7 Tools & Apps To Optimize Your Instagram Account

There are countless Instagram Apps out there that will help you get to the next level of Instagramming.

We share Cyber PR’s 7 favorites here…

Top Hashtags

Top Hashtags keeps track of all the trending hashtags on Instagram, and lists them in order of popularity. It updates about every 30 seconds, so it’s always accurate. Using top trending hashtags increases the chance that other people around the world will find your pictures. Now, we don’t really recommend that you put up a random photo and say “#fashion #amazing #nofilter”. That isn’t the way to get real, fully engaged followers. You want to attract people who will actually listen to your music and become part of your tribe. Use the top hashtags sparingly, interspersed with more specific hashtags (ie. #acousticmusic or #guitarcover). This way, you’re casting your net wide AND intelligently.

These hashtags are so meaningful. Deep, man, deep.

IFTTT

IFTTT stands for If This Than Then, and it’s a freaking cool website. Basically, a whole bunch of programmers all over the world has created “recipes” that connect different parts of your life – “if this happens, then this will happen.” Make a profile on IFTTT, and you can get ‘recipes’ that will text your husband every time you leave for work, or will send you a notification if it’s supposed to rain tomorrow. I highly recommend you go on the site and check out all the different ways you can use IFTTT, but for right now, focus on this recipe: Post Your Instagram Photos as Native Twitter Photos. Connect both your Instagram and Twitter accounts, and you’ll be able to post Instagram photos to Twitter as actual photos, instead of those annoying links!

Afterlight

Afterlight is a photo editor app. It’s chock full of gorgeous filters, separated by different categories. Along with these filters come more editing tools like brightness, contrast etc. that allow you to make your photos entirely unique. They even have textures that you can apply to your photos to make them seen vintage or dusty. There are also various frames and sizing options to help your photos stand out.

VSCO

VSCO is also a photo editor Instagram app It has another array of filters that come along with it. VSCO comes with similar tools like brightness and contrast, but also has a more extensive toolbox. There are tints you can put on your photos to make them slightly one color or another. Another cool thing that comes with VSCO is the feed. You can post the photos you edit to your own VSCO feed, as well as uploading them to Instagram. That way, if you edit a photo and want to save it for posting to Instagram at a later date, you can put it in your feed instead of having a bunch of photos clog your camera roll (and your content will be preped and ready!)

Iconosquare

Iconosquare connects with your Instagram account, and gives you detailed analytics on your followers and their engagement. You can also find users who might be interested in your account and music and gauge your progress on the platform. It will help you find the optimal time to post, and generally help you grow your Instagram tribe. If you want to take Instagram seriously, this is an invaluable tool.

Layout

Layout is also exactly what it sounds like. Combine several different photos to create one single image! This Instagram App lets you choose from a huge variety of layouts, resize the photos, choose the crop, flip the images around, add borders… there are all sorts of toys to play with. This is a great way to combine concert photos that you might not want to have as separate posts, or outtakes from a photo shoot or different angles of your merch or mics.

Got a million cat photos, like me? Put them all together!

Boomerang

Boomerang is an app that allows you to record a short video and then plays it forward and backward in a loop. It’s a cool way to add a creative spin to some of your posts! Every time we post a Boomerang we get great results. It’s the easiest Instagram App in this lineup to use.

want to see our 7 favorite musicians to follow and emulate on Instagram? click here.

Want to optimize your branding as well?  Cyber PR LAB 7: Discovering Your Brand with Bobby Owsinski can help]!