You know those people on Instagram who look like they have professional photographers
and stylists around them at all times? Well some of them do, and some of them just have
some really simple tricks that make their photos look amazing. (music interlude)
This professional aesthetic is called an Instagram Theme.
and in today’s video, I’m going to show you a few apps and a few tips and
tricks to get your own unique look, feel, and vibe to your Instagram account. Why do
you need an Instagram theme? Well you don’t. If you’re using Instagram
for personal reasons, it really doesn’t matter. However, if you’re using it for
any kind of branding or business purpose, or if you just want your Instagram to look
a little nicer, a little more professional, then you definitely want to consider implementing
an Instagram theme. Having a consistent look and feel to your
Instagram photos does increase engagement because it helps you stand out amongst a cluttered
feed. But also because it’s just plain facts. In a study of over 8 million Instagram images
a few findings were that light and bright images got more than 24% more likes, images
with low saturation got more than 18 % likes, and images with high levels of texture got
79% more likes. I’ll put a link to that full study below.
So how do you perfect your Instagram theme? There are five key elements.
Number one? Crop all of your images the same way.
There are so many different tools you can use to crop your photos, but one of my favorites
is called Afterlight. So you go into your camera roll and choose your photo. I’ll
use an example that I posted recently on Instagram. You can use this go to all of the different
crops here at the bottom, you can see there are the original crops that you can use with
borders, outlines, circular, oval, - tons of different options. And you get out of that,
there's also some really cool, um, different shapes you can use and try out for your photos
on Instagram. Before you pick any kind of background for
your crop, you want to make sure it’s the right size to fit your theme. So all of the
photos on my Instagram page are 4 x 3. So I make sure that it fits those dimensions.
And another option for cropping, which is what I use, is Squaready.
And you can add your photo from your favorites. And you can crop it into any kind of rectangle
or square that you want. I like it to hit the borders, so this is the crop that I use.
Number two: Keep a consistent filter. You can add filters to your photos within Instagram,
but I usually do it with an external app, so Camera + is a great option to do that.
Go back into your photos. So you can choose clarity to make things a little more vibrant.
There’s also tons of different filter options within here, uh, that you can try out. And
I use Afterlight before, but I also come back to Afterlight if I want to add some light
leaks, to add a little dimension to your photos. And you can flip them around, using this tool.
And it just adds a cool effect, uh, to your photos on Instagram. And Pixlr is a great
option to brighten your photos. Remember, bright photos perform really well on Instagram.
So the tool that you can use in here, there are so many, but the one that I like to use
is ‘brighten’. And you just increase the brush size to as
big as you want it to be, and you just brush your hand over the screen and it automatically
brightens the look of the image. And Facetune is an option that a lot of professional
bloggers use, they pick the whitening tool at the bottom here, and you can whiten the
background of the photo really easily, to give it that bright white quality. And you
just have to be really careful around the edges but you can erase anything that doesn’t
look quite right, but you get the gist. So you can add, uh, a white backdrop to pretty
much any photo that you want to make it look a little brighter. And you’ll notice this
is a really popular option for a lot of bloggers on Instagram. They love that white, clean,
backdrop. And one of the most popular apps for filters,
outside of Instagram, is called VSCO Cam. So you can import your photos, so you add
your filters through the tools at the bottom here. And they have presets that are really
really nice filters to give sort of a raw look and feel to your photos. But you can
also play with the tools down here, and tune it to your own liking. You can also increase
the contrast, sharpen your images, increase the saturation, or decrease it, increase the
color temperature, and you can add a little bit of a color tint through VSCO Cam 2.
Another option for brightening your photos is through VSCO Cam 2. You use the exposure
option. You can go as bright as you want to. Number 3: Find a subject or a category, and
stick with it. Once you become known for something, that’s
what people expect to see and consistency is the key to higher engagement. So you can
post things in the category of food, or fashion, or architecture. Those are some of the most
popular categories on Instagram. And of course you can also post images that are more fun,
like pictures of a dinosaur doing different things. Or even your cat. We all know that
some of the most successful Instagram accounts have nothing to do with people and everything
to do with cats and dogs. Number 4: Staging and Posing.
Now this may feel totally unnatural, but remember that you’re competing against big brands
with big budgets and they’re putting stylists and a lot of thought to the posts that they
put on Instagram. So in order for you to compete, you have to put a little bit of thought and
strategy into your photos. So if you’re a food blogger, uh, map out how your photos
are going to look before you post them. If you’re a fashion blogger, have a friend
go out with you and take photos of you in set up locations. Act natural, make it look
natural, but we all know there’s someone there taking the photo of you. And that will
help with the aesthetic of your photos and make them look more professional.
And the fifth, and final element, is your captions. Keep them consistent.
If you always do long-form captions, try and stick with that. Uh and there’s a few tricks
that you can use to get long-form captions. Don’t write them in Instagram, because you
can’t actually put in a paragraph break in Instagram. You have to write your captions
in your notes on your phone, or in an e-mail or text message, and then you just copy and
paste that into Instagram. Or you could use bold lines in your captions, that’s another
popular method, or forward slashes, whatever it is that you like the look and feel of,
stick with that in your captions across the board on Instagram.
My friend Sue Zimmerman has some amazing tips on creating unique looking captions. And obviously
some other great Instagram tips, because she is ‘theinstagramexpert’. I’ll put a
link to her account below, and you’ll find lots of great resources and information there.
I put links to all of the apps that I mentioned below, and I’d love to hear what apps you
use to make your Instagram photos look amazing. If you found this video helpful, please share
it with your friends, hit the ‘like’ button below, and be sure to subscribe because I
post new video marketing and social media tutorials every single Tuesday. Thank you
so much for watching and I will see you guys next time.