Instagram has grown from a photo-sharing app to one of the most sort-after social media marketing tools. According to research done by DataReportal, by April 2022, Instagram was reported to have at least 1.452 billion users and at least one billion active users per month. With such outreach, your business stands a better chance of reaching its target audience. Besides, customers tend to respond better to visuals than texts giving Instagram a competitive advantage over other marketing tools since it was initially built to share visuals.  

However, running a successful Instagram account for your business is more than posting your products. It would be best to strategize how to grow your account, earn engaging followers that create leads, and turn those leads into sales. Therefore, running your Instagram for business can be overwhelming unless you have a separate department for social media marketing.   

Unfortunately, most small businesses don’t have the budget for a social media marketing department. Therefore, they could use all the help they can have, including using third-party Instagram apps. Third-party apps have a range of uses, including helping schedule posts, growing organic followers, and even allowing you to view private accounts—see this list of private Instagram viewer tools.  

This article will explore what third-party apps are and how you can use them to leverage your business promotion on Instagram. Keep reading to learn more.  

What Are Third-Party Apps?  

A third-party app is an application created by a developer who isn’t the creator of the operating system or device on which the app runs. For example, Instagram permits several apps it didn’t develop to function on its social media site. Other than for entertainment like using them to download private Instagram videos, third-party apps have other general uses, including:  

• They’re used on devices for calorie counts  
• To manage bank accounts and;  
• To activate home security cameras, among other uses   

Specifically, you can use third-party Instagram applications in your business in the following ways: 

• Organically grow your Instagram following  
• Increase your engagements  
• Schedule posts  
• Generating content  
• Record your analytics  
• Management of several Instagram platforms  
• Automation of social media marketing   

However, not all third-party apps are permitted to use because, when the apps access your profile, they also access all your information. This, therefore, presents a risk of your accounts being hacked. It’s therefore recommended only to use the third-party apps that Instagram has approved.  

Here’s how you can use third-party Instagram apps for business promotion  

1. Growing Your Instagram Account Organically  

When using Instagram for business promotion, the larger your following, the more likely your business will reach your target audience. However, it’s not enough to have a big following. The following has to be organic, which means your followers have to be genuinely interested in what your Instagram account is affiliated with.   

Growing an organic following can be quite tasking; without help, it can take a lot of time. That’s why you need third-party applications to help to accelerate the process. The third-party apps work by allocating a manager to run your account automatically on your behalf.  

The manager engages with your target audience, seeking to know what the target audience is interested in, considering what your business does. The manager then uses the information to create more exciting content that will spike the interest of other people your business needs to reach.  

And since you’ll be creating more targeted, once the new audience interacts with your content, they’re more likely to be interested enough to follow and engage with your brand. Therefore, your Instagram will grow organically. Usually, some of these followers are leads, often converting into sales and loyal customers.  

2.  Increasing Your Instagram Engagements  

As mentioned before, it’s not enough to have a large following. Otherwise, people would just be buying followers. It would be best if you had a following that interacts with your content. The more they interact with your content, the more likely they’ll find a product or service they may want to purchase.   

Increasing your Instagram engagements requires constant activities; sometimes, you may not have time for that. If that’s the case, you need to consider using third-party applications.  

One of the ways third-party apps can help you increase engagements is by allowing you to create comment responses ahead of time. Sometimes comments from a post on Instagram can be overwhelming. Therefore, if there’s an app that can help you respond to your target audience faster, you should add it to your marketing tools if you haven’t already.  

Some third-party apps also have a dashboard that you can use to manage your social media platforms. Therefore, if you’re running two Instagram accounts, you can easily manage them and respond to messages as soon as you take note of them. The faster the turnaround time to respond to your audience, the more they feel encouraged to engage with your content in the future.   

3. Building Consistency  

One of the ways to achieve an organic following and increase your engagements is by consistently generating content on your Instagram platform. However, generating content can be quite hard when you’re running a business, mainly because your mind is preoccupied with other business-related things to create content.   

Also, sometimes you may have the content but forget to post it. That is where third-party apps come in. You can use third-party apps to schedule your content. That way, you’ll have something for your audience on a specific schedule without fail.  

When you schedule your posts with third-party apps, they’ll get automatically uploaded according to your pre-set time. With that task out of the way, you are free to focus on other critical business activities while simultaneously meeting your audience’s expectations.  

4. Improving Your Instagram Visuals  

Originally Instagram was a photo-sharing app. Visuals mattered the most. Although this app has gradually evolved into a top-tier marketing platform, it’s still important to take care of the basics. In this case, the visuals.   

While promoting your business on Instagram, it helps if your visuals are attractive. Attractive visuals could be why you earn one more follower who could convert to a sale. Coming up with a strategy to create an appealing visual may be tasking, especially if content creation isn’t your forte. However, with Instagram third-party apps, creating visuals for your content becomes more effortless.  

Third-party apps like Canva will help with the graphic design of your content. You can use their templates for your Instagram posts, stories, and animated posts. With such templates, you’ll be able to achieve a consistent, aesthetically pleasing Instagram account.  

5. Driving More Traffic To Your Content  

Marketing your business means exposing it to as many people as you can. Let them know what your business deals with and how they can access your goods and services. When it comes to Instagram, one way you can do this is by driving traffic to your content, and one of the ways to drive traffic is by using hashtags.  

However, not all hashtags work. You have to be able to use the trending hashtags to drive the necessary traffic to your content. Determining the correct hashtags isn’t that easy, especially if you aren’t on top of your game regarding trendy things on social media.  

To make your work easy, you can use third-party apps that help identify trendy hashtags and suggest them. Other than that, these apps will help you store and organize the hashtags for future posting.  

Finding the relevant hashtags can also help you see how your competitors use them. This will help you borrow a leaf on how to use their strategies and make your hashtags stand out.  

6. To Buying Likes  

Buying likes is also another form of driving traffic to your content. This is because they give the social proof you need to build trust with your followers. The more your content is liked, the greater the chances it has to appear on your target audience timeline. Therefore, it doesn’t harm to buy likes if you can.  

Buying likes involves using third-party apps. So how does buying likes work? You’ll be required to purchase the number of likes you want. It’s recommended that you don’t buy too many so that the likes can look natural to your potential audience. You’re also at liberty to control the speed at which the likes reflect. Ensure that the rate and number of likes appear as natural as possible.   

The third-party app works by detecting every time you post new content. The apps then direct real likes from real followers to your content. By doing so, you gain higher engagement through the increased likelihood of more people viewing your posts.

7. Keeping Track Of Your Instagram Analytics  

After you’ve done all these things to promote your business on Instagram, it’ll mean nothing if you don’t use data to analyze and review your performance. It’s always good to keep track of your performance. It helps you identify your weak points, work on them, and leverage your strongholds.  

In the age of automation, collecting data for Instagram analytics has also been simplified by third-party apps. You can use third-party apps to record data and analyze it. The charts and graphs generated by the third-party apps are easy to read. Further, these apps will give you insights into new strategies you can implement to improve your marketing and business promotions on Instagram.  

Wrapping Up!  

Even though not all third-party apps are approved for use by the original app developer, those that are can be very beneficial for running your business. Approved third-party Instagram apps can help you grow your I followers organically, increase your engagements and help build consistency for posting. These tasks and many more are essential for promoting your business on Instagram. Therefore, if you’ve been toying with the idea of using third-party Instagram apps, consider this a sign to go for them. Remember to always do proper research on an app before integrating it with your Instagram account.