The Five Best Pinterest and Instagram Marketing Tools

Revised March 30, 2023
~~Revised August 1, 2022~~
~~Revised January 29, 2020~~
~~Revised November 20, 2019~~

Increasing use of mobile devices combined with the popularity of “snackable” information have made visual content an increasingly important component of content marketing. Greater use of visual communication has in turn made Instagram and Pinterest two of the fastest-growing social networks.

On Instagram, marketers can post high-quality photos along with captions and hashtags, and use Facebook-type features such as tagging people in photos as well as “liking” and commenting on others’ images.

Dominated by fashion and food posts, Pinterest is most commonly viewed as more of a B2C platform by marketers. But savvy B2B marketers increasingly see its value for promoting infographics, blog posts, videos, presentations, and case studies.

As with other social networks, the right tools can help marketers use these platforms more effectively. Here are a handful of the best tools for growing your brand’s following and monitoring your results on Instagram and Pinterest.

1) Sked Social (formerly ScheduGram)
Google Review Count: 269

Upload images, then crop, rotate, apply filters and add text before posting; schedule posts for maximum exposure; and coordinate activity across multiple Instagram accounts and team members.

Sample review: “Are you posting multiple times a day on Instagram? If so, why not make you(r) life a little more efficient by scheduling your posts?” — StoreYa Blog

Pricing: $20 to $100 per month; contact vendor for enterprise pricing

Showcase reviews: StoreYa Blog

2) ViralWoot
Google Review Count: 193

Though there has been no official announcement, it appears this company is no longer active. It was a tool which enabled you to schedule your pins to optimize exposure, promote your pins, engage top influencers on this platform in your industry or subject area, analyze your competition, and measure results.

Sample review: “Over 39,000 individuals and businesses use ViralWoot for their Pinterest management and analytics…The platform allows you to gain followers by being displayed in the ViralWoot database, promote pins, create pin alerts, manage multiple accounts and get analytics on each of these items.” — MarketingLand

Pricing: free to $499 per month

Showcase reviews: BuzzBlogger, Catherine Pham/SlideShare, MarketingLand

3) Tailwind
Google Review Count: 187

Discover content of interest, schedule posts, monitor conversations, run promotions, and analyze results on Pinterest and Instagram.

Sample review: “My go-to tool for content scheduling and detailed Pinterest data is Tailwind. Want to make content curation, scheduling and analysis super easy? This is the tool for you!” — Rebekah Radice

Pricing: $10 to $800 per month; contact vendor for enterprise pricing

Showcase reviews: Catherine Pham/SlideShare, MarketingLand, RazorSocial, Rebekah Radice, Visually

4) Viraltag
Google Review Count: 162

Create original content with your own images or through ViralTag’s integration with Canva, make changes using the built-in image editor, collaborate with your team, and measure the results. Schedule unique content across Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

Sample review: “Publish your visual content to multiple platforms at once with ViralTag. The…platform already has over 40,000 users, both individuals and business, and is geared largely towards Pinterest.” — MarketingLand

Pricing: $24 to $249 per month

Showcase reviews: MarketingLand, RazorSocial

5) Layout from Instagram
Google Review Count: 117

An app that lets you combine multiple photos into a single post image. Drag and drop photos to rearrange them, pinch to zoom or pull the sides of each photo to adjust size and layout, then flip and rotate your photos to create arrangements and mirror effects.

Sample review: “Trying to create a stronger, and more engaged Instagram community? Layout from Instagram is a simple app that lets you create collage-type images so your images can do more work (if one picture is worth a thousand words, what is a layout worth? :))”— StoreYa Blog

Pricing: free

Showcase reviews: StoreYa Blog

More Tools

Planoly
Google Review Count: 184

An all-in-one tool for Instgram marketers, Planoly enables you to arrange the look of your Instagram feed with a drag-and-drop editor, schedule content to post to Instagram at any specified time, discover relevant users, analyze your results, collaborate with your team, respond to comments, and create a Shoplink feed to drive ecommerce sales.

Pricing: free or four levels from $7 to $159 per month

Inflact (formerly Ingramer)
Google Review Count: 152

Inflact offers an AI-powered bot that helps you grow your following and get more likes using hastag, location, username, gender, and language targeting filters. Features include auto liking, following, and posting; smart unfollowing; ability to offer gifts and bonuses; and detailed statistics.

Pricing: $57 per month

Gleam
Google Review Count: 100

Engage your Instagram audience with contests, giveaways, and hashtag campaigns. Run photo and video contests, create contests easily from pre-built templates, showcase user submissions, track entries and choose winners. Grow your audience beyond Instagram on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. Gleam integrates with more than 100 popular tools including Mailchimp, Amazon, Shopify, Snapchat, and Salesforce.

Pricing: $97/$397/$997 per site per month for the full package; individual apps start at $10/month

Pinflux
Google Review Count: 89

A Pinterest marketing automation tool that enables you to find and share relevant content in order to drive buyer traffic. Create and promote multiple niche-focused boards, schedule pins, find high-quality repins, automatically follow / unfollow other boards, and get complete analytics to see what is working for you and what’s not.

Pricing: $17 per month or $67 per year

Smart.bio by Tailwind
Google Review Count: 76

Turn your Instagram followers into customers by creating a personalized landing page with a branded bio link and button color; customizing your bio link so it’s always sending traffic to your most recent and important content; and smart, one-step scheduling that updates your bio link as you post.

Pricing: free

Combin Growth and Scheduler
Google Review Count: 75

Combin Growth and Combin Scheduler help you attract new Instagram followers, plan and schedule Instagram content (upload images, plan stories, and auto-schedule posts), manage multiple Instagram accounts, engage with your followers, and monitor all activity and audience growth.

Pricing: free or $10/$30 per month

Best Time to Post on Instagram
Google Review Count: N/A

What’s the ideal time to post for brands on Instagram? The varies widely by industry, not surprisingly. The team at Riotly Social Media built this handy free tool, based a huge dataset, to help identify the best times for posting across 65 different industry segments.

Pricing: free