When it comes to building your online brand and achieving sustainable growth a strong strategy is everything. One of the key parts to any strategy is creating a cohesive Instagram feed. Although it’s crucial to focus on the quality of your individual content, it’s just as important to tie your entire feed together. It doesn’t matter if you’re using Instagram for your business, or building your personal brand. If you want to appeal to new followers you should be creating a cohesive Instagram feed. Creating harmony on a feed requires a few different ingredients, and all of them are equally important.
A consistent look helps the overall feed to look better. When a new follower comes across your page, you only have a few seconds to grab their attention enough to make them want to follow you. Asides from your bio, the look of your Instagram feed plays a big part in this decision. This is why it’s absolutely imperative that your editing and photography style are consistent. You also want our Instagram feed to properly represent your personal brand, and keeping consistent is a great way to have that show through.
Does Content Consistency Matter?
You should also be consistent in the type of content that you’re delivering. A consistent theme in your content is important because it sets the tone as to the type of content your followers can expect from you. Let’s say you start following a healthy food blogger because you love the restaurants and recipes she shares. A few weeks later, if she were to start posting mom related content it may prompt you to unfollow her. Generally you’re gaining followers because they are interested in the type of content you’re posting. So it’s important to find your niche and stick with it. Of course, your followers also want you to share your real life and experiences. So natural shifts in your content based on where you are in your life are normal.
Often times bloggers and content creators who have been doing this for years will have an evolution in the types of content they share. A great example is style Influencer @LisaDNYC. For years, Lisa has shared her daily outfits and beauty picks with her followers. But in 2018 she became a new mom and began to share a glimpse into motherhood. Lisa has done a great job of keeping consistent with her brand while incorporating the natural changes in her life. This has not only helped her to keep her dedicated followers, but expand her base into the motherhood category.
Creating A Cohesive Instagram Feed
Tip #1: Pick A Consistent Editing Style
A large part of being consistent in how your photos look is developing an editing style and staying committed to it. One easy way to do this is to use a preset. Presets can be purchased or created on editing apps like VSCO or on professional photo editing software like Adobe Lightroom. Presets make it easy to apply the same type of “vibe” or overall look to different photos. Just as a disclaimer, every photo will need slight adjusting, as not all pictures you’ll edit will have been taken in the same lighting. Having the preset, though, establishes an end-goal for your photos for you to work towards when editing.
If you’d rather not create your own presets, or if you like the look and feel of someone’s feed and photos who sells their own presets, it’s super easy to buy them. A quick google search or a search on Etsy will give you lots of different presets to purchase. If you missed the article we wrote on the best influencer-created presets, be sure to check that out for some inspiration.
Tip #2: Create & Formalize Your Personal Brand
One of the best ways to help stay consistent is to formalize who and what your brand is. Most established companies and brands have formalized documents called Branding Guides or Branding Guidelines. These documents outline everything from fonts to themes, colors, content categories and pretty much anything that goes into defining a brand. You’ll benefit from outlining your own brand and putting in writing what your niche is, what colors are staples on your feed and your tone of communication. Once you formalize who and what your brand is, you’ll have a clear and established direction for your Instagram page and who you portray yourself as to your followers to stick to.
Tip #3: Develop A Routine & Create Expectations For Your Content
A popular method used by some of the fastest growing Instagram accounts is to develop a routine for your content. Fashion and lifestyle Influencer Delaney Childs does a #MakeUpMonday with her followers. Every Monday she shares a new makeup routine video on her IGTV and on her feed. Similarly, fashion Influencer Lexi Mars films and posts at least one outfit video per week. Not only does this method establish a consistent schedule for your content creation, it also establishes what your followers can expect on a weekly basis. You can even create personalized hashtags based on the categories of content you share, so your followers can easily search them to find your exclusive content.
Tip #4: Use A Feed Planning App
We highly suggest downloading a feed planning app to help achieve a cohesive feed. They help you you plan out your future posts so you can see how your feed before publishing. Planning everything out will let you see inconsistencies in your editing so you can make changes until everything looks consistent. It can also help you preplan your content in advance, including writing captions, to help you better manage your account. If you’re looking for some great feed planning apps, checkout this Wolf Blog post!
Tip #5: Consistent Lighting Rules Aesthetics
One of the things found to be true when creating consistent content is that lighting is very important. No matter how much you edit, a photo taken in the sun will not look the same as a photo taken in the shade. Take a look at some of your favorite Instagrammers. One of the first things you’ll notice is that the lighting is consistent throughout all of their photos. There are a few ways to be consistent with your lighting the first being to try and shoot within the same time period each time. But this can be a challenge for those who blog or create content around their work schedules. Another way to be consistent with lightening is to find different neighbourhoods you can use as go-to shoot locations.
