Guest post by Tom Siani.

The COVID-19 pandemic is causing severe damage to both physical and economic well being. It’s vital to do all we can to keep our businesses as well as our bodies healthy in this challenging environment.

Want to not merely maintain but actually grow your business during the coronavirus slowdown? Are you using efficient Instagram tools to boost your sales?

Here’s why you need various tools to support your Instagram marketing efforts, along with guidance to help you determine which tools are likely to work best for you.

Coronavirus pandemic and economic downturn

The rapid spread of COVID-19 has caused an unprecedented economic crisis. As of this writing, more than 3.1 million people are infected worldwide.

Widespread, ongoing lockdowns by governments have led many businesses to the verge of bankruptcy. More than 20 million workers in the USA have requested unemployment assistance since early March.

However, jobs that are not dependent on physical presence haven’t suffered as much. Many digital-based businesses such as Amazon.com have seen increased demand and rising stock prices.

Social media marketing

With live events shut down, digital marketing using content and social networks has become even more important for brands and marketers. More than 70% of marketers say social media marketing has significantly helped them.

Almost half of the world’s population is using social networks, and not just for socializing. Many people use social media to search for their favorite products/services/brands.

Today’s lockdowns have made people more active on social media, creating an opportunity for marketers to build brand awareness.

Social media marketing can save you time and money, and help you maintain your brand in the market during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Why Instagram?

Every social media service has its pros and cons. Many of them are designed for a specific purpose and niche.

For example, LinkedIn is a platform for professionals, employees, and companies. Many students, job seekers, employers, and other experts are active on it to reach out to their communities.

Other platforms are more general, with a vast audience reach. Facebook is the largest social network with more than 2.5 billion active users.

But Instagram is one of the fastest-growing networks. With special visual features, Instagram is a perfect choice for social media marketing, especially during lockdowns.

Multi-media posts, stories, live video, and IGTV are its most-used features that are outperforming rivals such as YouTube and Snapchat. However, Instagram has some strong alternatives such as TikTok that are growing rapidly.

Eight top Instagram tools to boost marketing

Although Instagram has many useful marketing features on its own, using third-party applications can enhance your results.

With social media marketing competition getting more intense, Instagram’s basic features aren’t enough. If you want to be successful on this platform, here are eight of the best Instagram marketing tools to check into.

1. Crowdfire

Due to the importance of social media in digital marketing, most brands now maintain accounts on all the top social media platforms.

Managing your Instagram account along with other platforms is not an easy task. Crowdfire is one of the most useful social media management tools covering top networks such as Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

Scheduling posts across these social networks is one of the most useful features of Crowdfire. Automatic and manual modes for scheduling provide flexibility in managing your social presence.

During this lockdown, you may need to increase your posting frequency to get the attention of people. But make sure your content is relevant and helpful, or your increased activity may actually damage your brand.

2. InVideo

Video has become even more popular among social users in this environment. They are a powerful way to redirect audiences to your landing pages.

Instagram offers unique features for video marketing. Of course, many videos need editing before being broadcast.

InVideo is a very effective video editing tool for Instagram. With thousands of attractive templates that can be customized, InVideo is nearly unrivaled.

3. Hashtagsforlikes

Hashtags are an important element in getting more exposure, and subsequently higher rates of engagement.

Any hashtag is a directory for a specific phrase, and every post containing it can be discovered in the search results for that hashtag.

Hashtags are most effective when used strategically. You need data-driven analysis for creating and using hashtags optimally.

Trending niche-relevant hashtags along with branded ones are key to get more followers. Hashtagsforlikes is an Instagram tool built specifically for this purpose.

Hashtagsforlikes finds the most sought after hashtags related to given keywords and offers hashtags based on data analytics.

You may want to constantly update your hashtag strategy using this tool, especially during the COVID-19 crisis.

4. Kicksta

Getting more followers is a top priority for every marketer on social media. But achieving a higher engagement rate is much better than simply gaining more followers.

The key to getting more clicks is having relevant followers who are prospects to buy your products or services.

Reaching out to niche audiences is vital, and fortunately there are highly useful tools in this regard.

Kicksta is a growth service for Instagram that lets you attract relevant organic audience quickly and easily.

Just describe your ideal audience and Kicksta will search, find, and reach out to them automatically. Of course, you still need to review your followers and try to increase your following within key niche audiences.

5. HypeAuditor

HypeAuditor is another useful tool to analyze your followers and evaluate the quality of your audience, demographics, and engagement. This tool will help ensure you have a real audience on Instagram, not irrelevant followers.

This tool can also help you evaluate the authenticity of other Instagram accounts.

This is especially important if you want to find authentic influencers. Many Instagram “influencers” have fake followers and want to sell their Instagram account. Based on a report by Social Tradia, you need to use valid tools to find authentic influencers.

6. Planoly

Planoly is another scheduling tool for Instagram. Planoly is the first visual Instagram scheduler, giving you the ability to plan out your content in a graphical manner.

A consistent Instagram presence is a must, and Planoly can greatly help you to reach this goal. You can assign the posting procedure to Planoly; but take the responsibility for engagement yourself.

7. Awario

Awario provides real-time mentions of your brand and topical keywords across the web and social media. This helps you know whenever an important conversation related to your niche goes online.

Awario crawls more than 13 billion web pages each day, making it the most accurate tool to find niche-relevant mentions immediately.

This is especially useful during the coronavirus outbreak as new trends are popping up.

8. Iconosquare

Iconosquare delivers Instagram analytics and niche benchmarks that can help you enhance your Instagram marketing strategy.

This tool tracks important metrics such as engagement rate, impressions trend, and followers.

Other great features like stories data tracking, hashtag tracking, competitor search, etc. have made this tool a must for marketers.

If you want to maximize your performance based on the current crisis requirements, this powerful tool can help you analyze and optimize your activity.

Final word

These Instagram tools can be of great use to engage your audience and grow your business during the current crisis. Make the most out of Instagram marketing by using these tools. Of course, Instagram alone is not enough to achieve significant success. You need a cross-channel approach to get maximum exposure.

Tom Siani is an online marketing expert with more than four years of experience in this digital industry. He is also collaborating with some well-known brands in order to generate traffic, create sales funnels, and increase online sales. Tom has written a considerable number of articles about social media marketing, brand marketing, blogging, search visibility, etc..

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