With Instagram constantly reaching new heights of users, a plan is needed to create a more aesthetically pleasing Instagram feed that stands out among the thousands. By identifying profiles that are the most appealing and engaging on social media we can outline tactics that have driven their success, heightened their follower count, engagement and collaboration opportunities with followers, brands, and companies.
Create Your Brand Identity
A commonplace accounts start out, is by identifying a brand identity. Having a feed that reflects the purpose of your personal brand can play an extremely important role in creating uniformity. A repetitive structure and layout allows followers to become familiar with the brand’s content and easily distinguish their content from competitive brands. Posting random content can throw viewers for a loop and create a block between commitment to structure and brand identity.
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There are two aspects of identifying and constructing brand identity. First, Instagramers must ask themselves questions to identify what personality and values their brand embodies. For example, the brand GoPro posts content that explores their active, adventurous, and life on the edge identity that keeps viewers engaged and wanting to go out and experience those similar feats. There may be some variety with what they post however their content fully conveys these similar values of adventure and risk to embody a daring and bold identity.
The second aspect of finding a brand identity is looking outwardly at the brand’s audience and what they respond well to. If followers are engaging with specific photos, accounts will seek out the reason behind the boost of engagement in order to hone in on which content is most appealing and reproduce similar content. For example, different angles, filters, and photography styles, may connect better with both the audience and what story the brand is telling. Analytics allows users to blend art with marketing by providing numbers that show which visual styles are the most successful.
Prepare A Theme
The next step to enhancing aesthetic appeal is keeping the brand identity in mind when taking photos. By establishing a specific aesthetic to your profile, it’s an easy way to ensure that each photo fits well within your profile. Some ways to keep photos consistent are by avoiding artificial light, incorporating similar colors within each photo, or posting photos at the same time of the day. These rules can establish a theme that may appear in a block of nine to twelve images or change to a consistent rule that is included in every photo. Themes can be an asset to your brand identity by communicating values and tone.
One common theme is a white background behind products or smaller figures that displays a fresh, awake, and clean tone such as in Dove’s profile. The company’s feed has a large amount of white space to highlight the freshness the soap provides.
Other common themes consist of color blocking, which can display a bold or fearless spirit in its use, minimalist which uses tiny details to tell a story or embellish a figure, or a monotheme which displays the same layout repeatedly to play with symmetry and is commonly used by foodies or healthy eats profiles.
Just as we strategically include products, colors, or looks into our images, successful profiles use their main page as another avenue to stand out from others who may post similar content. Your profile’s theme can help you determine where you place products within your photo, the photo angle, or a specific filter used to heighten the image. These decisions can build into your profile’s theme and make your photos consistent with your profile.
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Successful profiles use images to tell a story, and their feed represents their everyday life. By taking photos that tell narratives, images connect to the brand identity and reach followers who are seeking meaningful and relatable content.
For example many parents post about their children, however the most appealing profiles use a story when adding to their feed to emotionally connect with other parents who can relate to their account. By connecting narratives with a coordinated book of themed stories create a consistent and engaging profile followers will want to return to.
Construct Your Profile’s Feed
Posting content requires organization and critical discipline. Many successful accounts use the editing app VSCO or Planoly to plan the layout of their feed when creating new content. These apps provide a similar visual layout to Instagram and allow influencers to strategically plan out their posting schedule based on filter, subject type, tone, or color scheme. This is also a way to verify that random, unintentional, personal or un themed images are not being posted because it visually shows the user that it does not fit with the other images displayed.
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An example of this is the highly successful lifestyle account SincerelyJules, who posts a range of lifestyle images from coffee to jewelry. By filtering her images to align with one another, it allows followers to distinguish her content apart from others. Even in her travels she coordinates her photography to embellish her brand by including her common photographing foundation, poses, and filter. Another way users can stand out is by editing and taking monochromatic photos that highlight specific colors.
In the end, there isn’t a specific monochrome of colors or filters that harnesses the most appealing profile. Profile types and styles can range yet the most wildly successful accounts construct similar foundations that enhance their brand’s communication and connection with followers.
The most successful accounts match their theme to embody their personality and what their audience wants to see. Brands are cultivating a science to drive successful Instagrams and through their tactics they verify that organization, strategy and creativity enhance the aesthetic quality of their feed for success.
