THE INSTAGRAM ACCOUNT OF YOUR DREAMS; HOW TO!

I want to believe one of the reasons you’re here is because you have an open mind towards making your instagram account look better than it already does. 

This post is packed with tips to help you improve your instagram from the tiniest detail to the most obvious content. 

Shall we?

NICHE: As a business, a content creator or anyone who’s trying to build a brand on Instagram, you need to explicitly say what your page is about. Whether it’s lifestyle, fashion, travel or poetry, you need a niche that guides whatever content you’ll be puttting out. 

Although there are cases where a brand offers multiple services and that’s okay as long as the content you put out are geared towards that and are not always completely random. 

This gives your audience a sense of belonging as they know exactly what to expect from you. It also helps them decide if they’ll be watching from the sidelines or become a part of your community.

BIO: One of the easiest ways to tell your community what you’re about is by having a well curated bio because it’s the first thing they read about you even before tapping on your pictures. 

See below: 

PICTURES: There’s no getting away with horrible pictures on instagram and no amount of filter or preset would turn a badly taken picture into a good one. 

You don’t necessarily have to invest in a fancy gadget if you cannot afford it, your phone would suffice. However if you’re a brand offering services, then you should consider investing in tools that gives you the best result be it a camera or a phone. 

Creating your own pictures and how: 

Take good pictures that portray your brand exactly how you like it, putting into consideration your brand colors, message and niche. A great picture is the foundation of a great instagram feed. 

Natural light: Pay attention to having the best lighting when taking your pictures. Usually, natural lighting does this best. If you have to go outdoors to get great pictures, do it. 

There are also options of artificial lighting e.g ringlight, softbox etc that works great depending on what you’re trying to achieve. 

Consistency in creating your own photos helps you understand exactly what you need and what you don’t. Don’t ever be worried about starting with what you have, you’ll gradually ease into what you need. 

Tip: Keep your photos as clear and airy as possible, except you love a lot noise in your pictures, that’s okay. It’s a concept. 

Color coordinate: When taking pictures, it’s important to think of the overall effect you’re trying to achieve with your page and try to insert color gradients or elements that ties your pictures together. 

See below:

Angles: This is taking it a step further but if you’re trying to achieve something close to perfection, focus on your angles. This makes putting your feed together a tad easier. 

Tip: Take your photos from different angles so you have multiple options to work with. 

See below: 

High quality photos: Instagram is about visually appealing content and a high res photo is not only a step in the right direction, it also gives room for modifications when it comes to post production aka editing. 

A scenario: I created some fun content on my Instagram a while ago without putting much thought to my picture quality. To me, I was just having fun. The brand whose product I had featured reached out to me the next day wanting high res pictures that I could not provide. And there goes a potential client. 

As much as you’re having fun while creating content, keep it 100. It might eventually be an opening for greater opportunities.

POST PRODUCTION: Not much work needs to be done at this stage when you have great photos. However, if you’re trying to tie your feed together seamlessly, this is where the magic happens. 

There are different aspects to post production.

• Presets / filter pack
• Borders 
• Texts

Presets and filter packs: A preset is a set of edits and effects already to put together that you can apply on your photo in one click.

Filter packs usually have sets of presets in them. e.g, a filter pack has 10 presets that gives a picture 10 different results but with color gradients that ties them together. 

We’ll dig deeper into how these works while discussing postproduction tools. 

Borders: Borders are barriers placed around your photos . Applying borders to photos is usually a lay out style. This is completely optional as it doesn’t take away from how good your photos are. 

See below:

Texts: If you’re they type that loves to post  inspirational quotes, story times or memes, having a text style is a branding technique that pulls your feed together. Your community can also tell at glance, contents that belongs to you. 

Text style doesn’t have to be a single font, depending on what appeals to you, it could me a mixture of various fonts and sizes. Whatever rocks your boat. 

See below: 

Recommend tool: Canva. 

Here’s what the canva app looks like. It’s also easily accessible either via mobile app or web. 

POST PRODUCTION TOOLS

Here I’ll be sharing tools that have either worked for me or other creatives I work with. 

*LIGHTROOM: Just like most other editing apps you know, Lightroom comes with free presets or filter that helps tweak your pictures to achieve desirable effects.

Lightroom also lets you create your own presets. This means is you can personalize your edit by giving it a signature that only you have by either making it match your exact skin tone or enhancing a color gradients that pulls your feed together. 

Here’s what the Lightroom app looks like.

Tip: Download free Lightroom presets from your App Store and carefully follow the steps in the app. Basically all you need to do is copy all the free presets into your Lightroom app and discard the third party app. 

See below:

Tip: You are able to make your favorite preset fit every picture you own by fixing the saturation, hue or vibrance in your settings to give the exact look you like. 

See below:

Viola, your photo is ready to go. 

PREVIEW: This is a planner app that helps plan your content ahead. Preview helps you arrange your instagram feed before you post on your actual instagram page. Basically, it’s a representation of your instagram page except it’s another app entirely. 

Here you have the luxury of moving your pictures around, feel it out and see where it fits perfectly. By planning months of Instagram contents ahead, you don’t have to worry about running out of content as you’d be able to tell how long your content would last and also know when you need to create more. 

Filter packs: The preview app has different filter packs, some free and others paid. So if you’d rather edit in your preview app, feel free to download filter packs that suit your theme. 

See below:

Other Instagram planner apps:

*Unum

*Plann

*Planoly

INSTAGRAM THEME: An instagram page without a theme is just ** an instagram page *just kidding*. 

Having a cohesive feed is creating a vibe, a personality or an identity. A theme style could range from minimal, grunge, tropical, moody, colorful, white or dark and this could be influenced by your niche. Eg: Travel bloggers for tropical themes. 

There are various theme styles/layout that gives your page an identity different from the next blogger or small business owner and below are a few of my favorite instagram themes / layouts. 

Hack: One of the easiest way to achieve a well rounded theme is by using the same filter on all your pictures. Except you have the luxury of time to always switch and feel out your filters, you can totally do that but don’t be tacky.

The greatest hack however is to enjoy what you do. Enjoy the process and have fun. 

I do hope you find this helpful because I enjoyed putting it together.

Don’t forget that comments are gems. 

Thanks for reading. 

Soaked In Love

❤️❤️❤️

Meedah!