Nowadays, a user's attention span is shorter than ever. You have less than a couple of seconds to make a great first impression and interest a person to read the post. Instagram, arguably the most popular social media for businesses these days, is all about visuals. Even if you engage your audience with meaningful and useful content or use Instagram as a blog, you still need the right images to draw the attention of your audience and get more followers.
If you feel that your approach to visual content on Instagram lacks something, you need to research how to make your strategy more consistent and creative. Aim for your day-to-day choice of content to add up to your overall visual identity and the aesthetic you want to promote. This article is a guide on how to improve your Instagram feed to boost your brand image. It is useful for marketers of small and medium brands, solo entrepreneurs, and even beginner Instagram bloggers who want to engage more users with visuals.
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1. Research editorial collections on stock websites
Even if you take photos for your Instagram profile yourself or hire a photographer from time to time to shoot your products, regular updates on Instagram require a lot of images. Sometimes, you need some extra pictures or videos for your everyday publications, stories, updates, and announcements. This is where stock photography websites come in handy. There, you can actually find tons of non-stocky and artistic photos, graphics, and videos.
This might not be so obvious if you search a stock website with a search tool, but there are thousands of appealing images to fit in with your Instagram aesthetics. The easiest way to find them is to research curated photo collections carefully chosen by professional content curators. There, you can stumble across abstract oil paintings, images that look like they were taken straight from an indie movie, and outstanding photo art.
2. Find your unique aesthetics
It is important to understand your aims and values before you update your content strategy on Instagram. You need to understand yourself because with your choice of visuals, you can communicate a certain message, add extra meaning to your work, and appeal to many of your future clients. Fonts, templates, and color choice should depend on your aims as a brand and your target audience. The great way to be consistent with your Instagram is to create a style guide where you can state the connection between your values as a business and your approach to choosing visuals. This will contribute to your overall visual branding or visual identity.
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3. Plan your feed for visual coherence
When a person stumbles upon your promoted post on their feed and it appeals to them, they will visit your Instagram account before they decide to follow you. There, you have a chance to make a good impression so that a user will want to follow your profile. People would see the overall picture of your Instagram page, and not so many users would scroll further than top 9-12 posts. This is exactly why you need to plan your feed grid or layout in advance to see how your posts will look together.
There are many apps both for iOS and Android that can help you with planning your feed layout, such as Preview App, Later, or Planoly, which you can use for free. You can upload images there and organize the order as you like to find the most eye-pleasing combinations. Another, easier solution is to post in threes, which means you should make each 3 posts interconnected and visually alike. For instance, if you post several times a day, you can stick to 3 posts in a similar color palette per day. This way, your layout will look coherent.
4. Experiment with colors
Colors can be used to add extra meaning to your visuals. Warm colors such as red, orange, and yellow are associated with strong emotions, happiness, and youth, while using purple and blue hues can add sophistication to your brand image. Some brands tend to use bright and colourful images on Instagram, while others prefer minimalistic pictures in pastel hues. As mentioned above, this choice depends on the message you want to convey with you visuals. If you rely mostly on photos instead of graphic design, you can opt for a 'rainbow feed', combining your posting in threes with colors. It's not a new thing on Instagram, but it's definitely something that appeals to people when they want to see similar posts.
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5. Choose fonts that represent your brand
When it comes to visual brand identity, everything is of importance, including fonts you use for your images. Any brand can benefit from choosing 2 or 3 fonts that correlate to your message. If you use them consistently, they will become a part of your visual branding identity. Use modern and bold typefaces if your style is playful and youth-oriented, or choose classical and minimalistic fonts if you work with wider audiences. There are many amazing typefaces you can find and use for free even for commercial purposes, and a great place to look for them is Behance, where designers and illustrators share their works that can be used with permission.
6. Use design tools to edit images
There are some tools that can make your workflow with Instagram way easier. To vary your content on Instagram, you can use graphic design apps and services that you can try even with basic knowledge in design and composition. For example, Crello is an easy-to-use and free graphic design tool to create short animations, DIY infographics, and other formats available from ready-to-use templates to brighten up your posts.
7. Opt for interactive storytelling
Storytelling through ephemeral content is getting more popular. Nowadays, most of the companies and brands post stories on their Instagram accounts, but posting some random stories from time to time won't engage your audience. Creative approach to storytelling is a must for anyone who wants to boost their Instagram profiles. Don't be afraid to add illustration GIFs, stickers and emojis, create quizzes and polls with your stories. This will make your followers interact with your content and improve engagement.
Stories are often approached as something less formal than your feed posts, so this is a great opportunity to explore and broaden your experiments with visual content. If you stick to a certain way to organize your feed posts, try out something different with your stories to see what your followers like the most.
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An afterthought
To win over your competitors on Instagram, it's not enough to post beautiful images with some text. You need to keep up with the latest trends on this social media and constantly explore new opportunities for your Instagram strategy. Inspiration is everywhere, and you can start with following brands with inspiring and beautiful accounts that appeal to you as they might give you ideas for your own content strategy.
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