Welcome to My Blog

With 500 million daily active users on Instagram, it’s not enough to just rely on the 24 standard filters and tools available within the app anymore. To truly set yourself apart from the other brands competing for attention, you’ve got to supplement your Instagram game with some extra apps.

Lucky for you, there are plenty of apps and tools available to help you edit Instagram photos, gain followers, attract likes, and analyze your performance. Unfortunately, a lot of these tools aren’t as helpful as they seem.

To help you take your Instagram posts to the next level, we’ve compiled a list of all the best apps and tools that will help you at any stage of your Insta journey. These tools will make your Instagram content distinguishable, memorable, and impactful. You might not be able to reach all 500 million potential customers, but you’ll be able to reach the ones that matter most to your brand.

Instagram Photo Editing Apps

Instagram’s in-app filters leave something to be desired. If you’re looking for an easy way to make your photos look more professional and unique, try out one of these alternative photo-editing apps. Whether you’re looking for a wider selection of filters developed by professional photographers, or just want to remove blemishes from selfies, these will do the trick.

1. VSCO

• Price: Free
• Available on: Android and iOS

VSCO provides free filters that often beat Instagram’s in-app options in terms of quality and professionalism. VSCO also offers plenty of editing tools (like customized sharpen, brightness/contrast, and skintone correction), so you can fully tweak your photo before exporting to Instagram. Plus, like Instagram, VSCO offers its own social capabilities: you can follow people directly on VSCO, and post and share photos from within the app.

2. Priime

• Price: $2.99
• Available on: iOS

Priime offers a selection of over 100 filters created in collaboration with professional photographers. If you aren’t sure which filter will look best, you can even receive recommendations from Priime’s Smart Suggestions.

Images via App Store

3. Snapseed

• Price: Free
• Available on: Android and iOS

Sometimes, your photo has varying degrees of darkness and brightness and you don’t want to auto-enhance all of it. Snapseed’s brush tool allows you to selectively adjust for exposure, saturation, and color temperature, which is ideal for situations where you’d rather selectively edit. Snapseed also gives you plenty of control and fine-tuning, and even provides tools to remove small blemishes or unwanted objects.

4. Pixlr

• Price: Free
• Available on: Android and iOS

With Pixlr, you can build your own filters with effects, overlays, and textures. When you’re happy with a filter you’ve created, you can save that filter and use it again. This can be particularly useful if you’re trying to build a unique brand image. Pixlr also lets you selectively adjust your brightness and sharpness. It includes a red-eye fixer and an array of photo-editing tools.

5. Litely

• Price: Free
• Available on: iOS

If you’re frustrated by photos that look overly filtered and edited, Litely is the tool for you. Litely offers uniquely subtle filters with the intent of enhancing the natural beauty of a photo. You can drag your finger anywhere on the image to make adjustments, and tap your finger to compare “before” and “after” versions. You can also choose different variations of the same filter (like “argyle,” “argyle high,” or “argyle faded”) to ensure the filter looks natural with your photo.

Instagram Apps for Followers

There aren’t many automated ways to gain followers, which makes the task a tedious challenge for any social media manager. Fortunately, the following tools can combat this challenge. Although the apps won’t let you buy followers, they offer legitimate options to gain and manage followers organically. You can decipher why people unfollow you, how to improve your social media visibility, and how to keep your followers long-term. With the help of these tools, you can attract a larger following and ensure your current followers are happy.

6. Followers for Instagram

• Price: Free
• Available on: Android and iOS

Followers for Instagram shows you accounts that unfollowed you, accounts that haven’t followed you back, and accounts you should be following based on similar accounts you already follow. You can use this data to strengthen weak relationships, make your followers happier, and understand the reasons an account might unfollow you. You might find that accounts are unfollowing you for simple, fixable reasons — like posting infrequently. Hopefully, fixing these issues improves your relationship to your Instagram audience longterm.

Images via App Store

7. Social Rocket

• Price: Free
• Available on: iOS

Social Rocket is a “likes/followers” marketplace: every time you like someone else’s post, you gain points to exchange for followers or likes on your own posts. Although this is probably an inefficient long-term solution, it can be helpful in the beginning when you’re trying to build an initial following and want your content to spread.

Images via App Store

8. Crowdfire

• Price: Free
• Available on: iOS

Crowdfire identifies your inactive followers. If you know your inactive followers, you can delete them from your followers pool and fix your ratio to get better analytics. Crowdfire also provides automated DM messaging, recognizes when people unfollow you, and helps you find new followers.

Images via App Store

9. Tracker for Instagram

• Price: Free
• Available on: iOS

Instagram doesn’t offer any efficient tools for unfollowing or following accounts in bulk. Tracker for Instagram allows you to do this directly from the app. It also shows you your overall post performance, and analyzes how followers engage with your account, so you can discover your most active users.

Images via App Store

10. Followers & Likes on Instagram

• Price: Free
• Available on: iOS

Followers & Likes on Instagram creates lists of your most engaged and least engaged followers, which is helpful because it gives you a better understanding of your target audience. It also shows you which posts attract the most likes and comments from your best followers. Knowing your most popular posts helps you evaluate and modify your future content strategy.

Images via App Store

Instagram Apps for Likes

On Instagram, likes are the strongest indicator we have when evaluating whether our audience is happy. Plus, the more likes your post gets, the higher it’ll appear on people’s feeds, and the more popular it’ll become. While there are no apps that allow you to buy likes, there are apps that help you attract more likes by offering suggestions, popular hashtags, and favorable captions.

11. InstaTag

• Price: Free
• Available on: Android

InstaTag allows you to discover the highest trending hashtags, which is valuable since popular hashtags change daily. By knowing the trending hashtags, your posts are more likely to show up ahead of the less relevant competition. There are dozens of categories and hundreds of tags, and you’re even able to search tags across categories.

Images via Android Apps on Google Play

12. Get Instant Likes and Hashtags

• Price: Free
• Available on: Android

Get Instant Likes and Hashtags gathers the top tags for each category and shows you the most popular ones, making it easy to make hashtag decisions quickly. You can also add, edit, and remove categories, and create custom hashtags, so you can copy all your hashtags at once and paste them into your post.

Images via Android Apps on Google Play

13. Magic Liker for Like Tags

• Price: Free
• Available on: iOS

Magic Liker helps you search multiple tags at the same time, find popular tags suggested by the app, search through daily suggested tags, or search posts by category like, “only videos,” or “only photos.” It also provides captions that are currently popular, for additional caption-writing inspiration.

Images via TopAppsLike.com

Instagram Analytics Apps

Regardless of where you are in your Instagram strategy (i.e. still creating it, or have been implementing it for years), it’s important to gather analytics to figure out how well you’re doing, and where you could be doing better. With the right Instagram analytics tools, you’ll be able to improve your strategy, attract a larger audience, and make your existing followers happier than ever.

14. Instagram Insights

• Price: Free
• Available on: Android and iOS

Instagram actually does offer its own native analytics tool. Instagram Insights does require you to have a Facebook Business profile, but if you don’t have one, it’s a simple four-step process to get set up. The tool offers powerful insights, including how many times people use the Send Message option on your Instagram story, how many people have saved your posts, and how well your Instagram advertisements are doing.

Image via Buffer Blog

15. Hootsuite Analytics

• Price:Free 30-Day Trial, Professional Version is $30/month
• Available on: Android and iOS

Along with metrics like audience growth and traffic, Hootsuite gathers insights like how people react to your posts according to language or gender, and what types of action your followers are taking. You can also customize the insights you collect, which is particularly helpful if you’re testing out unique engagement factors or collecting specific data.

Image via Hootsuite

16. Iconosquare

• Price: Free 30-Day Trial, Professional Version is $30/month
• Available on: Android and iOS

While the above two tools focus on your business alone, Iconosquare also examines the community (and competition) by identifying the most important Instagram influencers in your industry. This is great if you’re interested in hiring influencers to promote your brand, but aren’t sure where to find them. It’s also helpful if you’re just starting to build your Instagram strategy, and want to see what other brands are doing for inspiration. Iconosquare also provides analytics on engagement, and analyzes hashtag growth and popularity.

Images via App Store

17. Union Metrics

• Price:Free Account Checkup, Lite Version is $23/month
• Available on: Android and iOS

Union Metrics’ free Instagram Account Checkup shows you the best time to post for your network, your most loyal followers, your top hashtags, and your best-performing posts. The paid version gathers more specific information including a profile analysis, analytics, and hashtag monitoring. If you’re unsure about paying for it, test out the free Checkup Tool and see what you think.

Image via Union Metrics

18. Squarelovin

• Price:Free
• Available on: Android and iOS

Squarelovin provides analytics regarding growth, engagement, number of followers, best and worst times to post, and top hashtags. Best of all, the analytics are delivered daily, weekly, and monthly, allowing you to narrow or broaden your focus and your analytics as you see fit. This is especially helpful if you want to A/B test a few different Instagram strategies throughout the month, and want to compare weeks or even days.

Image via Squarelovin

Here at HubSpot, some of the most awe-inspiring moments take place when we get to take new products and features for a test drive. We transform, if it’s even imaginable, into even bigger geeks than we normally are, squealing with the excitement typically reserved for iPhone launches and new seasons of Netflix series.

But alas — this glee is caused by software we use every day at work, and will eventually get to share with other marketers.

Many B2B marketers have seen B2C content at least once and asked, “Why do they get to have all the fun?” But the moments like the one we described above are the ones that remind us: B2B companies are just as passionate about their products as B2C companies are. And for every B2B product, there are even more B2B users out there looking for information, inspiration, and knowledge to provide them with solutions.

The point? No marketing, including content, is uninteresting if you look at it certain ways.

Done right, B2B content marketing can certainly match — and sometimes, maybe even rival — the creativity and appeal of the best B2C ones. And we want to recognize the brands that are breaking that mold and creating great content that grows fervent, dedicated audiences.

Below, you’ll find a few of our favorites, all with their own B2B marketing strategies that you can take with you.

10 Exceptional B2B Content Marketing Examples

1. CB Insights: Newsletter

What It Does Well

There are two things I love about the CB Insights newsletter. First, it’s surprisingly funny (the subject lines alone make it worth it). Second, you learn a lot just by reading the newsletter, no need to click through a bunch of links.”

– Janessa Lantz, HubSpot Senior Marketing Manager

We love how this newsletter illustrates the willingness of CB Insights to not take itself too seriously. Yes, it shares some of the finest insights on technology, venture capital (VC), and emerging businesses, but it does so with fun images that ultimately relate back to the subject — e.g., the above photo of Oprah that’s been adapted as a meme, since, well, that was the topic of the newsletter.

But the messaging remains relevant, even among the hint of silliness. After all, CB Insights designs technology for people in the VC space, so it’s tasked with creating content that will appeal to a broad audience: customers, prospective customers, tech enthusiasts, and investors. And so, under such subject lines as “so sad: tough to have a VC dad,” it includes relevant data. Yes, gifs are hilarious — but in some contexts, they’re also worth $147 million.

Takeaway for Marketers: Remember Your Buyer’s Goals

When you’re dying to create truly unique, cutting-edge content, it’s easy to stray from your organization’s mission and focus.

So, while it’s great to think outside of the box, use clever subject lines, or even write every email with an overarching humorous tone — keep it relevant and include the information that the people reading it signed up to receive in the first place. Then, keep it human.

2. Mattermark: Raise the Bar

What It Does Well

Raise the Bar rounds up the best stories about a variety of different industries, giving me a great snapshot of trends to watch and news stories to follow without having to search for them myself.”

– Sophia Bernazzani, Editor, HubSpot Customer Success Blog

One of the best things about well-curated content — especially the kind that pertains to your line of work — is that it eliminates a lot of work. Keeping up with news and trends is never easy when you’ve already got a full plate, so when someone else is able to hand-pick the things you need to know, it can feel like you’ve struck gold.

That’s what Raise the Bar does, by compiling a “daily digest of timely, must-read posts on sales, marketing and growth engineering.” And, that was the intent all along. In a 2016 blog post announcing the launch of the newsletter, Mattermark’s Co-founder and CEO, Danielle Morrill, wrote, “We’re turning our focus toward sifting through the mountains of content out there around sales, marketing, and growth to help the community of DOERS who grow companies.”

Takeaway for Marketers: Educate Your Buyers

Think about the problems that your product or service already aims to solve for customers. Then, turn that into relevant content that’s going to both save time for and inform your audience — and make it easy for them to access it.

3. MYOB: Tax Time

What It Does Well

MYOB, a provider of business management solutions in Australia and New Zealand, helps companies manage their finances, in part by connecting them with bookkeepers and financial services professionals. It has two main buyer personas:

1. Small businesses that are just learning the ropes
2. More established companies that need greater insight into all facets of their operations.

Each audience has its own set of concerns and corresponding hub of information on MYOB.com — and MYOB has built a B2B content marketing strategy for each one that shows how much it understands its customers.

MYOB recognizes that many businesses are figuring out accounting and financial decisions as they grow, so it’s created content that positions the brand as a go-to resource to help those businesses navigate each stage of their development. The Tax Time center, for example, is angled to fit the needs of both customer groups, providing tips for those just starting out, and guides for breaking through new stages of development.

Takeaway for Marketers: Grow With Your Buyers

When you begin to brainstorm and map out ideas for content, ask yourself, “Do I really understand my audience?” If you have any doubts as to how the idea will benefit or be useful to your audience, the answer might be “no” — and that’s okay. Like everything else, audiences (and people) evolve, so it’s okay to go back to the drawing board in instances like these for a refresh.

4. Unbounce: Page Fights (R.I.P.)

What It Does Well

If you’ve ever seen a growth marketer on the heels of a successful optimization experiment, you know that her energy is electric. Unbounce, a landing page software company based in Vancouver, understands that excitement and decided to leverage it to create an engaging microsite, Page Fights, in collaboration with optimization company Conversion XL.

The project came to a close after one year, but during its existence, Page Fights contained live streams of marketing optimization expert panels who critiqued landing pages in real time. It was content that expanded far beyond the written word — and that was one thing that made it so great.

Sure, Unbounce has a successful blog, but it saw Page Fights as an opportunity to expand beyond that copy. It knew that the web — especially within marketing and web design — was becoming increasingly crowded with content. To address that, it diversified the format of its expertise, to keep its audience engaged and learning.

Takeaway for Marketers: Diversify Your Channels

The internet is only going to become more crowded. And as the human attention span dwindles, that makes it even more important to create content that engages and maintains your audience’s attention.

So while we don’t recommend abandoning blogs completely — after all, written content is still vital to SEO — we do emphasize the importance of diversifying content formats. Marketers who incorporate video into their content strategies, for example, have seen 49% faster revenue growth than those who don’t. And remember that tip to “keep it human” we mentioned earlier? That’s a great thing about live video in particular — it can help portray brands (and their people) as candid and genuine.

5. Deloitte Insights

What It Does Well

Deloitte is a professional services company specializing in consulting, tech, auditing, and more. It works with a massive cross-section of industries, from government agencies to life sciences — and that broad range of knowledge is a major selling point. That’s why creating informed, useful content for individual, specialized audiences is core to its marketing strategy.

But Deloitte has also used that wealth of knowledge to position itself as a resource for those who want to know what it knows. So, among its specialized hubs are educational content centers, including Deloitte Insights (formerly branded Deloitte University Press).

Much like some of the other remarkable B2B content we’ve come across, it curates not only different pieces of highly helpful content — but also a variety of content formats. From blog posts, to webcasts, to podcasts, Deloitte Insights has a bit of everything for those who want to learn about its specialties and the industries it works with.

Takeaway for Marketers: Separate Your Buyer Personas

Creating a content strategy to please a wide-scale audience like Deloitte’s is challenging. It can quickly become unfocused. But if your company has a number of specialties, creating content microsites for each of them is one way to keep that information organized, discoverable, and easy to navigate.

Plus, it can never hurt to establish your brand as a go-to resource. So, as you create these content hubs, consider adding a “knowledge center” among them that’s dedicated to teaching your audience the valuable things it wants to learn.

6. First Round Magazines

What It Does Well

Here’s another example of a brand that does a great job of leveraging different categories of knowledge. First Round, an early-stage VC company, recognized the knowledge among entrepreneurs and leaders that wasn’t being shared — knowledge that could be highly beneficial to their peers — and created the First Round Review as a place for it to be shared. It serves, reads the manifesto, to liberate the ideas and expertise that are “trapped in other people’s heads.”

But liberating that much-untapped knowledge can lead to the same problem we alluded to above — an unfocused mass of content that makes it difficult to discover exactly what you’re looking for. That’s why First Round organized the Review into a collection of nine online magazines, each specializing in a different aspect of building a business.

Takeaway for Marketers: Work With Thought Leaders

If you’ve ever wondered how to leverage the wealth of knowledge outside of your organization — and inside your professional network — here’s a great example.

Don’t be afraid to reach out to the entrepreneurs and leaders you’ve met, or simply just admire, to figure out how they can work with you to create content with teachable experiences that your audience will value. Sharing useful, relatable first-hand accounts conveys empathy, which helps to invoke trust among readers.

7. NextView Ventures: Better Everyday

What It Does Well

We absolutely love stumbling across B2B companies with an active presence on Medium. A great example is VC firm NextView Ventures’ Better Everyday, a Medium publication that focuses on “stories, analyses & resources to help seed-stage founders redesign the everyday.”

But why would NextView want to create an entirely separate blog that isn’t even on its website? Well, it’s an exercise in creating off-site content: the material you own but doesn’t live on your website. When executed correctly, it can give publishers a huge boost in discoverability, variety, and quality, especially when making use of a highly popular platform like Medium.

Because Better Everyday isn’t attached to the company’s main URL, it provides an opportunity for NextView to experiment with different tones, voices, and stories — all from a variety of experts that might already be using Medium to discover and contribute unique content. Plus, with Medium’s built-in ability for people to recommend, highlight, and search internally for relevant content, it makes the work published there that much more shareable.

Takeaway for Marketers: Publish Off-Domain Content

Take advantage of the availability of off-site content platforms. As my colleague, Sam Mallikarjunan, writes in “Why Medium Works,” it can take up to six months of consistent publishing on your company’s blog before it gains significant traction. (And we’re not discouraging that — stick with it, and find ways to supplement those efforts.) But off-site content diversifies your audience by engaging readers who might not have otherwise found your website.

Medium, for example, connects your content with the people most likely to read it. Plus, you’re creating a publication on a platform that comes with a built-in audience of at least 6.3 million users.

8. Wistia: Instagram

 

Want to capture glorious shots like this with a DSLR camera? Head over to the Library for everything you need to know (dog sold separately). Link in bio!

A post shared by Wistia (@wistia) on Apr 24, 2017 at 11:58am PDT

What It Does Well

At risk of sounding like a broken record, we can’t emphasize enough the importance of B2B brands maintaining a human element. That’s why we like it when companies use social media channels to give audiences a “look inside” at the people who make the great products and services they love.

Wistia, a video hosting platform, does that particularly well by sharing visual content on Instagram that lifts the curtain on its people — and dogs. It not only aligns with its brand — after all, the company does provide technology to businesses that want hosting solutions for their visual content — but it’s also just smart. Among its other advantages, visual content can help boost a viewer’s retention of things like brand information.

Takeaway for Marketers: Incorporate Visual Content

Please, please, please don’t neglect to incorporate visuals into your content strategy. Of course, having a presence on visually-focused channels like Instagram and YouTube is vital — but when it comes to your written content, don’t afraid to use visuals there, as well. After all, articles with an image once every 75-100 words got double the number of social shares than articles with fewer images.

But if you can also create content that aligns with the core of your product or service, that’s also great. As we mentioned before, Wistia creates visual content technology — so it makes sense that it would have unique visual content. Identify what your business does particularly well, and then make the most use of the channel that best aligns with your strengths.

9. Zendesk Engineering

What It Does Well

Yes — more offsite content. This time, it’s from Zendesk, a maker of customer service software that’s done something unique with its Medium publication, Zendesk Engineering.

Zendesk might be an expert in the solutions provided by its product, but behind that product is a chorus of highly skilled experts — the people who build and engineer the software. The company realized that there’s an audience to be tapped that’s seeking insights and expertise on the technical side of the product, so it used that to build an entirely independent content property.

Takeaway for Marketers: Tell Your Brand Story

Dig beneath the surface of the solutions your company provides. You offer solutions — but what is your process? What have you learned that makes you do what you do so well, and how did you get there?

Sure, topics like engineering might be traditionally “unsexy.” But when leveraged and communicated in a storytelling manner, they can make for remarkable content.

10. Hexagon: Annual Report

Image via App Annie

What It Does Well

Who says written content needs to be two-dimensional?

For Hexagon, an industrial IT solutions provider, “AR” doesn’t just stand for annual report. With that in mind, the company recently “augmented” a presentation to its investors in a creative way.

Hexagon used augmented reality (AR) to spruce up their written company report, giving investors a more interactive experience when learning the latest updates on the company. How does it work? A mobile app, based on technology from Samsung and zSpace, displays a virtual demonstration of a product when readers hold their mobile device over a “trigger image” of that product within the report.

Takeaway for Marketers: Challenge Your Buyers

It’s easy to feel limited by your medium as you create content — especially for a business audience who you’ve all agreed is comfortable with that medium.

But in order for content to convert readers and incite growth, it needs to occasionally disrupt its audience’s point of view. A company doesn’t work for its content; content works for its company. If you need to say something that a blog alone can’t, the business demands that you make it work — whether that means starting a YouTube channel or seeing how you can integrate an AR tool into your next ebook.

And the List Goes On

We’re optimistic that the digital realm is full of strong B2B content marketing efforts — and, we want to hear about them. But even more than that, we want to hear how these examples inspire you. As they show, there’s a world of content opportunities out there, just waiting for creative B2B marketers to take on.