Instagram recently announced plans to shift their algorithm from its current chronological style to a style that prioritizes high engagement posts. To many social media managers, we knew that the honeymoon phase would one day end. After all, Instagram is owned by Facebook and Facebook has been manipulating news feeds for years in order to make a “pay to play” game out of content marketing. This change will be particularly hard for new Instagram accounts, as you work hard to gain followers as well as doting fans through your much agonized over graphics of lunch and motivational quotes. But, as your helpful social media friend, I have a few tools to help you get engagement and get your content in front of others. In the future, it will be important to create visually appealing content, optimize your hashtags and post when your followers are online to aim for the best engagement.
Image Editing
So people clearly love to see beautiful photos. If you live in a dark, windowless apartment like me, it might not be easy to get the perfect lighting every time. Here are some of my favorite editing apps to help.
Color Story is one of my new favorites from blogging superstars A Beautiful Mess. It has a great amount of filters to help you show your pictures in your best light. Also the hashtag #colorstory is getting a lot of love in the Insta world so if you use it, flaunt it!
VSCO is the best image editing app in my opinion. I typically forgo the filters and just use the photo settings to get the picture just how I like it. #vscocam is the accompanying hashtag and it gets a lot of love too.
Relight is a recent app I’ve started using. Like I said, dark apartment and desk cube calls for special help in lighting. This one is $3.99 but if you have the Starbucks app I found it in my free downloads.
Hashtag Planning
One way to get found by the right audience is to use the right hashtags on your posts. There are some hashtags that are pretty “one size fits all” such as #instagood and the world-famous #love but for the most part you want to tap into things that closely fit your niche.
For a starting list of suggestions based on niche, this is one of my favorite blog posts on Instagram hashtags by Latergramme, a popular Instagram scheduling tool.
Hashtagify is a great tool for finding the top 10 hashtags on your specific topic. I would say use your best judgement to decide which are most relevant to you and search as specific as possible.
Iconosquare is another tool where you see how popular a specific hashtag is. You can also use it to view metrics about your own account.
Timing and Scheduling
Timing is everything. You can post at 3pm but if most of your followers are at work doing work things, they’ll probably miss your post (especially with the new changes). Plan ahead and use one of these apps to post on the go.
WhenToGram is an IOS software that lets you know when your followers are on Instagram most. They allow you to schedule your posts out and remind you when it is time to post. However, this currently lacks a computer and android interface.
Latergramme is the industry leader when it comes to semi-free Instagram scheduling. It’s free for up to two accounts and is available for computer, IOS and android. The free version only allows 30 posts a month, but if you are planning to use once a day you should be just fine. Like WhenToGram, they don’t post for you but provide a reminder when it’s time to post.
Hootsuite also allows you to schedule Instagram and optimize for best timing. Like the other two, they only remind you when it’s time to post. If you’re looking for an option that manages many facets of your social media presence at once, Hootsuite is your guy.
Bonus tip: Facebook has several blog and Instagram support groups that can help you get engagement for your page. The main investment is your time as you typically have to reciprocate the engagement in the groups, but it’s a great boost for certain posts as you need.
Hopefully these tools will ease your mind in the face of the new changes. Do you have any other tools you use for Instagram?