YouTube and Facebook have always been two of the most widely used social media apps. However, Pew Research’s report on social media use also notes that Instagram ranks third, with a huge following from young adults — and 73% of them use it every day.
Even outside of young adults, more people from other age groups also use the app compared to others. For instance, 13% of those aged 65 and above use Instagram, compared to Snapchat’s 2% and Twitter’s 7%.
Since Instagram is continuously seeing a growing share of American users, so it’s become essential for businesses to also create an account on the platform to help spread brand awareness.
However, for you to catch people’s eyes, you’ll need to put in the effort to create a visually appealing feed, not just posts.
You can think of your feed as the digital representation of your business’s personality, and if people like it, then they’ll more likely follow you since they want to come back for more.
So to help you create that follow-worthy feed, below are a few tips to follow:
5 Ways to Make Your Instagram Feed Follow-Worthy 16
The theme, which you should consider your business’s visual personality and messaging, should dictate the overall look of your feed. Having a theme makes your feed look more cohesive, and creates a good first impression.
There are many existing strategies that you can get ideas from, such as utilizing the same color (monochromatic), background, and filter across all your posts.
When choosing a theme, it must reflect your brand persona — you can choose pops of colors for a fun and fresh tone or subdued hues for an elegant touch.
A brand color might be the easiest theme to use since it can appear in a variety of photos, from packaging and the background to clothes and other props. Kylie Skin by Kylie Jenner (@kylieskin) is a brand that uses its brand color to build its feed.
The company uses a pink logo and product packaging, so all of its posts have an element of pink. If you want people to focus on your products in posts, then using a uniform background to frame your goods will do the trick. It also makes your feed look clean and professional.
She Is Gold, LLC (@sheisgoldjewelry), for instance, uses a white or muted background to showcase its products. There are also photos where their jewelry is being worn, still superimposed on the same background.
In line with your theme is a grid style. This is essentially how posts are positioned on your feed. Having a grid layout helps you know what kind of photo you should be posting next — not to mention it can make it easier to stick to your theme. However, a good grid style will take some planning to get the best results.
One of the simplest layouts is the tiles or chessboard grid layout, an effect done when you alternate between two main kinds of photos. Selected Simple Essentials (@thecollectclubvn) switches between their products and simple photos with white backgrounds.
Meanwhile, the puzzle grid style is something that will definitely make you stand out since it’s not the easiest to pull off. After all, you’ll need to ensure that after splitting an image, each square is still of high quality.
But if it’s something you want to try, then you can take inspiration from Pandora (@theofficialpandora). The brand is known for utilizing puzzle grids whenever there’s a special collection.
Though we’re talking about visual aesthetics, you should still be posting photos and videos that define your brand. Like every other online platform, content is still king on Instagram.
A guide to increasing Instagram followers from AskMoney highlights the importance of providing your followers with valuable content, otherwise, they won’t stay interested or invested in your account.
As such, everything you post must be worth watching or reading. To make planning what to post easier, start with choosing just a handful of content pillars — these are the content that will serve as the foundation of your feed since they’re what you’ll likely be able to produce most often.
Daniel Wellington (@danielwellington), for instance, includes their products in all of their photos. They show their watches and accessories as worn by different models or as a standalone to further showcase their features.
Meanwhile, Gucci (@gucci) has a simple but great idea of posting videos and photos of people wearing their items.
A high-quality photo will draw in more people as opposed to blurry or weirdly-cropped ones. And as Instagram is no longer just a photo-centric platform, you should also consider leveraging videos and reels.
Try to make the thumbnails of your videos and reels match your feed’s theme since they also appear on your grid.
Reels are relatively new, introduced only in 2020, but they’re now already a primary way for businesses to reach more people. This means an engaging reel will let you pull more people to your feed.
One way to get more views for your Instagram reels is by keeping them easy and relatable but still related to your brand. Cassey Ho (@blogilates) creates fitness-related reels, such as the difficulties of the day after a hard workout.
To help make sure all your posts are Instagram-sized Business Insider talks about the exact ratios that your posts should follow so nothing gets cropped out. After all, it’s different from Facebook where you can enlarge a photo by tapping on it.
On Instagram, regular photos and videos have the best resolution at 1080x1080px. Meanwhile, reels should be at 1080x1920px.
Try apps to help you plan your feed
Creating a good feed involves quite a lot of planning. After all, you’re making sure that what you’re posting aligns with your theme and content plan.
For instance, Preview lets you plan your content without connecting to Instagram. Some of its features include drag & drop so you can easily move your photos around.
An unlimited grid space means you can plan and schedule posts up to a month in advance. It also has a huge selection of filters, and you can edit your photos too.
Plann is another versatile tool that has the drag & drop feature as well, but it also has a Strategy section where you can plan your content around themes.
It can even give you your Instagram account’s color palette. Utilizing Instagram theme apps makes planning and curating your feed easier.
Rahul Setia was born and raised in the Kaithal, Haryana. He worked at brands like Jabong, ProProfs etc. He was also in the List of Top 100 Social Media Influencer's 2019 by Status Brew. He lives in Delhi/NCR and is a Digital Gig & Founder of Websites i.e TechBlogCorner.com, ViralMasalla.com, DealorCoupons.com. Follow me on: LinkedIn, @rahulsetia007 and Facebook.
FacebookTwitterRedditPinterestWhatsApp Influencer marketing industry is growing day by day with an expected rise to $15 billion market by the year 2022. A couple of years ago in the year 2019, it was noted that the industry was around $8 billion. See the jump the industry is experiencing. There is no looking back because the fate…
FacebookTwitterRedditPinterestWhatsApp These days working relationships are not limited by geography in the way they used to be in times before the world was linked via the internet. This means that it is extremely easy to be able to manage projects that span two or more countries, and this often means using subcontractors that are in…
FacebookTwitterRedditPinterestWhatsApp By now, you probably have realized that digital advertising is a significant component of the world. Without giving due consideration in this field, your business strategy cannot overcome this generation’s hurdles. Even if you are a brick and mortar business, you need to focus on advertising yourself in the online arena. Maybe 100 years…
FacebookTwitterRedditPinterestWhatsApp While you’re searching for anything online, sometimes one of the top options you’ll have will take you by surprise when it either opens a PDF document in your browser or starts the process to download it. But how do you get your quality PDF content to rank highly in the search engines? There are…
FacebookTwitterRedditPinterestWhatsApp There are occasions when it’s challenging to track your search history on Instagram. Typically, the search history is a catalog section that provides easy access to your previous searches. You can quickly find your searches through it. It’s more beneficial when you have a social media app or a social network. This way, you…
FacebookTwitterRedditPinterestWhatsApp American small and medium enterprise (SME) needs a wake-up call when it comes to digital privacy and security. CNBC research shows that the majority of small businesses are unconcerned when it comes to the prospect of a hacking attempt, and this goes hand in hand with poor digital hygiene standards. SMEs operating in the digital sphere need…
