Instagram is quickly becoming the social media platform of choice. To be competitive and grow your audience, trade businesses need to stay consistent, and produce quality content, and do it often. We recently posted an article on why your trade business needs to be on Instagram.
As trade business owners, we’re super busy and don’t have time to be spending hours on growing our Instagram audience. So how can we make the process as easy as possible?
Check out these 6 tools to help you do just that:
1. SocialSteeze
This one is a bit of a ‘top notch’ program, where you’re assigned a ‘growth expert’ who takes over the growth of your account.
You provide them the details about your desired target audience, for example a female, aged 30-50, local, etc. Your virtual assistant then engages with your target, growing your following, and ultimately increasing your traffic and sales.
2. Hootsuite
You may have used this one before for Facebook or another social media outlet.
Hootsuite makes scheduling your content easy. Write captions for your posts, attach the media you wish to include and then pick dates for them to be published. It will post directly to your Instagram feed at the scheduled time. Hootsuite will also be able to give you some analytics, so you can see what’s actually working and what’s not.
Whilst Hootsuite is an awesome ‘set and forget’ program, it does cost users approximately $40 a month.
3. Later
Later is essentially a free substitute to Hootsuite.
Later (an app and also desktop site), allows you to upload media, write captions, and pick a date for publication. BUT whilst the price tag ($0!) is pretty, it does not automatically publish your posts. You have to physically go into Later on the date of publication and ‘push’ it through to Instagram.
All up it is a super quick, free, and easy process however it is not a ‘set and forget’ program.
4. Sprout Social
Businesses on Instagram often gauge their success on the platform based on their likes, comments and followers. Sprout Social allows a business to dive into more useful data.
The app allows brands to view performance data within specific time periods and between individual posts. In addition, it allows pre-scheduling of posts, making the process of publishing consistent Instagram content much easier.
5. Iconosquare
Iconosquare allows you to view detailed Instagram analytics, track all comments, organise a library of content and schedule posts.
Getting this information is normally time consuming and tricky. Why waste going through all of your posts and followers to find what you need when you can easily get the information from Iconosquare?
6. Repost
Sharing an image from a customer or supplier can often maximise your brand awareness and create credibility.
When doing this, your first thought would be to ‘save the photo then repost’, right? This is where you can get in trouble when it comes to copyright/legal issues.
Repost solves this problem by allowing users to repost content whilst still giving credit to the original poster!
By using at least some of these apps, you will find it much easier to not only use Instagram properly, but really start to see some real value in it as part of your social media marketing strategy. Instagram is here to stay, and your trade business needs to be a part of it, that is for certain.
Interested in discovering more low cost marketing ideas for your trade business?
What’s next?
- Join our Kick-Ass Tradies Facebook Group, for access to trade business specific conversations, tips and resources, plus a like-minded community of tradies.
- Book a 15-minute Game Plan Call with Andy, owner of Dr. DRiP plumbing and co-founder of Lifestyle Tradie, to clarify your priorities and get clear action steps.
