6 Simple Steps to a Beautiful Blog Instagram Feed
Creating an
Like, all professional photos, perfect grid layout, etc.
And it makes Instagram seem unapproachable as a blogger.
At least that’s how it felt for me.
But it doesn’t have to feel like that.
So, here’s what we’re gonna do. We’re gonna talk about creating an Instagram feed that you love but doesn’t suck your time from more important things and doesn’t make you want to shave your head a la Brittney Spears 2007.
So, if you’re ready to take back your IG, go ahead and put the razor down and keep reading.
What is a polished feed?
I want to go ahead and squash any ideas you might have about the “perfect” feed. You don’t need perfect, you need
Remember: People don’t want to engage with brands, they want to connect with real humans that can help them solve a problem.
So take a deep breath and let go of the perfection myth you’ve been taught.
Let’s get started!
1. Know your niche and your audience
You know your niche and you are probably already writing to a specific audience.
What I mean is that you need to know some of the trends in your industry.
What are the visual trends in your industry? What is your audience attracted to? These are things to consider when narrowing down your visual style.
Don’t overthink this or spend too much time researching. Just have a few notes about the visuals in your niche and the visuals your audience love.
2. What are you trying to communicate?
Are there a few words that you could use to describe your blog? What do you want people to understand about your blog?
I’ll give you an example using my brand.
If you take a look at my Instagram (and follow me while you’re there!) you’ll see I have a pretty distinct photography and imagery style.
My brand colors are cool, earthy tones. I like to call them navy and evergreen. I chose these for a few reasons:
- These are colors that I love and gravitate towards in my life. I don’t get tired of these colors. This makes it really easy for me to find images!
- I want to communicate my personality. I’m calm, introverted and focused. These colors are great communicators of those qualities.
- Blue paired with green also communicates growth, trust, steadiness, and being grounded.
And I try to implement these in my imagery as much as possible. Here’s a sample of my images I’m using right now:
Don’t let choosing brand colors overwhelm you too much. When in doubt, choose colors you absolutely love to use. Using colors you love is a great way to show your personality!
And when in doubt, you can always change it up later. Everything is editable on the internet, my friend!
3. Determine your style
When I was creating my look, I turned to every
I searched and pinned images to a secret board whenever I saw something I liked. Eventually, I had enough photos to narrow down my style.
The key here is to pin what you’re drawn to and the things that fit into what you want your brand to communicate. Don’t try to curate up front.
Once you have 20-40 pictures or images on your board you should start to see a theme or a pattern. And you can start deleting images that don’t fit in anymore. Slowly, you’ll start to hone in on what your imagery style is going to be.
4. Gather your tools
Once you have your narrowed down your style, it’s time to gather the tools you’ll need to make it all look consistent.
There are a million and one different tools you can use for building, editing, and creating of your Instagram feed. My favorites are Adobe Lightroom CC, a preset for Lightroom from Creative Market, and Planoly.
Adobe Lightroom CC
This is one of my absolute favorite editing tools. I use both the mobile and desktop versions of lightroom. Lightroom for mobile is available in
Lightroom Presets from Creative Market
This is one of the secrets to creating a consistent look across all of your photos. And it’s beyond simple. Using a preset allows you to press a button and automatically get the color tone you want out of your image. I use one on most of my photos as a starting place for consistency without using a lot of extra brainpower. You can find some of my favorites here: Lightroom Presets.
Planoly
I’ll be the first to tell you that you don’t NEED a scheduling tool to do Instagram like a pro. But, I love Planoly because I can create drafts, grids and auto post content to my feed and stories. I always interact around my posting times and throughout the day, but having the ability to post things on a schedule is really helpful for my inner procrastinator.
5. Build up your image library
This is the fun part! I like to have a folder full of images ready to go so I don’t have to think about what image I’m going to use. I’d recommend coming up with a couple of types of images you want to use in your feed on a regular basis. Here are a few ideas:
- Your workspace
- Supplies
- You
- Niche related images
- Quote images
- Illustrations
- IGTV covers
And here’s the best part: you can totally mix in stock images to save you some time and hassle!
My recommendation is to mix in pictures from a variety of sources like stock photo sites, quote graphics and pictures that you took. The key here is to make sure that you are taking photos that fit into the style that you chose above. So, if you are aiming for that light, bright and airy look, photos that are visually dark are going to stick out like a sore thumb, ya know?
Related: How to photos for your blog and social media
6. Plan your Instagram Visuals
I’m a fan of planning my visual grid on a monthly basis. That doesn’t mean that we can’t change it up or change the content on a whim.
But, as a Type A human, I like everything to be planned as far in advance as I can. It keeps me zen.
There are a couple of different tools you can use to create a visual plan. Actually, there are probably a thousand ways you can plan you visual content. Tools like Excel and Google Sheets are a great place to start. You could even just drag around open images on your desktop until you find a layout you like, take a screenshot of it and then drop the images into a folder for later use.
My favorite tool, by far, is Planoly.
With Planoly, I can plan my grids, stories, and captions ahead of time. It’s visual and let’s me automatically post my content which is a huge plus for me. It takes the pressure off of the actual posting in IG and lets me batch my work ahead of time. Planoly makes creating an Instagram feed simple for me.
Easy peasy!
One last thing…
Remember, Instagram should be fun! Don’t get too caught up in the visual planning. Keep it simple, keep it consistent, keep it YOU.
Now let’s chat in the comments: What
