Instagram is more than just an app for photo filters, it’s a community to share stories. And sometimes, the app’s built-in features aren’t good enough to tell the story you want to.

But there are some innovative third-party apps that let you get creative with Instagram.

Instagram is trying to make it easier for people to search and discover content on its service, which a revamped Explore box to help users find trending information and improved search for those directly seeking stuff out.

Instagram just rolled out two major updates that make it even easier for people to find your content, encouraging brands to leverage events and locations for greater discovery on the visual network.

This development makes a lot of sense given the current climate of social networks attempting to provide users with the most “in real time” experience possible.

We’re seeing more and more businesses starting to use Instagram for the kinds of contests and giveaways that have been popular on Facebook for years.

If you’ve been thinking about hosting an Instagram contest, here are four things you need to do first.

Read on to find out the 10 best tactics (with tools and examples!) we uncovered that could help you grow a bigger, relevant audience on Instagram.

Today, all kinds of brands have a presence on Instagram, from the smallest businesses (shopkeepers, creators) to the biggest international brands (distributors, automobiles, luxury brands).

Some use it as their main social network, which means they have a social media communications strategy exclusively based on Instagram.

But in most cases, brands use Instagram as a secondary social network to complement their presence on Facebook, Twitter, or YouTube.

An Instagram contest is a great way boost to your social media marketing. A simple contest can generate the same reach, engagement and increase in followers as hundreds of pieces of content, saving you time and money. But what types of contests can you run and do they work?

Instagram's ads aren't just for brand building anymore. They're also for business building.

Instagram is tweaking its ads and the ways advertisers can buy them to make them as suitable for pushing product to likely customers as for promoting a brand to just about anyone.

In short, Instagram's ads and ad-buying process are becoming more on par with those of its parent company Facebook.

As you may have heard, Instagram is opening its photo feed to advertisers. By the end of this year, businesses big and small will be able to buy ad space on the app and also be able to target by age,

You like their work on the big screen, so check out their impressive Instagram images.

Instagram has become a dominant player in the social sphere especially in the last few years. The number of active users grows constantly making this a marketer’s gold mine.

But how do you capitalize on all these active users? Better yet, how do you start an Instagram community? I will explain how I got to 20,000 real, active, engaging followers in less than 6 months.

by Brandon Leibowitz

Instagram has become a dominant player in the social sphere especially in the last few years. The number of active users grows constantly making this a marketer’s gold mine.

But how do you capitalize on all these active users? Better yet, how do you start an Instagram community? I will explain how I got to 20,000 real, active, engaging followers in less than 6 months.

by Brandon Leibowitz

Content - Short-form videos on Vine and Instagram are powerful tools for increasing brand awareness and increasing sales. But which platform is better? Instagram, hands down.

Let's look at ten fantastic Instagram posts, why they work, and how you can use these ideas for your future Instagram content.

In a first for Instagram, the photo-sharing social network will use its considerable resources to promote a specific kind of content on the platform: music.

The Facebook-owned company has launched a new, internally operated account, @Music, that it will use to showcase musicians and music lovers in the Instagram community.

Here is a list of tools to help businesses establish, manage and broaden their presence on Instagram. There are tools to create and schedule posts, manage relationships, run promotions, display content and analyze engagements. Some of them are free.

Are you looking for Instagram management tools to become more productive? We want to share 4 useful tools that are well worth checking out.

Including photos in tweets can generate up to 35 percent more retweets and 18 percent more clicks, so you’re missing out on a good chunk of engagement if you’re not sharing photos.

And it can be quite time-consuming to snap a photo, share it via Instagram, and then open Twitter to write and send a separate post. This will, of course, ensure that the full photo is shared on both networks, but it doubles your workload.

But there is a method that will bypass this extra work, and allow you to post full-size images from Instagram to Twitter.

There are many ways to increase your following on Instagram or any other social network, but going the wrong route can get your account banned. Buying followers or mass follow unfollowing are ways to get whacked by the ban hammer.

You don’t want that, especially if you’re using Instagram to promote your business. You need a smart strategy combined with good tools of the trade. Let’s look at how it’s done.