Speaker 1: Growing an Instagram account takes a lot of time and energy. While running Instagram ads and reaching out to influencers are highly effective, there are certain tools that you can use to turbocharge your Instagram account. Use these 17 apps to compliment your growth strategy. You're going to learn how to increase your reach, save time, build a brand look and feel, drive more customers to your online store and create more loyalty with your existing audience. Let's get into it. Hi everyone. My name is Michelle Valley and I am your host for today's video. So if you're a small business owner with big plans, learn with Shopify. This channel right here is the place that you need to be because each week we release a new video that gives you the knowledge to start and grow your online business. We actually just released a video on the six reliable ways to grow your following on Instagram. So if you like content like that, make sure that you're subscribed to this channel so that you don't miss out on any future videos. So here are the top 17 apps that are going to help you level up your Instagram game and set you apart from the others. TrueFan. With TrueFan, you can discover highly engaged followers and engage them even further to turn them into brand advocates. So basically with TrueFan, you can strengthen these relationships, and then you encourage them to proactively share about your brand via social and word of mouth. TrueFan to me is more than just an Instagram growth tool. It's actually a business growth tool that increases fan loyalty and ambassadorship. Adobe Rush. This app, in my opinion, is not talked about enough. So Rush allows you to edit your videos directly on your phone. It mimics Adobe Premiere, if you're familiar with that, but it makes it so much easier. It just really simplifies the process. So even if you're a beginner, you can create really captivating videos super easily. And they even have presets to format your videos for stories or feed posts. You also get three video exports to start for free. Display Purposes. This web-based tool delivers all the details that you need to know regarding Instagram hashtags. One of my favorite things about this tool is its ability to see related hashtags. If your goal is to grow on Instagram using hashtags, then this tool is going to help spark some ideas for new hashtags while still ensuring that you're hitting your target audience. Instagram Analytics. So you might've overlooked Instagram's in-app analytics, but it is a powerhouse. Basically at just a glance, you can see who your audience is, what kind of content resonates with them, and you can see your growth over time. By using this tool, you can better cater to your current and your desired audience, which is going to set you up for growth. So for example, if you've identified that most of your audience is based in Brooklyn, then you might want to create content that connects with a Brooklyn subculture, and that is going to help you expand your growth within that niche. Gleam.io. It's widely known that running contests can grow your Instagram account really quickly. And with Gleam, you can run contests, track entries, pick winners, showcase user submissions, and a lot more. This tool is super powerful and it makes entries a lot more seamless than other apps. Seamless entries are going to result in higher conversions and more followers for your brand. BigVue. If you're a small business owner, you understand the importance of having a personal connection with your audience on Instagram because it increases engagement. Getting on camera and chatting with your followers as if they were your friends, it's going to build community, but not everyone is comfortable. Not everyone is a pro when it comes to putting yourself online. So that being said, BigVue is a teleprompter app that will help you script and shoot your videos so that you can speak on camera like a confident pro. It's also going to automatically transcribe your words into captions, which makes your videos more inclusive and more of an engaging experience. Mentionlytics. Track the mentions of your brand so that you can identify where your brand is being mentioned most. You're going to want to use that data to understand what content is resonating with people. And then once you have a strong grasp on that, you're going to be able to make more content just like that to continue the buzz and keep that conversation going. This is going to help with engagement. This is going to help with exposure and it's going to help with your follower count as well. Canva. Canva is a free web-based graphic design platform where you can really easily lay out professional looking content. You can design with graphics, animations, you can design with text, and you can use your own original photos, or you have the option of using stock photography. You don't need a degree in design to use this. And even if you're not a hundred percent comfortable with technology, Canva makes it so easy to just visually communicate product drops, maybe you have some quotes you want to put on your Instagram. You can lay out some company news or sale events, whatever it is that you're looking for, Canva makes it really easy, I would recommend you use this tool where appropriate though, because when you're on Instagram, most users are looking for organic content, sometimes when you over-design this tends to lose engagement, so make sure that you're just saving this tool for infographics or even if you want to put your logo in your profile picture, this is an amazing tool for that as well. Hootsuite. Hootsuite is a scheduling tool that takes a lot of that grunt work out of posting to Instagram. Images, videos, and stories can be posted directly from Hootsuite, whether you're on desktop or whether you're on mobile, and I personally love Hootsuite because you can dedicate a few hours a month, you know, just at the beginning of the month to scheduling all your content out at once, and then not really having to think about doing that later. This tool is really great for growth because it keeps you on track for posting content consistently, and we all know that consistent content is great for growing an Instagram account. VSCO is an app, which is best known for its filters, 10 of which are completely free when you download the app. So if you're looking to tighten up your branding, sticking with one or two VSCO filters and applying that to your entire grid is going to help you develop your brand look and feel and more consistency throughout your grid. Whether your brand aesthetic is grunge or whether you're more of the soft and simple type, VSCO can really help develop that tone and better relate to your desired audience. Having a consistent brand look and feel is going to help boost the engagement and it's going to help boost your follower count when it comes to building a brand Instagram profile. Prequel. Along the same lines of VSCO, prequel also is going to offer filters, but these are more trendy and they're more bold. These are going to be especially useful if you're appealing to Gen Z. So while prequel is not going to directly gain you more followers, this tool is going to help you send visual cues that you are on trend. And we've come to learn that visual cues are extremely important to Gen Z, an audience that is highly literate in visual aesthetic, so if you're marketing to Gen Z, prequel could be a great tool for you. All right, quick break here. So if you're wondering how to make money on Instagram, this free online course hosted by Shopify is going to walk you through proven methods for growing an Instagram following from scratch and the variety of ways that you can start monetizing with just as little as a thousand followers. In 45 minutes, you're going to learn strategies to get more engaged followers and to start an Instagram powered business with the link in the description box. I will make sure to drop that in there for you guys. Keyhole. Are you using branded hashtags? Well, if you are, Keyhole can actually calculate the ROI of your branded hashtags and if you're working with influencers, Keyhole also measures if your influencers have been successful with the use of your branded hashtags. Preview. This feed planning app helps you curate a visually cohesive feed, so you can move your photos around where they look best and you can schedule them in time for your brand campaigns. It also helps plan your captions and you can copy paste, save hashtags. So for me, this has been a huge time saver. Dovetail. If influencer marketing is part of your growth strategy, Dovetail is an amazing platform to help you find those niche influencers on Instagram. So you can search by keyword, you can search by location, engagement rate, and the number of followers with this tool. Dovetail helps to ensure that your influencer campaigns are showing a return on investment by starting with the right fit. Brand collabs manager. Dovetail can lean a little pricey. So if you're looking for a budget friendly alternative, Instagram business and creator accounts now have access to Facebook's brand collabs manager. So this is a platform that's designed to make it really easy for compatible brands and influencers to find each other and then collaborate on campaigns. Brands can look up lists of creators based on their past partners, creators who liked their account and set up audience matches. Insta feed. If you have website traffic and you're looking to convert those people into Instagram followers, you should check out Insta feed. So this is a Shopify app that's going to display your Instagram feed beautifully on your Shopify store. And it also includes a link to allow people to visit your page and follow you right away. This is going to increase your follower count, especially if you have a busy website already. TikTok. TikTok has amazing potential to reach a very wide audience. By growing your TikTok account, you can actually convert these followers into Instagram followers as well. So start by making sure that your Instagram account is connected to your TikTok profile. If you're interested in seeing how to grow a TikTok account as well, make sure that you're leaving me a comment down below, and if enough of you are interested, I would be more than happy to make a video on that as well. Instagram is a really great tool to get people talking about your brand, but if you have a product or if you have a service to sell, you're going to need a platform where customers can actually go ahead and make those purchases. Shopify is a really great place to start. Selling online with your own e-commerce website has never been easier. It's never been faster. It's never been more scalable. And setting up your store can be done in a matter of days, all by yourself. You don't need a fancy coder to do the work for you. You can get started with a free 14 day trial. No credit card required, and there's no commitment at all. These free 14 days are going to give you some time to really build a branded, personalized e-commerce store so that you can start making money on Instagram. This by no means was an exhaustive list. App trends definitely tend to come and go. So if you have any hot tips for us, feel free to flex that knowledge in the comment section so that we can all learn from each other. Also, if you found this video helpful, make sure that you're giving it a big thumbs up. That helps me understand what kind of content you enjoy, what kind of content you find helpful. And it also helps our channel and our lovely community grow. Speaking of community, if you want to be a part of this wonderful community of knowledge-hungry entrepreneurs, make sure that you're hitting that subscribe button to join us. Thank you so much for watching. I'm your host, Michelle Bali, and I'll see you in the next one.