5 Ways To Step Up Your Instagram Game

Fortunately, the days of painfully waiting for all of those usernames under your photo to magically turn into lucky number 11 are gone. Unfortunately, the competition for cool content is steep and it’s here to stay. Everyday our feeds are filled by brands running creative campaigns, celebrities posting amazing outfits and foodie pics from the trendiest coffee shops. Whether you’re new to the ‘gram or your game has been suffering lately, here are 5 tips for an insta-boost.

If it’s a bad photo...don’t post it. I’m serious. There have been so many times I’ve taken a photo when I was at a concert or a cool restaurant and have tried my best to fix it up in order to post it, instead of just accepting that it’s not going to happen. Don’t post something just to post something. If you’re not a fan of it, what makes you think your followers will be? Which leads me to my next point...

Develop an aesthetic. This is not easy to do at first, but once you have it figured out, it will make posting photos so much more enjoyable for you and your fellow ‘grammers. You have roughly 5-10 seconds to win over a potential follower when they first come across your account. During that short amount of time, they're going to evaluate your style and see if it's consistent. All of my favorite feeds are thoughtfully curated. The user has combined a theme and color palette with a consistent photography style and editing process. When I come across a post in my feed, I can almost always tell who’s picture it is just because I recognize their style. Whether you’re using Instagram for your business, for cute pictures of your dog or to showcase your own work, it’s a portfolio, it’s important and you should be proud of it! Here are three of my favorite accounts that do this so well:

@glossier

@local_milk

@jaquib

*Quick tip: Pay attention to the third photo in the first row of your feed. It’s going to be underneath the photo that you post next. They should compliment each other.

Fine tune first. This a trick that will drastically improve the quality of your photos. Download the Snapseed app and learn how to tune your image. Play around with the brightness and/or, contrast, saturation, shadow/highlight save. Mobile photos can lack in sharpness, I always bump that and the ambience up a touch. Remember to stay true to your theme/aesthetic during post-production. Little enhancements can go a long way.

Don’t Use the Instagram Filters. I repeat. Do not use the Instagram filters. I could (and I will) write an entire blog post solely on the VSCO app. No, I have not been paid to say that but I’ve used this app since it first was released and I’ve come to love it more and more. After you’ve tuned your image in Snapseed, play around with the filters in VSCO and find a few of your favorites. I admit, I have every filter, but I fine tune a photo knowing that I won’t be straying from the 2-3 filters that I use to keep my feed consistent.

Hide yo hashtags. They’re important but nobody really wants to see them (unless it’s 1 or 2 that are a part of your caption). So how do you hide them? Simple. Open the Notes app on your phone or desktop and do this:

Place a period on five separate lines. Underneath the last one, start writing out your hashtags. After you've posted the photo with your caption, select and copy all 5 periods and your hashtags from your Notes document and paste them under your picture as a comment...voila!

Would you like to see more social media tips and tricks like this? Comment under the Instagram post or send us a tweet!

Work small, dream big,

Team Kinglet