer to work.
Cool Features of Massplanner
- Scheduling posts
- Auto-follow related niche users
- Unfollow using Massplanner
- Auto-comment and like to new posts
- Fast and reliable customer support
- 5 days free trial
Pricing starts $10/month
Remember Instagram does not allow posting from third party apps but these tools can really help you save time. Take some time and give try to above listed tools to understand which works best for your business. Are you using any automation tool for Instagram? I would love to hear from you on how they help and what best they do!
