7 best Instagram tools to grow your followers

Instagram only continues to grow in popularity for sharing images and videos, which means it's a great platform for your brand to reach a larger audience.

Instagram now has more than 3 billion monthly active users, making it one of the largest social platforms in the world.

So, what does your brand's Instagram audience look like? Are they engaged? Do you have a strong reach?

Using the right Instagram tools can help you be more efficient and effective on the platform and boost your followers. A word of caution before you start shopping for tools, though: be wary of anything that asks for your Instagram password and promises automated "growth" through mass follows, likes, or comments. Instagram actively detects and penalizes that kind of automation now, and several once-popular tools that relied on it have shut down entirely in the last couple of years after Instagram cut off their access. The following are some of the best Instagram tools we recommend you check out to see what works best for your social media marketing strategy.

Instagram doesn't have what some would consider more traditional sharing features, so Repost is a tool that not only satisfies that need but helps you automatically credit the original poster.

It's a free app with available in-app purchases (if desired) that does not have a desktop interface.

The value of interacting with user-generated posts by sharing and providing credit at the same time shows that you as a brand value them and their input. Other features include the ability to bookmark content and search for images by hashtag or a specific user's name.

Buffer is a straightforward, reliable social media scheduling and publishing tool that works well for Instagram alongside Facebook, LinkedIn, TikTok, and Pinterest. Its free plan covers up to three channels, which is often enough for a small business just getting organized.

Beyond scheduling, Buffer includes a content calendar, basic analytics, and a browser extension for quickly queuing up articles and images you find while browsing. It's a good fit if you want a tool that stays out of your way rather than one packed with features you'll never use.

In addition, you get hashtag suggestions, analytics, and the ability to customize posts by platform rather than publishing the exact same content everywhere.

Focused on Instagram (and Facebook and TikTok) analytics, Iconosquare gives you a deeper look at your account's performance than Instagram's native Insights offer, along with legitimate hashtag and competitor tracking that doesn't rely on the kind of automation Instagram now blocks.

Iconosquare lets you track which hashtags are actually driving reach for your account, benchmark your performance against competitors you choose to monitor, and schedule posts in advance. (See more about how to conduct your first competitive analysis plus 16 recommended tools.)

Because it connects through Instagram's official API rather than automating actions on your behalf, it's a safer long-term choice than tools that ask for your login credentials directly.

Woobox is a great tool for creating engagement opportunities for your Instagram audience. However, keep in mind that the free version only allows limited Facebook interactions. You'll have to choose a paid subscription to access the Instagram features.

Woobox enables you to promote polls, giveaways, coupons and more. In other words, it helps you become even more social on social media. For example, you can even age-gate your contests and feedback if your brand is not geared toward a particular age group. Just be sure your giveaway is set up correctly; see our guide on keeping giveaways legal.

Truly, this tool is about bringing gamification to your Instagram presence.

A powerful social media management and social listening tool, Hootsuite has a hair more options in its free version than most tools, but the most powerful features are available in its paid subscriptions.

Hootsuite gives you the opportunity to manage multiple profiles, monitor interactions and hashtags (among other conversations) and more by setting up tabs to organize your social media management.

Additional apps can be integrated (such as Asana) into your Hootsuite account to streamline your workflow.

For Instagram, Hootsuite empowers you to not only create and schedule posts but monitor popular hashtags and search terms on the platform, all in one place, where you can comment and reply as well.

Looking to make more sales from your Instagram audience? Consider Foursixty, which is a tool that can turn your Instagram and TikTok content into shoppable galleries for your Shopify, BigCommerce, or WooCommerce store.

A strength of Foursixty is its ability to monitor anytime anyone tags or mentions your brand or product and curate all of that and sort by performance, which can be a time-saving method for gathering user-generated content.

Check out our 10 tips to generate more user-generated content.

Other features include rights management so that you don't have to worry about copyright and the ability to track creator and influencer campaigns, which helps you discover new influencers through Instagram while getting a better understanding of their engagement. Partnering with high-quality influencers can definitely help you grow your Instagram following.

See our seven tips you should know before starting your first influencer marketing campaign.

Later is a social media management tool with a visual focus, perfect for Instagram. Its free version allows you to explore, but some key features are tied to its paid subscriptions.

You can use it to schedule photo and video posts while tagging locations and users. Later also includes hashtag suggestions and Instagram Story management.

Part of its analytics capabilities has hashtag monitoring. This means you can see the statistical information about tags and identify the ones that work best for your brand and/or campaign. In addition, Later shows the best times to post according to the activity of your target audience.

If you're in the retail industry, consider Later's Link in Bio landing page. This feature resembles your Instagram feed and enables users to shop easier. This integrates with Google Analytics so that you can better understand the relationship between your Instagram posts and sales.

Check out the 14 biggest mistakes businesses make on Instagram (and how you can avoid them). And if growing followers across every platform, not just Instagram, is the bigger goal, see our 11 best practices to grow your social media followers.