7 Instagram Tips to Visually Enhance your Small Business Brand

Creating captivating imagery as a social media content marketing strategy

Instagram is becoming a major platform for businesses to promote their brand and generate leads. Don’t believe me? Click here for statistics on just how many people use Instagram for not only personal, but professional and consumer purposes.

Creating high quality visuals will not only help your business stand out from other social media profiles, it is one key component in grabbing and keeping users on your feed. Your profile can skyrocket to the top of popular feeds all from creating “linger worthy” profiles. Instagram algorithms identify the time spent lingering on each post, which determines the priority posts will appear.

Utilizing Social Media as a content marketing strategy encompasses more than just visuals, but securing aesthetically pleasing and cohesive profiles can make all the difference between looking at cafeteria food and a lobster dinner.

You do not have to be a creative genius to generate visually appealing content. For startup businesses who may not have the budget for pricy photographers and art departments, here are 7 starting points you can apply to your instagram business profiles:

1. Plan ahead and create a storyline– Incorporate your values and what you know about your target demographics to tell your business’ story. Utilize Social Media Content Planners so you can preview what your story and photos will look like ahead of time.

2. Pick and stick to a color palette – Dull color schemes are boring inconsistent color schemes are distracting. Psychology studies have found that colors to play a role in mood associations and message interpretations. This link has some interesting color schemes to match different types of businesses.

3. Adjective worksheet– Generating new and original imagery sometimes feels like running around in circles. A helpful exercise to spark new ideas is to create a spreadsheet that starts with pulling adjectives directly from your consumers own words. Look at your target demographic or current consumer statements and from there, build on those adjectives to create a new image concept.

4. EDIT- Photos that look like they were taken by your grandmother do not send the idea of “quality” products. Cropping photos to basically get rid of excess “image information” is a helpful way to look at it. What am I trying to say with this photo and is there anything surrounding the image that takes away from my message?

5. Rotate content- Keep the content exciting. Users do not want to see variations of the same images over and over again. If your last post was a product photo, make the next one interactive.

6. Find profiles you like as inspiration (do not copy!)– looking at high quality profiles and their strategies will help you build your own. What is it about their page that attracts you to them? What message are they sending and how are they choosing to send it?

7. Be authentic!– Throw your personality in there!

#socialmedia #instaworthy #instagram