In 2014 I was tasked with writing a social media strategy to increase engagement across all our client’s social media channels. This gave me an opportunity to have a good think about why they were using each platform and who their target audience was.
Instagram was one of the least used but would prove effective in reaching a young audience that our client had previously had difficulties engaging with. We improved engagement across all channels and Instagram has proven to be the easiest to use when our client is out and about at events.
Some people still find Instagram’s vertical/portrait layout challenging. I’ve also heard complaints about the web restrictions so I found some tools to overcome the problems.
Padagram
(iOS and Android)
I use Padagram as my main Instagram viewer because it allows me to browse in landscape/horizontal view. It also presents images in a grid view, if I want to see more of an image or read the comments one click gives a full screen view.
Padagram also enables you to manage more than one account which is useful if you have clients or more than one personal account.
You can’t upload images using Padagram but you can save images you like or repost them to your own account. To do that the app requires that the original Instagram app is open and you are signed in. Padagram copies over the user\’s original text so you can edit or delete it.
You can also follow people from the app, like photos and comment on them. There’s also a neat feature that lets you subscribe to your favourite tags so you don’t have to keep typing it in the search box.
Repost and Regram
(iOS only)
Repost and Regram (R&R) is an app that allows you to repost images and video with the feature of giving credit to the original poster by placing their name on the photo or video. Unlike Padagram the text from the original poster is not included and you can only manage one account.
Like Instagram, photos are viewed in portrait mode but you get a grid view so that more fits on the screen. From the app you can also like posts, search for tags and view a list of followers and see who you are following.
The repost feature is the strongest feature in this app. InstaRepost is an alternative for Android
LiPix
(iOS and Android)
Instaframe has changed its name to LiPix but it’s still one of the best collage makers for Instagram. If like me you take landscape photos that end up getting cut off on Instagram, LiPix gives you the opportunity to group your photos into various collage grids and frame them if you want to. You can go pro for more frame options.
You can apply filters, add text and either save the image to your photo album or share to Instagram and other social media.
InstaCollage or Pic Jointer are alternatives to LiPix.
Iconosquare
Having fully embraced Instagram it would be great to see usage translated into statistics, Iconosquare can help with that. It’s a free online tool that really deserves a post of its own to fully detail all its features.
Once you’ve signed up you are presented with a dashboard that has a lot going on. The Viewer tab shows you your Instagram timeline; you have the options to view as a slideshow, single images or grid view.
The Statistics tab shows the number of people following, how many you follow, likes received and the number of comments. Further down you are presented with a growth grid, followers lost and gained. Below that are stats for follower engagement.
The Snapshot tab shows your most liked photos, Instagramers that you give the most love to and your most used filter amongst other things.
From the manage tab, you can see the engagement on your last five photos. This ensures you never miss any comments. It’s also awesome because it allows you to delete any spammy comments, there and then.
The Promote tab gives you the opportunity to promote your account via a link you can share but best of all is the Instagram tab for Facebook pages. This creates a tab on your Facebook page where visitors can browse your Instagram feed.
I’m amazed that this is a free tool and hope it remains free.
What tools are you using to manage your Instagram engagement?
Boris Lively
Awesome apps, i use all the 4 of them. I’d like to share one more that i use regularly. it’s fast-unfollow.com, and it allows to unfollow up to 5000 users not following you back. Joe you seem like an advanced users, so i think you can appreciate it’s speed, and also a welcome gift of 1000 free unsubscriptions. I’d like to ask if you’re familiar with simply measured, it’s similar to iconosquare and i heard a lot of good things about it, do you know something about it?