Mwah ha ha, time to put your evil plan in action. Oops—we mean your Instagram plan, of course. How good or evil it is is entirely up to you and your complicated backstory.
In order to conquer/save the world, you’ll need a sidekick: an Instagram planning app. From content ideas to scheduling and auto-publishing your content, an Instagram planning app is an extraordinary asset when it comes to getting organized and saving time. And there’s lots of options out there (like, of course, Hootsuite—yeah, we’re hooting our own horn).
In this blog post, we’ll go over some of the most popular Instagram planning tools and compare their features, integrations and prices.
Still reading? Excellent, everything’s gone according to plan.
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What is an Instagram planning app?
An Instagram planning tool is an app or web tool that gives you the resources to prep your Instagram content. This often includes:
* Building and editing posts
* Suggesting keywords and hashtags
* Scheduling posts to publish at optimal times
* Providing analytics on your already-published posts to give insight for next steps
Instagram is a fun platform for personal and recreational use. But when you’re using Instagram as part of a marketing strategy (ahem, to make money), proper planning and tactical organization is required. Instagram planners offer the best tools for success, and often save social media marketers and community managers hours of valuable time.
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The benefits of using Instagram planning apps
Get organized
Any successful marketing plan requires—well—planning. There’s a limit to how effective your Instagram can be if you’re posting content randomly without a specific strategy in mind, or if you’re not thinking ahead.
Instagram planning tools are excellent for getting organized and efficiently sharing work with your team. They’re an essential investment for holistic, deliberate social media marketing.
Find the optimal time to post
Most Instagram planning tools will tell you when the best time to post is—in other words, when the most people are using the app, and when you’re most likely to get the maximum engagement.
Posting at the optimal time ensures that all of the hard work you’ve put into creating your post pays off. (The best time to post on Instagram, you ask? Hootsuite analyzed over 30,000 IG posts to find the answer: it’s 11am on Wednesdays).
Psst: You can also easily find your unique best time to post in Hootsuite Analytics:
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Schedule Instagram content ahead of time
Okay, so you now know the best time to post on Instagram… but you can’t have your entire life revolving around an IG schedule. To make sure that your social media optimization isn’t getting in the way of your sacred second breakfast time, you can plug your post into a calendar that will automatically publish your content the moment you want it to go live.
All great Instagram planning tools allow you to schedule content: it’s a lifesaver when it comes to workflow and making sure you get some well-deserved downtime.
Manage comments and direct messages
Managing your Instagram followers is a breeze when your following is small. That said, once your audience starts growing (as is inevitable, thanks to all of the ultra-informative blog posts you’ve been reading) the comments and DMs can get overwhelming.
Tools for managing comments and direct messages (like, ahem, Hootsuite’s inbox, which pulls comments and DMs together all in one convenient place) are essential for maintaining your followers’ trust and attention. No one likes being left on read.
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