VISCO
The VSCO app allows users to capture photos in the app and edit them for fade, clarity, skin tone, tint, sharpen, saturation, contrast and temperature. For example, if you have a Small Business that sells either toy figurines, furniture or runs a restaurant, VSCO can be a great way to showcase those products, while not having to pay for professional photographers to do the work.
FACETUNE
This app is great for ‘photoshopping’ faces before posting the photo on Instagram. Facetune would be particularly handy if your Small Business is trying to promote the people within the Business, perhaps interviews or company profiles. Or maybe your brand supplies facial products like makeup or cream, or even accessories such as sunglasses and headwear.
SOCIALRANK
This marketing tool helps you to identify, organize and manage your Instagram followers, even grow them. For your Small Business, or any Business for that matter, SocialRank will let you know who is following you and who you’re following in return. It also includes information on how your account stacks up to others in terms of influence.
REPOST
This tool is considered by many as an absolute ‘non-negotiable’ for all Instagram users, including Small Businesses like yours. As the name suggests, Repost lets you easily repost photos on Instagram, while giving credit to the original poster. It also allows you to see which photos and users are getting the most reposts, as well as allowing you to search for relevant users, tags and contests. More than anything, Repost helps with engaging your followers, while cross promoting your brand too with other Businesses in the market.
INSTAGRAM FEED WD
Instagram Feed WD is a high-grade plugin that allows the user to display image feeds from single or multiple Instagram accounts directly on a WordPress site. This is useful to Small Businesses that are using WordPress, as it acts as a content management system for their website. It also helps drive user traffic to your Instagram profile.
LATER
As a busy Small Business Owner with so many things happening simultaneously, missing your Instagram post opportunity can easily occur. Luckily, you can stress less. With the Later app, you now have the perfect tool to schedule your online posts at the time of your choosing. By using a free account, you can create up to 30 Instagram posts a month.
FACEBOOK POWER EDITOR
Since Facebook bought Instagram in 2012, users have been able to specifically build Ads for Instagram through the Facebook Power Editor. This is brilliant promotional tool for Small Businesses, as it allows you to showcase your products and services via your Ad, and link it back to your Instagram page. The tool also means you can create multiple Ads at once and tailor each one to specific campaign schedules.
COLLEC.TO
Currently, Collec.to is offered in both free and paid versions, and gives you access to important stats and analytics. This is effective for your Small Business as it also helps run effective Instagram contests and campaigns. For those Businesses with room in their budget, the paid version of Collec.to delivers access to enhanced browsing options so that you can browse by tags, filters or even dates.
As a bonus, here are some more Instagram tools that your Small Business can deploy, albeit there are costs involved.
FOURSIXTY / SOLDSIE / LIKE2BUY
Ultimately, you want to use Instagram as the space where your Small Business can engage with consumers and increase sales. These three Instagram apps are mostly similar in their makeup, in that they allow you to display products and give your followers the option of purchasing those items directly through your Instagram feed without having to exit the app. This is a fantastic option, as it streamlines the buyer’s purchasing process, making it incredibly quick and efficient – perfect!
As a champion for providing Small Businesses with an Online presence, Sites n Stores can highly recommend Instagram as great option for your Digital Marketing Strategy. By using the tools that we have mentioned above, your Small Business can save on precious time and money, while improving your marketing skills and gaining extra followers from that 20-40 year range at the same time!
