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December 9, 2024
When managing social media accounts in a professional manner, we often use external tools to maximize our customer’s results. However, using external tools doesn’t have to mean paying for them; some tools offer pretty good results at no cost whatsoever (Of course, everything comes with a price, just as Instagram doesn’t charge us money, but it sure comes with its indirect costs). We have gathered a list of 6 free tools to help you manage Instagram accounts like a pro without spending a dime. Check out these free Instagram tools you can use.
Unlike most free software, this one is actually free: Darktable is free, open-source software that acts as a free alternative for Lightroom. It is part of the GNU project, just like WordPress and other things, and was developed on GitHub by an avid community of photographers who saw the need for a quality raw photo processing tool. Like WordPress, Darktable is highly efficient: It allows you to process your photos at the most professional level possible. Furthermore, Darktable supports various file formats (JPEG, CR2, NEF, HDR, and much more), interfaces with social media, and allows Non-destructive editing (meaning it doesn’t change to the file itself). All in all, Darktable is recommended for those who take their photos seriously.
Canva is an online design tool that enables you to design absolutely amazing posts for social media. In principle, we strongly recommend purchasing the Canva pro version, which allows you to use its many stock photos, design elements, endless templates (that are suited for the resolution you are working on), and other great features. However, Canva’s free version still allows users pretty good options, especially in comparison with the alternatives (Such as design wizard and other free designing tools). Canva’s free version will enable users to upload as many photos as they want, set any resolution as they wish, and download as many designs as they want. From our experience, it is probably the best free alternative you can find.
RiteTag is genuinely a genius service for all of you Instagrammers. When you want to publish a post of some sort, you copy and paste the post’s text on RiteTag. Then click on suggested hashtags, and get a bunch of recommended hashtags we can use for our post. There are several service providers similar to RiteTag, which we believe is the best free alternative (premium versions allow users to “Enhance,” meaning to perform a checkup on posts, to ensure that our phrasing matches Instagram’s current trends).
Timing is everything in life and social media. Therefore, we must publish our posts at the exact recommended time. Buffer is an online tool that enables us to schedule our social media posts: We link our social media platforms, and then we can easily (and freely) schedule any post we want and even add a first comment to the post. Awesome tool.
Let’s say we want to design a seamless carousel for Instagram (A carousel where all of the images seem connected in a “seamless” manner). First, we need to create one “giant” image, from which we could cut several smaller images. In our example, we have used Canva and created a canvas that is 1000 pixels in height and 8000 pixels in width (from which we could carve up eight small images). Now, how do we crop the smaller images? Go to iloveimg, and crop images online in a precise fashion.
If we want to stay clear of copyright infringement issues, one of the more difficult missions in managing social media accounts is finding free images that we can use. However, some websites offer free stock images that require no attributions whatsoever. One of the better websites for this purpose is Unsplash, a free stock photo reservoir that will meet most of our needs without charging us even a red cent.
Let us know how we can help you!
