Creating Truly Remarkable Marketing and Social Media Content That Lasts – Ryan Holiday [SSM058]

How do you create something that lasts in marketing and social media?

Not just for 15 minutes, or even for a year. But for a lifetime.

Today, we as marketers are so focused on what’s next. We create content, ship it, and move onto the next project without even blinking an eye. Is there another way? A way to create perennial sellers?

Best-selling author, Ryan Holiday, has dedicated his life’s work to answering that exact question. He’s studied hundreds of perennial sellers from movies and television to books and marketing campaigns.

What Ryan has found is that creators of great works don’t distinguish between the making and the marketing. The purpose, goals, frameworks, and target audience are in the creator’s mind from the moment that she or he begins the project.

In episode #58 of The Science of Social Media, we sit down with Ryan to explore the current state of marketing and social media content and how short-term thinking only creates short-term results. Ryan dives into how we as marketers and businesses can begin to think strategically about our content and create something that lasts a lifetime or more.

Let’s dive in!

How to listen: iTunes | Google Play | SoundCloud | Stitcher | RSS

In this episode, here’s what you’ll learn:

Ryan Holiday takes us through the proven process that many of the greatest creators in history have used to generate remarkable content that truly lasts. You’ll also learn tons of other insightful things like:

• How marketers and businesses typically approach content creation
• Why measuring success based on instant results leads to challenges and discouragement
• Finding your own “blue oceans” where this is no competition
• How taking calculated risks is the only true way to stand out in a sea of content
• Taking risks, standing out, and doing something that is truly remarkable

 

3 strategies for marketers looking to create remarkable content

1. Focus on word of mouth

“At the end of the day all successful products are not successful because advertisements or celebrities, they are successful because they are good products and are recommended by other people.

I get emails from people who read my books all of the time saying that they got my book from someone who had sent them a copy. By sending out one free copy to one person, I reached all of their followers. And, if I did my job right, then it will be recommended repeatedly over time.

It’s worth thinking about how this thing that you made is going to be discovered and then working on marketing that drives that discoverability. It’s very hard to get people to pay for something that they know nothing about. I urge people in their products to ask: How are we bringing our first customers through door?”

2. Do something unexpected or surprising

“If you stopped your advertising, would anyone notice? They probably wouldn’t.

Most ads are so boring that companies have to pay extra just for people to see them!

The hack or the secret is to not be boring. Do something risky and cool. Say something unique and special. For example, Buffer’s decision to run itself in a transparent way – talking transparently about salaries and revenue – probably got the company much further than an advertising campaign ever would have.

Do things and take risks. That’s a better way to stand out and get attention online and off. Then the attention will go on for a very long time. Salary transparency is a timeless problem, it will always exist.”

3.  Find and make room for controversy

“I have an expansive definition of controversy.

What you’re doing has to be consistent with who you are and what you believe in.

For example, I wrote a piece a couple of weeks ago on why I don’t think that entrepreneurs should write books. It made some people very mad and other people agreed. But I didn’t become a writer to not say what I think out of fear of hurting people’s feelings.

It’s worth knowing who your audience is and who you’re really speaking to and as long as you’re good with them, that’s what really matters.”

A Great Moment

“On the one hand, marketing is very simple. it’s finding where your customers are and giving them things that they want. On the other hand, it’s much harder in practice. a lot of people do what everyone else is doing and they don’t break through the noise.”

– Ryan Holiday

Awesome Mentions in the Show

• Perennial Seller: The Art of Making and Marketing Work that Lasts
• Ryan Holiday – Homepage
• Ryan Holiday – Twitter
• 1,000 True Fans – Kevin Kelly
• Casey Neistat Official Website
• Buffer Transparency Dashboard – Revenue, Salaries, and More!
• Buffer Open – Our Blog and Journey to Greater Transparency
• Dear Entrepreneurs: Please Don’t Write a Book – Ryan Holiday

Favorite Quotes from Ryan Holiday

• “This idea of ‘if you build it they will come’ ends up meaning that a lot of great content goes undiscovered and to me that’s a shame.”
• “I’m always gravitating towards what they call ‘blue oceans’ where there is no competition. Doing things that others have never done before that are going to break through the noise and provide big ROI.”
• “There’s no hack to building 1000 true fans, developing relationship of trust and reciprocity and you need to provide value over and over again.”
• “At the end of the day all successful products are not successful because advertisements or celebrities because they’re good and recommended by other people. What your marketing is designed to do is to acquire those first customers so those customers can tell other customers.”
• “If you stopped your advertising, would anyone notice? No they wouldn’t. Most ads are so boring you have to pay extra. Do things and take risks, that’s a better way to stand out and get attention.”
• “I have an expansive definition of controversy. What you’re doing has to be consistent with who you are and what you believe in. Example entrepreneurs shouldn’t write books. I didn’t become a writer to not say what I think. It’s worth knowing who your audience is and who you’re speaking to and as long as you’re good with them, that’s what really matters.”
• “I’ve written many blog posts and several have turned into books. I don’t remember how many tweets those blog posts got or comments they got.”
• “There’s this immediacy bias in what we do in the internet because we have… we put something out there and if it doesn’t immediately get a response people might write it off.”

How to Say Hello to Ryan Holiday (and Us!)

We would all love to say hello to you on social media!

• Ryan Holiday on Twitter
• Ryan Holiday Homepage
• Hailley Griffis on Twitter
• Brian Peters on Twitter

Thanks for listening! Feel free to connect with our team at Buffer on Twitter, Buffer on Facebook, our Podcast Homepage, or with the hashtag #bufferpodcast.

Enjoy the show? It’d mean the world to us if you’d be up for giving us a rating and review on iTunes!

—

About the Show

The Science of Social Media is your weekly sandbox for social media stories, insights, experimentation, and inspiration. Every Monday (and sometimes more) we share the most cutting-edge social media marketing strategies from brands and influencers in every industry. If you’re a social media team of one, business owner, marketer, or someone simply interested in social media marketing, you’re sure to find something useful in each and every episode.  It’s our hope that you’ll join our 10,000+ weekly iTunes listeners and rock your social media channels as a result!

The Science of Social Media is proudly made by the Buffer team. Feel free to get in touch with us for any thoughts, ideas, or feedback.

source https://blog.bufferapp.com/ryan-holiday-show-notes

Instagram or Snapchat: Which is the Best Fit For Your Business?

Should our business be on Instagram or Snapchat? Or both?

With Instagram and Snapchat becoming increasingly similar, many social media managers find themselves asking these questions.

To help you figure out which platform — Instagram or Snapchat — is more suitable for your business, we decided to analyze the differences between the two platforms. We compared six key aspects of the two platforms:

1. Users
2. Content types
3. Discoverability
4. Engagement rates
5. Analytics
6. Ad

What we found is this (and you might know it already) is that it greatly depends on your business. Snapchat is great for some business and Instagram for others…and for some, both is the best solution.

But which is the best fit for your business?

Read on to find out…

6 questions to consider

Here’s a list of criteria you could consider when comparing Instagram and Snapchat:

1. Are your target audience and customers on the platform?
2. Which content type (e.g. stories, images, or videos) suits your business best?
3. Do you prefer having a public profile that is easily discoverable and to interact with your followers in public? Or do you prefer a private profile and build close one-to-one relationships with your followers?
4. Is your target audience more engaged on Instagram or Snapchat?
5. Do you want analytics to measure your performance?
6. Do you want to boost existing posts or run ads on the platform?

At Buffer, we choose Instagram over Snapchat (but that’s not necessarily the best more for you).

Here’s how we came to the decision, according to Brian Peters, our Digital Marketing Strategist:

For a long time we were on posting unique content to both Snapchat and Instagram at Buffer.

What we found over time is that the quality of conversations we were having on Instagram with our target audience (marketers and social media managers) was much higher than on Snapchat.

Since we are a small team with limited resources, we decided to post exclusively to Instagram so that we could continue to focus on developing meaningful relationships and creating quality content. Since the decision, we’ve grown our Instagram account by more than 20,000 followers and increased engagement by nearly 300%.

Furthermore, the ability to get in-depth analytics on how our content is performing across our feed, Stories, and Live is a major value-add.

Not to mention the platform is approaching a billion monthly active users!

If you would like to learn more about our comparison of Instagram and Snapchat for businesses, we’ve unpacked our analysis below.

1. Users

The Instagram user base is larger and slightly older.

Size

Let’s first look at the size of the user base of the two platforms¹.

In terms of active users, more than 400 million people use Instagram daily (and more than 700 million use it monthly). In comparison, 173 million people use Snapchat every day.

In terms of Stories, over 250 million people use Instagram Stories daily. That far exceeds the 173 million people who use Snapchat every day.

This chart by Recode shows the rise of Instagram Stories and the slow growth of Snapchat:

In terms of user growth rate, Instagram has been growing steadily while Snapchat’s growth seems to have slowed down. Here’s how the user growth of the two platforms look like (with the data from Statista):

Note: The graph for Instagram shows monthly active users while the graph for Snapchat shows daily active users. Even though they are different metrics, I believe the number of monthly active users and the number of daily active users correlate with each other.

Demographics

In 2016, Pew Research Center did a study of the demographics of American users on the most popular social media platforms.

Here are some highlights of their study for Instagram:

• A bigger percentage of women (38 percent) than men (26 percent) in the U.S. use Instagram.
• Instagram is most popular among online Americans between the age of 18 and 29.
• A third of online Americans between the age of 30 and 49 use Instagram.

It seems that Instagram is more popular among women than men and among online Americans below the age of 49 than those above.

On the other hand, Snapchat has a much younger user base.

• Almost 60 percent of the users are under the age of 25.
• People between the age of 18 and 24 forms the bulk of Snapchat’s user base (36 percent).
• Only 15 percent of the users are above the age of 35.

Note: For Instagram, the percentages show the percentage of people in each category that uses Instagram. For example, 59 percent of online American between the age of 18 and 29 use Instagram. For Snapchat, the percentages show the percentage of Snapchat users in each category. For example, 22 percent of Snapchat users are between the age of 13 and 17.

Others

Here are some other interesting insights about Instagram’s and Snapchat’s user bases.

Instagram

• The most popular topics among young adults on Instagram are fashion/beauty, food, TV/films, hobbies, and music, according to a Facebook survey.
• Instagram users like to follow celebrities, get DIY inspiration, and look at travel photos, according to a Facebook study.

Snapchat

• The majority of Snapchat users (71 percent) use Snapchat only or mostly for peer-to-peer messaging, according to a survey by Defy Media for Variety.
• Nearly 60 percent of interactions on Snapchat are made between close friends, according to a study commissioned by Snap, as reported by Mashable.
• 46 percent of Snapchat users in the U.S. don’t use Instagram, according to App Annie. The percentage is 37 in the U.K.

When deciding between Instagram and Snapchat, I personally think that the user base is the most important. If your target audience is not on one of the platforms, it may not be worth investing in that platform.

Consideration: Is your target audience on the platform?

If your target audience is on both platforms (yay!), here are a few other things to consider:

2. Content types

Instagram posts are high-res and polished; snaps are often raw and unedited.

Next, let’s take a look at the types of content you can create on the two platforms.

Stories

Stories are available on both Instagram and Snapchat.

Stories can be either videos or images. Because stories are displayed in full-screen, the ideal orientation and dimensions for the stories are horizontal (i.e. portrait) and a 9:16 aspect ratio respectively.

Images and videos

Besides stories, images and videos are the other main types of content on Instagram and Snapchat.

But they are displayed differently on the two platforms.

• Images and videos are published as posts on Instagram and snaps on Snapchat.
• Instagram posts are public (unless your account is private). Snaps are mostly private between two accounts.
• Instagram posts can be horizontal, square, or vertical. Snaps are usually vertical (since they are displayed in full-screen).
• Instagram posts will stay on your feed and profile, whereas Snaps dissappear after 24hrs.

Content quality

In general, people like to post high-resolution, (usually) edited content on Instagram and raw, unfiltered content on Snapchat.

That said, with the introduction of Instagram Stories, people are also posting more unedited content on Instagram through Stories.

Consideration: Which content type (i.e. stories, images, or videos) suits your business better?

3. Discoverability

Your brand will be more discoverable on Instagram.

In terms of discoverability, there are three areas to look at:

Profile

On Instagram, you can have a public profile which shows your follower count and all your Instagram posts. Instagram suggests profiles to follow and curates relevant posts in Discover, which helps people to find your Instagram profile.

On Snapchat, your profile can only be viewed by your friends and people who have added you. There’s little information on your Snapchat profile as the snaps and stories you post on Snapchat disappears after 24 hours.

Engagement

On Instagram, likes and comments on your posts can be seen by everyone while direct messages can only be seen by you.

On Snapchat, only you can see who has replied to your snaps or stories.

User-generated content

On Instagram, people (including yourself) can find posts that mention you. Through hashtags and @-mention tags, people can discover and check out your Instagram profile.

Hence, user-generated content is a common Instagram marketing strategy as it can help you grow your Instagram account and increase your brand reach.

On Snapchat, snaps or stories that mention your brand can only be seen by the friends of the person who posted them.

Your brand will be more discoverable on Instagram than on Snapchat. This is great if you want to raise the awareness of your brand on social media and use social proof to build your brand.

That said, many brands like the privacy with Snapchat as that allows them to build meaningful one-to-one relationships with their followers.

Consideration: Do you prefer having a public profile that is easily discoverable and to interact with your followers in public? Or do you prefer a private profile and build close one-to-one relationships with your followers?

4. Engagement level

Engagement seems to be higher on Instagram than Snapchat.

Comparing engagement levels on the two platforms can be tricky since the forms of engagement on the two are different. On Instagram, people like, comment, and watch a video. On Snapchat, people view a snap and reply privately.

While I can’t compare engagement levels as a whole between the two platforms, I thought it might be worthwhile to look at engagement level of stories since stories are available on both platforms and are very similar.

As reported by TechCrunch, businesses are seeing better engagement with Instagram Stories than Snapchat Stories.

• An analysis of 21,500 Snapchat Stories by Delmondo found that the average unique viewers per Snapchat Stories fell by about 40 percent in 2016 after Instagram Stories was launched.
• On the other hand, the influencer community of TheAmplify was seeing 28 percent higher view rate for Instagram Stories than Snapchat Stories.

For us at Buffer, we were seeing higher-quality conversations with our target audience (marketers and social media managers) on Instagram than on Snapchat before we stop posting on Snapchat.

Consideration: Is your target audience more engaged on Instagram or Snapchat? (You’ll have to try both platforms to get a good sense of this.)

5. Analytics

You can get Instagram data more easily than Snapchat data.

Being able to measure and analyze your social media performance can help you improve your social media marketing.

Natively, Instagram provides business profiles with Instagram Insights, an in-app analytics for posts, stories, ads, and followers.

Snapchat does not provide any analytics (except for ads), and most marketers have been tracking their Snapchat marketing manually.

In terms of third-party tools, there are many free Instagram analytics tools available, such as Websta, Union Metrics’s free Instagram account checkup, and Keyhole.

There seem to be much fewer Snapchat analytics tools and they are not free. For example, Snaplytics, a popular Snapchat analytics tool, costs $19 per Snapchat account per month for very basic metrics — views, screenshots, and completion rate.

Considerations: Do you want analytics to measure your performance? Or are you all right with manually tracking your performance?

6. Ads

Both offer powerful targeting and several ad formats.

Since Instagram launched ads on its platform in late 2015, the number of businesses who advertise on the platform has grown to over a million. With Instagram being part of Facebook, these businesses have been able to easily create Instagram ads using the robust Facebook Ads Manager.

Snapchat advertising used to be quite inaccessible to most businesses. Other than Snapchat geofilters, businesses that want to advertise on Snapchat had to purchase ads from Snapchat’s ad partners (and they often cost a lot). Fortunately, Snapchat launched its self-serve Snapchat Ad Manager this year, making it easier for businesses to run ads on Snapchat themselves.

Let’s take a look at three key aspects of advertising on these two platforms, namely audience targeting, ad formats, and costs.

Targeting

The two ads managers are quite similar in terms of their powerful targeting ability.

Using either of the ads managers, you can create a target audience for your ads with factors such as demographics, interests, and behaviors.

On top of that, you can also reach people using your own data (e.g. people who have interacted with your business) and the platform’s data (e.g. users who look like your customers).

Ad formats

Both Instagram and Snapchat offer a variety of ad formats. Here’s an overview of the ad formats each of them offers:

Instagram ad formats

• Feed ads
• Stories ads
• Boost existing posts

Snapchat ad formats

• Snap ads
• Geofilters
• Lenses

Apart from Instagram Stories ads and Snap ads (which are quite similar), Instagram and Snapchat offers quite different ad options.

I believe Instagram ads are easier to create than Snapchat ads at the moment. While Snap ads can be easily created using the Snapchat Ad Manager, creating Snapchat geofilters requires some design know-how and creating sponsored lenses requires you to work with a Snapchat partner (and it seems to cost hundreds of thousands of dollars now).

Cost

It’s a little tricky to compare the advertising costs of the two platforms as it can be quite dependent on the quality of the ads and the target audience created.

In general, it seems to be cheaper to advertise on Instagram than Snapchat at the moment.

Here are some numbers I’ve found from Digiday and AdAge:

• Buyers say Instagram Stories ads are about $3 to $4 CPMs (and completion rates are between two and three times higher on Instagram than Snapchat).
• Instagram Feed ads cost a little more than Stories ads, between $5 and $7 CPMs.
• Instagram Stories ads can cost half the price of Snapchat ads, at $4 CPMs (price per 1,000 impressions) versus $8.50 for Snapchat.
• Snap Lenses’ minimum price has also dropped since they can now be targeted — but they’re still pricey, costing upward of $300,000 for one day.
• Snap Geofilters can be bought for as little as $5 via self-serve, and CPMs can be as low as 27 cents (for geofilters in crowded areas) to as high as $48.

With the launch of Snapchat Ad Manager, perhaps the cost of Snapchat advertising will gradually be lowered.

If you are interested to learn more about advertising on Instagram and Snapchat, here are two guides you might like:

• The Complete Guide to Instagram Ads: A Step-by-Step Guide to Advertising on Instagram
• The Complete Guide to Creating Effective Snap Ads with Snapchat Ad Manager

Consideration: Do you want to boost existing posts or run ads on the platform?

Which platform are you using?

While Instagram seems to be better than Snapchat in most aspects of the comparison, it’s important to consider which platform your target audience prefers.

For example, if your target audience is students, teenagers, and young adults, you might be able to reach them more effectively on Snapchat than Instagram.

Also, a huge percentage of Snapchat users aren’t on Instagram as App Annie has found. So being on Snapchat might be the only way to reach them.

I hope you have found the analysis of the two platforms useful for your decision-making. Once you have made your decision, I would love to hear from you.

Which platform did you choose? What were your main considerations?

—

Image credit:

• The feature image is via Unsplash.
• The graphic on Snapchat user base is via Snapchat.
• The graphic on Snapchat audience exclusivity is via App Annie.
• The chart on the change in average unique viewers per snap is via TechCrunch.

Footnote:

¹ The statistics for user base were taken from Instagram, TechCrunch (Instagram monthly active users, Instagram Stories daily active users), and Statista.

source https://blog.bufferapp.com/instagram-vs-snapchat

Get Over Your Creativity Block With These 20 Social Media Content Ideas

30+ Free Instagram Tools to Help You Grow Your Following

More than 700 million people use Instagram and 400 million of those users check the app daily.

With such a large audience, and some incredibly business friendly updates such as Instagram Ads, Stories, and Business Tools, Instagram is becoming a must-have channel in many social media marketing strategies.

So how can you stand out from the crowd and grow your Instagram following?

We’ve previously shared proven tactics for growing your following and easy ways to increase your organic reach. And this time, we would love to share a big list of free Instagram tools that’ll help you to grow your following.

Going beyond the usual photo editing tools, we’ll also be sharing tools for finding the best hashtags to use, running Instagram contests, displaying your Instagram posts on your website, and more.

Let’s dive right in.

30+ free Instagram tools to help you grow your following

It’s wonderful to think that there are so many free tools available to help you grow your Instagram following.

Here’s a round up of over 30 free Instagram tools that can help you with your Instagram marketing, everything from creating amazing Instagram posts and stories to finding the best hashtags, to planning your Instagram schedule, to analyzing your Instagram performance.

Note: Some of the tools mentioned below have limited features on their free plan and offer more features in their paid plans.

1. Photo Editor by Aviary

Photo Editor by Aviary is one of the most comprehensive and highly recommended photo editing apps. With the app, you can enhance a photo with a single tap, add effects and stickers, draw, add text, and more.

There are over one-thousand free photo effects, stickers, and frames in the app but more are available for purchase if you’d like to expand your library.

Photo Editor by Aviary is available on Android, iOS, and Windows, which means you can most likely use it regardless of which smartphone you’re using.

2. PicFlow

With PicFlow, you can easily create 15-second video slideshows for Instagram in three quick steps:

1. Select your photos
2. Select a music
3. Set the timing of each photo by tapping

If you would like to make longer videos, remove the (tiny) watermark, or unlock more transitions between photos, you can purchase them from within the app for less than $3.

Pic Flow is available on Android and iOS.

3. Canva

Canva is one of our favorite free design tools for creating images for social media, blog posts, and more.

The team at Canva has created many amazing Instagram stories templates that you can customize. The templates come in the ideal dimensions so you can focus on the design and not worry about getting the aspect ratio and size right.

Just pick a template and change the text, images, and background to your liking.

(Canva has an iOS app for those who like to design on the go. Or you can use it to download your designs to your mobile phone directly.)

4. Adobe Spark

Adobe Spark is another free design tool that we love at Buffer.

Here’s a unique feature of Adobe Spark that I like: just by turning a dial in the editor, I can get different design recommendations for my caption.

You can learn more about how to create Instagram stories with Adobe Spark and get 10 free Instagram stories templates here.

5. StoriesAds

StoriesAds is an online tool for creating Instagram Stories ads (and good-looking vertical videos).

It provides several templates you can work with so that you don’t have to create a video from scratch. The intuitive video editor also prompts you about the things you have to change to customize the video.

As it is stated on the site that it is “Free for a limited time”, you might have to pay to use the tool in the future.

6 – 9. Other content creation tools

6. InstaSize (Android, iOS, and Windows)
7. PicPlayPost (Android, iOS, and Windows)
8. Quick (Android and iOS)
9. Studio Design (Android and iOS)

If you are interested in knowing more mobile apps for creating content, you might like our roundup of 26 apps to help you create epic content on your smartphone.

10. Buffer

Planning your Instagram posts in advance can help you save time and ensure that your profile is well-curated and consistent.

As you might know, Instagram doesn’t allow third-party tools to post directly to Instagram, unlike most other social media platforms. While Buffer can’t help you post on your behalf, we would love to help you plan and schedule posting reminders.

On the free plan, you can plan your Instagram marketing for one account. If you would like to connect multiple Instagram accounts or get the analytics, you could give Buffer for Business a go.

GET STARTED WITH BUFFER FOR INSTAGRAM >>>

Buffer for Instagram is Here: 8 Ways to Get Your Best Instagram Marketing Results with Buffer

11. Display Purposes

Display Purposes is a great tool for finding the best hashtags to use for your Instagram posts.

Simply type in a few hashtags related to your Instagram post and Display Purposes will generate a list of hashtags that are relevant and popular. It also filters out banned and spammy hashtags.

You can then manually select the hashtags you want to use or let Display Purposes pick what it thinks might be the best combination of hashtags.

12. Focalmark

Focalmark is very similar to Display Purposes, except that the suggested hashtags are generated from a list of handpicked hashtags (and it’s a mobile app).

Focalmark is available on Android and iOS.

13. AutoHash

AutoHash uses its computer vision algorithms to recommend the best hashtags to use.

Select a photo in the app and AutoHash will analyze the objects in your photo and suggest relevant hashtags. If you have your GPS turned on, it will also suggest location-based hashtags.

AutoHash is currently available on Android only.

14. UNUM

UNUM wants to help you design your perfect Instagram gallery.

The visual planner in the app allows you to see how your gallery would look like after you post your next few photos. You can also edit your photos and videos, draft your caption and hashtags, and schedule your posts with the app.

In its free plan, you get 18 grids to plan your posts and 500 photo and video uploads per month, which I believe are sufficient for small-to-medium businesses. If you would like to have more planning grids and a higher upload limit, UNUM offers two paid subscription plans at $2.99 and $6.99 per month.

UNUM is available on iOS and Android (in beta currently).

15. Later

Later is a popular marketing platform for Instagram, which allows you to visually plan and schedule your Instagram posts.

Just like Buffer, at your scheduled times, Later will send you a notification via its mobile app, prompting you to post on Instagram.

On the free plan, you can schedule up to 30 photos per month, search and repost user-generated content (UGC), and get basic analytics.

16 – 17. Other planning tools

16. Hootsuite
17. Sprout Social

18. Repost for Instagram

Repost for Instagram lets you repost an Instagram post on your Instagram account with just a few taps while also giving credit to the post owner. It is available on Android and iOS.

Before you repost any photos or videos, remember to get permission from the post owner and give her or him credit in your caption. This is required by Instagram’s Term of Use and is doing right by the amazing creators and businesses on Instagram.

To get permission for reposting the post, you can use any one of the following ways:

• Send the post owner a direct message
• Comment on the post
• Connect via email

Some people do ask for a fee for using their photos since it’s part of their livelihood. Be sure to iron out such details before reposting any Instagram post.

If you are using the Buffer mobile app — Android or iOS, you can also easily add a repost into your Buffer queue after you have gotten the permission to repost it.

19. ShortStack

We have found that hosting giveaway contests on Instagram is a great way to drive engagement and reach on Instagram.

ShortStack has a tool for organizing user-generated content (UGC) contests, where participants enter by posting a photo with your hashtag on Instagram. ShortStack will then collect and display the UGC, which can help you increase your brand.

On the free plan, you can host an unlimited number of contests and collect up to 100 entries. ShortStack also has paid plans if you want to collect more entries and get more advanced features.

20. Gleam

Gleam takes a slightly different approach to social media contests. It has an Instagram widget which you can add to your website and drive visitors to your Instagram account.

For example, you could require people to follow you on Instagram or view a particular Instagram post to participate in your contest.

On the free plan, you can host an unlimited number of contests, accept an unlimited number of entries, and select up to 10 winners. If you would like to get more features such as adding a feature image and customizing your widget, Gleam has two paid plans: Pro ($39 per month) and Business ($149 per month).

21. Feed Them Social

Feed Them Social is a WordPress plugin for displaying your social media feeds on your website. By having your Instagram feed on your website, you could encourage your visitors to check out and follow your Instagram account.

According to reviews of the plugin, it takes only a few clicks to set up the feed and the team provides excellent, timely support.

You can see a demo of our Instagram feed here.

22 – 24. Other WordPress plugins

22. Instagram Feed
23. AccessPress Instagram Feed
24. Instagram Feed WD

25. Instagram Insights

Instagram Insights is the Instagram analytics for users with a business profile.

In there, you can see the performance of your Instagram posts and stories and get insights about your followers such as when they are active on Instagram.

If you would like to learn more about Instagram Insights, we went more in-depth into the metrics you can get and the things you could do with your Instagram analytics in our Instagram analytics guide.

26. Squarelovin

If you don’t have a business profile on Instagram, you could use an Instagram analytics tool like Squarelovin.

Squarelovin has a free Instagram insights tool that provides you with your engagement and growth metrics, shows your posting history, and suggests the best times to post.

27 – 30+. Other analytics tools

27. Keyhole
28. Union Metrics Instagram account checkup

For more Instagram analytics tools, check out our Instagram analytics guide where we share seven more free Instagram analytics tools.

What’s your favorite free Instagram tool?

Growing an Instagram following is challenging. But with the right tools, it can become much easier to create quality content, engage your followers, and analyze your performance — which will help you grow your following.

What’s your favorite free Instagram tool that I’ve missed in this post? It’ll be great if you want to give it a shout out below and share what you like about it!

Thanks!

—

Image credit: Unsplash and the respective tools

source https://blog.bufferapp.com/free-instagram-tools