how to inspire your followers! Instagram content 2020
When using Instagram to grow your business, it is important to build an audience that is committed and loyal to your brand. But how can you ensure that your followers love your posts and in turn help you grow as a company on Instagram? Three words: high-quality content.
If you don’t have the time or resources to take your own photos for Instagram, don’t worry! There are many ways to create an engaging feed with a cool aesthetic – even if you’re selling something as ugly as Tupperware or promoting a completely digital product that seems impossible to visualize.
This article covers exactly how to research images for your Instagram account, where to find them, and what to consider when using them to promote your brand. You will also find some helpful design tips to ensure that all of the images in your feed are clean and beautiful so that you can inspire your community and make it almost impossible for them to stop scrolling.
Table of Contents
1. Research for ready-to-use templates
There are also many tools to help you create great Instagram posts without being an experienced Photoshop user. Online design tools such as Spark mail from Adobe, Canva, and Venngage are incredibly useful when it comes to creating attractive graphics for social media.
Maybe you want to make a contribution to advertising a special offer? Or maybe you want to publish a recipe that you shared on your blog?
You can opt for a simple or patterned background for a simplified look, or even use a product image if you want to increase your sales. A database of high-resolution photos of your products could really help you get out of a difficult situation if you ever have little Instagram content.
2. Find high-quality stock photos
Stock images have gotten a bad name lately, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t use them!
On the contrary, they can help you create a varied feed when you use it with a mix of other images, such as templates. However, not all stock images have what it takes to get a top spot in your feed – some can be pretty awful!
To find high-quality photos that don’t really look fake, use Unsplash or Stocksnap.io. They offer a range of images for free, and you’re guaranteed to find something suitable for your niche.
If you have a little budget to spend, try Stocks.
Just make sure to buy the right image size (there are some at different prices), taking into account the recommended dimensions of an Instagram post of 1080p x 1080p.
3. Use different image formats
Try the Carousel Post to share up to ten pictures at once and create a photo album. A 60-second video can also be a great way to show your products in action, or just a short tutorial or demonstration. However, make sure that your product posts don’t get too intrusive. You should vary your content topics to keep things balanced and encourage engagement from your followers!
4. Repost Instagram content from brands around you
There’s nothing wrong with reposting Instagram content from brands like yours or from an account that is relevant to your audience and Instagram strategy as long as you ask for permission.
To repost Instagram content and “legally” publish it, you need to do the following:
4.1 Follow hashtags and accounts to discover high-quality content
To find content for republishing, you should brainstorm some brands with inspiring Instagram accounts, a similar audience to yours, who are not direct competitors.
Check out their Instagram accounts and then make a list of those who create the best content.
Start by following them so you can keep up to date on their latest posts, and save any specific posts that you think are worth sharing by tapping the bookmark icon under each Instagram post or video.
You can also create a list of all the important hashtags relevant to your account and search these hashtags to find related content from other users. If you want to learn more about which hashtags are popular in 2019, our ultimate Instagram Hashtag Guide 2019 may be interesting for you.
Starting in December 2017, you can follow hashtags so that popular related posts appear in your feed, making it easier to discover great content that you can repost!
4.2 Contact the user for permission to re-post
If you find a post that you want to share with your followers, just send a DM to the user or comment on the photo to let them know that you a) love their Instagram content and that you think they are your users will also like it, and b) ask permission to share it in your feed.
Let them know that you will give them the right recognition, and most of the time they will be happy to get more attention and know that you think they are doing a great job.
To show the operator exactly which contribution you want to share instead of sending a general DM, select the arrow symbol below the contribution and send it to the operator.
5. Implementation of a UGC campaign
On the use of Instagram content created by other people: It’s also a good idea to encourage your existing followers to create content on a specific topic that you can post to your feed.
The term also applies in a broader sense to all content that is created by users of products or services about these specific products/services with or without the encouragement of the brand itself.
However, if you’re not a big, established brand, users are unlikely to create Instagram content about you and your products without incentive.
Avoid this by running a competition where users can win something by creating an Instagram post and tagging it with your own brand hashtag or campaign hashtag.
For example, if you offer your followers a free product or a discount, you can increase the dynamic of your campaign because more users are likely to use your hashtag. Announce your competition via your other social media channels and include it in your newsletter – basically: make the contest known in all ways that are available to you!
Keep in mind that you shouldn’t limit the type of content your users ask for, or they won’t care!
UGC should be a complementary content sourcing strategy for your feed, not the focus. If you rely too much on UGC, your followers will feel like you are taking advantage of them, and you will also have less control over the aesthetics of your feed.
6. Cooperation with influencers
If you want more control over your feed and a consistent flow of Instagram content under the brand, consider working with influencers.
the @TooFaced makeup brand’s feed – many of their posts are actually reposts from influencers promoting Too Faced products.
Of course, if you are a small company, you will want to get in touch with micro-influencers rather than the big names.
Micro-influencers will have between 10,000 and 50,000 followers, and it’s easier to make a deal with them – but only if you sell a product that their audience will be really interested in. That’s why you have to make sure that you only contact influencers who fit into your niche.
You can send a DM on Instagram, though typically influencers like @elnaz_golrokh, which I presented in the example below, have contact information in their Instagram biographies for collaboration requests.
Design tips for creating your own Instagram content
1. Define a clear focus
Instagram is about getting your followers to take a break and take a look at your photos, and there are a few tricks to get them to do just that and Buy Instagram Followers. For example, a clear focus could help keep users on your picture. A picture that is too busy is confusing to the eye and has the opposite effect. Our brain does all of these calculations without us even realizing it, so it is important to really take the time to think about your own content before asking your followers to do it after the release.
Take a look at this example from @konaction: Everything in this photo points to an object (the girl). The strong contrast (black object against a white background) also ensures that the eye is immediately focused on the central focus of the image:
2. Follow the rule of thirds
The rule of thirds is a classic photo rule that every photographer can tell about. To implement the rule of thirds, you have to imagine a 9-part grid that overlays your image and aligns its most interesting features along with the intersection points. For a more interesting shot, set the focus point in a third of the picture.
3. Taking spaces and margins into account
Leaving white borders around your Instagram images can create an unusual effect that attracts the eye more than an image without a border. This is especially true if the image respects earlier points such as the rule of thirds and clear focus. Limits help that elements in your design have room to breathe: an important aspect to consider if you want to avoid an overloaded post.
How to create high-quality Instagram content with spaces and frames
4. Pay attention to contrast and balance
In order for an image to stand out in an Instagram feed, it must have contrasting elements. The contrast can refer to colors, shapes, fonts, light and exposure, scale, white areas, and much more.
First, you can play around with filters and the editing suite in the Instagram app. These editing tools don’t get much attention, but they’re really nifty and easy to use to get great results. In most cases, the only thing it takes to make your photo stand out is adjusting the brightness, contrast, saturation, and temperature.
Conclusion
Whether you’re trying all of these methods to generate content for your Instagram feed, or just combining and matching two or three, you’ve learned here how to create a feed that will get your audience on the Follow button to click!