Table of Contents
There’s been lots of talk recently about various aspects of Instagram and how to get them working. I’m going to breakdown the app that’s been a lifesaver for me and that’s UNUM. There’s so much that this app can do for you and planning your Instagram feed. There are headings, a table of contents and screenshots where I can too. I’ve been loving writing blogging tips posts at the moment and I have a lot more in the works too.
Captions and Paragraphs
One of the biggest gripes of Instagram is that it doesn’t let you post paragraphs. Now UNUM does but it doesn’t let me seem to post with line breaks which is a pain. Although the paragraphs have line breaks in the image below it didn’t copy over to Instagram that way
I also love the fact that I can save my captions to the app for future use. When I’m more organised than I am currently I can prep my captions and add my hashtags later. sometimes all I’m saving is notes for where the picture was taken and any presets used or accounts that need to be tagged.
Planning Your Grid
I definitely use UNUM to plan out my Instagram grid and make sure that the photos I’m posting work well together. You can swap pics around until you’ve got them in the right order.
There’s only a certain number of squares in the grid that can be used at once so don’t try planning content for the next year. I tend to plan about 7 posts in advance at any one time with more in a folder on phone so I can find them easily. Honestly, I’ll have photos sitting in the app for weeks before I actually get round to posting them.
Hashtags & Mentions
I don’t recommend saving all your hashtags to UNUM but I do keep any community building ones so I don’t have to try and remember them for every post. There’s also some that I use on travel photos of specific destinations so it’s handy to have them to hand if I need them. This means that I only need to copy over the hashtags that are specific to the post and that are relevant to what I’m posting. UNUM will also tell you when you’ve reached the magic number of 30 hashtags for your caption which is a definite lifesaver for me.
It can also save recent accounts that you’ve tagged on Instagram too. This is a plus if you’re working with a brand and have tagged them previously. The Instagram API doesn’t allow for account searching via external apps so if you’re not sure of the handle for the account you want to tag then you need to find it on Instagram.
Stats & Analytics
The stats and analytics on Instagram are very different from what you will find on Instagram itself. It gives you a graph of your last 20 posts and tracks the number of likes and comments. You can compare the likes and comments on each post and figure out which ones perform well.
The aspect that I really love is that UNUM shows me the top 10 hashtags that I’m using that work well for my posts. It’s based on the number of comments and likes on the posts. I will admit that I paid to promote a post and this is definitely skewing the figures and which hashtags are actually working well for me.
You can also access data on the best days and times to post to Instagram and it works a lot better than the analytics I get from Instagram itself. There’s also an option to see your top ten posts of all time too. I find this handy when planning pictures I want to take to find out if they’ll be popular or not.
If you subscribe to plans with UNUM then you can also access features that track your follower count and Sentiment which helps you craft the perfect caption for your images. I use the free option for UNUM as I don’t feel that paying for it is beneficial for me.
Create a Series of Stories
If you’re looking for a way to make sleek, curated Instagram stories then you can do this using UNUM. The only issue compared to using an app like Unfold is that by the looks of it you can’t add text. If all you want to do is arrange your images and add the text in Instagram then that’s fine but personally this isn’t a feature I’ll be using any time soon.
I mocked up a story image above to show what it can do. You can create a series of story images and then upload them straight to Instagram from UNUM.
Plan Multiple Accounts
I’ve recently created a second Instagram account and although I’m yet to post to it, I am using UNUM to help me organise the feed and make it cohesive before I use it. This is a great feature for planning your Instagram feed, especially if you plan content for more than one account. Just make sure you’re logged into the right account before posting.
The only answer I don’t have for you is how many accounts you can link at any one time. I’m sure the answer is there somewhere and I’m assuming you can add more accounts if you pay for higher-level access.
Scheduling
This is one aspect of UNUM that I don’t recommend. All that happened when I tried this was I received a notification to go to UNUM to post my picture. The scheduling on Tailwind works a lot better but honestly, as I post when I remember anyway this isn’t too much of a problem for me. If you want an app to schedule to post to Instagram then this isn’t it!
Post Straight to Instagram
Honestly, this is the best part of this app. When you click on the photo you want to share and then export, it saves the photo and your saved caption to the clipboard so that you can post it in Instagram.
I love the fact that I can choose whether I’m posting to my feed or to stories with the app too. Live Grid means that once ut’s posted on Instagram, the feed on UNUM updates to show everything on Instagram. This is how I plan my feed and is one setting I would recommend you keep turned on.
As you can tell by the gushing post I love UNUM for helping to keep me organised and for being able to sort my Instagram out. This is even more important as I’ve also now launched a bookstagram account which can be found with the username readsfromfiona! As you can see from my post, planning your Instagram feed with UNUM is a doodle and something we should all be doing. Yes, there are some features that don’t work well or that don’t do what I would like them to but I think that happens with a lot of apps these days.
