Instagram stories are an amazing way to interact and stay connected with your audience! It’s an opportunity to show them a side of you you might not normally portray on your feed. Your audience loves to get to know you, which is why they follow you, so stories are the perfect place to show behind the scenes, post your giveaways, advertise your blogs and websites via the swipe up feature and showcase the content that isn’t on Instagram like YouTube or TikTok videos! We have also found stories to be useful for getting our audience to engage with us via questions or polls to get a general sense of what our audience likes, thinks and feels!
Ever catch yourself wondering “How did that person make this story?” or “Wow, I wish I knew how to edit like that!”. Well, if you have, you’ve come to the right place, and you’d be astonished to hear that it may not be as hard as you think it is!
Instagram has been around for a while now, and while it has matured as a platform, so have the apps that come along with it. In 2019, there’s no shortage of tools designed to up your Instagram game. In fact, there are so many that it can be overwhelming to try to figure out what will work best for your needs… Until now that is!
In this guide, we’ve compiled the best Instagram apps to UP YOUR GAME, and we’ve broken it down into three important categories:
- Photo editing
- Instagram Stories/Videos
- Planning
LIGHTROOM – Photo editing
Available on iOS & Android
Lightroom is a powerhouse and is the main app we use to edit our pictures for our Instagram feed, Instagram stories, and our website. We use both the mobile and desktop versions. Lightroom does everything from importing/saving, viewing, organizing, tagging, editing and sharing large amounts of high-quality images. The mobile and desktop app have a few differences, albeit not huge, but the mobile app will do everything you may need. One of the best features is Adobe’s cloud, which stores a backup of your photos so you never need to worry about potentially losing your local files.
The desktop and mobile versions will sync with one another, making it that much easier to access your photos on both devices. If you edit on the desktop (which for us is 95percent of the time), the edited picture will automatically sync to the mobile app and it’s then ready to be export it and uploaded.
Also, you can apply presets to your photo if you aren’t adept at editing yet. You can make on your own (we use our own) or you can import purchased presets from other content creators. Once the preset is applied you can then play around with the different settings within the preset to match the edit you’re going for! The desktop version allows for more detailed editing than the mobile version so we always recommend editing your photos on PC.
SNAPSEED – Photo editing
Available on iOS & Android
Snapseed is a mobile app with powerful photo-editing filters you can use on your smartphone or tablet. It’s 100% free and is an alternative to Lightroom if you don’t understand all the photography lingo. Snapseed is also non-destructive for your photos which means you won’t lose much quality once applying a filter to it.
Snapseed is a better alternative than using the presets Instagram provides you with and is an alternative to using lightroom if you don’t quite know how to edit pictures yet. We use Snapseed in conjunction with lightroom as a touch-up tool, using the selective tool or brush to brighten up an area or play with contrast.
AFTERLIGHT – Photo editing
Available on iOS & Android
Afterlight is a great app for creating a unique look to your Instagram stories so you can stand out from your peers. It’s a full-featured photo editing app with tons of creative options from unique filters, advanced tools, textures & overlays, frames & borders to make your stories more dynamic. Stand-out options like dust, light and double exposure set it apart from many other apps.
INSHOT – Instagram stories & videos
Available on iOS & Android
InShot is an all in one video editor – we use it for our IG stories and short videos. It’s simple to use and is loaded with features such as trimming, canvas size, adding text, filters, speed and you can add music from iTunes or featured music in the app. You can add multiple clips together and it comes in a lite and pro version.
MOJO – Instagram stories & videos
Available on iOS only
The Mojo app has everything you need to create stunning videos and stories your viewers won’t be swiping by. The app is packed with hundreds of animated templates for whatever type of content you’re posting. Mojo’s templates are totally customizable too — making it easy to trim, crop, add effects, titles, animation, change speeds, colours, and more! With Mojo’s animated template you can create engaging Instagram Stories for your profile on either videos or still photos — it’s particularly useful if you want to showcase a blog post or have some text content that you want to make stand out in your feed.
We mainly use MOJO to announce something exciting like a new blog post, before and afters, or a giveaway going live! Plus, if your Instagram account has the swipe-up feature enabled for your stories, the app has cool call-to-action features to customize the entire look of your story!
UNFOLD – Instagram stories & videos
Available on iOS & Android
Unfold comes loaded with IG story templates to create those clean and creative eye-catching stories. The app also lets you preview your story with ‘Story mode’ which allows you to see how your stories will appear on Instagram before you upload them.
The templates are very modern with tons of customization options from frames, layouts, collages, stickers and fonts, so it is no surprise it’s of the most popular template apps for Instagram Stories! One of our favorite things about Unfold is the sticker section!
MACHÉ – Instagram stories & videos
Available on iOS only
Maché is another app with story templates similar to UNFOLD – the templates allow you to add multiple pictures, and even videos, together within the same template. You can add titles and text boxes to make your stories come alive!
When you’re adding a text, image or video, maché will also have an indicator that will show you what your story would look like once uploaded to Instagram, that way you know if your image creeps into the ‘send message’ box at the bottom, or if it interferes with your image thumbnail in the top left corner. The templates are organized in different categories and you can even tap on the heart icon in the top right corner to add specific templates to your “favorite” section! Absolutely love this feature!
CANVA – Instagram stories & videos
Available on iOS & Android
Canva is another super-simple way to create beautiful Instagram Stories. It has a simple graph-design tool that can be used on your mobile phone or desktop and has an easy drag and drop format. Canva can be used to make IG stories, but it’s a lot more than that! You can use Canva as a logo maker, for making invitation cards, and also Pinterest posts.
This is what we use Canva for the most; Pinterest posts are crucial for driving traffic towards your blog, and Canva makes it really easy to create eye-catching Pinterest posts.
For Instagram Stories, there are plenty of ready-made templates to choose from, and you can customize your template with millions of background options, over 130 different fonts, and tons of graphics to create templates for your brand.
OVER – Instagram stories & videos
Available on iOS & Android
Over is an app that helps you design posts for multiple social media outlets. With it’s eye-popping and hand-curated Instagram story templates, it’s easy to use interface allows you to design from scratch, or build of a preset template. Loaded with tons of customization options, you can add text, colors, fonts, graphics and also import your own photos and videos.
It’s a great app for collages, making personalized Instagram story highlight covers and creating impactful posts that lead back to your website, email list and even for announcing upcoming events! We mainly use it for creating our covers for our IG story highlights and we love it!
Clipomatic – Instagram stories & videos
Available on iOS only
Let’s be real here, most of us binge our social media content when we shouldn’t… like at work for example. So, most of the time, your Instagram stories get watched on mute… but if your story is muted, how will your audience know what it is you’re talking about? Well, all your problems are now solved with Clipomatic! With Clipomatic your words are conveniently and automatically converted to text and your words will appear as stylish captions right on your recording!
The app can record video in square and full format and can be used for any social media platform. Plus, the app is also loaded with artistic filters, various caption styles and caption are available in 40 LANGUAGES! It’s well worth the price tag, especially for users who spend a lot of face time with their community, and at $6,99 for life, you might have to cut back on one Caramel Snickerdoodle Macchiato to afford it
PLANOLY – Planning
Available on iOS & Android
Planoly is the app we use to visually plan (ahead) our Instagram feed, along with managing and scheduling our Instagram posts. It’s drag and drop interface makes it easy to use, and you can even add your caption and hashtags so that everything is saved in one place. First, you add the pictures that you have already edited and are close to being a final product, then you can move them around with the drag option and finally, you can click the picture in which a text box will appear so you can add in your caption/hashtags.
WHEN TO POST – Planning
Available on iOS only
Timing is important when it comes to Instagram. We studied the analytics of our posts for quite a while and tested out the best times to upload for maximum engagement. Well, fortunately, this app does all of that for you. Log in with your IG and it’ll read the analytics for you and show you when your followers are most engaged and when most of them are online – It’s a useful tool to maximize your reach as it will also tell you which time is best to post on for each day of the week.
OTHER APPS
There are other apps that you should consider trying, but didn’t make the list because, quite frankly we can’t be here all day, or didn’t add enough value to really break down! However, you should also try Fonts, A Design Kit, Word Swag, Made, WeVideo and LD. With all these tools in your toolbox, you should be able to UP your Instagram instantly and get your audience more engaged than ever before!