Instagram is the best social media platform to showcase your brand’s aesthetic. With colors, images, fonts, and tone, Instagram aesthetics can convey a unified message about your brand. Are you edgy, classy, or rustic? Or is your feed an assortment of different moods and styles?
Beautiful and cohesive Instagram aesthetics aren’t just tactics to attract followers. They can improve brand recognition, turn casual visitors into customers, and increase business success. Moreover, 60% of the best-performing Instagram brand accounts have good aesthetics characterized by consistency.
Creating a professional and appealing aesthetic requires forethought and strategic effort. Here are four things to do to ensure that beautiful and cohesive Instagram look:
1. Define Your Theme or Color Palette
Getting the vibe of your social media page right comes down to your brand identity. If your brand was a person, what personality would it have? Would it be quirky, sophisticated, or rustic? You need to answer this question first.
Then, based on your brand’s personality, choose the color or colors that best represent/s you. In color theory, color is more than the qualities of light. It communicates different messages. For instance, orange evokes playfulness, and green symbolizes nature or wealth (if you’re in the United States). Your color palette also communicates messages about your brand identity. It represents and conveys necessary information about your brand.
Incorporate at least one of your primary brand colors in every Instagram post.
For instance, Boheme’s color palette features light neutrals like white. The colors reflect the brand’s identity of relaxed refinement.
Instead of a color palette, some brands use a central theme for their Instagram aesthetics. Some examples of popular Instagram visual themes include repetition, vintage, flat lay, color pop and illustrations.
Below is an example of a repetition visual theme.
This travel and food blogger holds food up against a cultural backdrop in every post as part of its overall Instagram aesthetics.
Note that consistency is vital to a recognizable Instagram page. So, once you choose your theme or color palette, stick to it as much as possible. You want to make sure many people see this consistent Instagram aesthetic, too, for brand recognition. So, find ways to expand your Instagram reach. You can, for instance, add followers or buy Instagram likes to get your content in front of more people. We’ll talk more about how you can increase your Instagram visibility through engagement later.
Make sure that consistency isn’t just seen on your Instagram account. The same aesthetic should be seen in your other marketing collateral. So, your marketing emails, brochures, and fliers shouldn’t look different from your Instagram profile. Even your calling cards and website should reflect the same Instagram look for branding purposes.
2. Pay Attention to Composition and Image Quality
Brands with strong Instagram aesthetics look at the big picture. In other words, they consider how an individual post will look in the grid.
So, when posting, pay attention to the overall composition. Composition is the art of putting together various elements. The elements, in this case, are your Instagram posts. Some Instagram posts won’t look good next to each other. If you opted for a checkerboard or puzzle theme, like the one below, you’ll have to think twice before posting, too. The Instagram page below, for instance, was probably not created overnight:
This layout is difficult to create without online content planning tools that confirm every post appears in the correct order. You can preview individual images before posting, rearrange posts to fit your theme or color scheme, and schedule posts for maximum visibility. You’ll have to post three pictures or videos at a time. Otherwise, the grid will be out of alignment.
There’s no hard-and-fast rule for choosing the best overall Instagram composition. You may want to use two to three posts to form the contours of your recently-launched product, for instance. Or more posts to spell out your brand acronym. The sky’s the limit. Just make sure your chosen overall composition can be easily executed.
Don’t just pay attention to your overall image composition. Look at the quality of each image, too. The recommended Instagram photo size is 1080 px x 1350 px. As for Instagram feed videos, the recommended dimensions are 1080 px x 1920 px.
You don’t have to have expensive camera equipment or professional photography skills to ensure the high quality of your visuals. You can use editing software to make them look even more appealing. Instagram also has premade filters you can experiment with.
3. Use Strategic Storytelling
Storytelling is one of the most powerful marketing strategies around. It’s widely used across different industries by both B2B SaaS and direct-to-consumer (DTC) brands. Great storytelling helps you hook your audience and evoke emotions from them. You can use this technique to boost your Instagram campaigns.
Strategic storytelling involves using narratives to convey a message about your brand. It is a powerful way to foster deep connections with followers and build customer trust. People love stories. So, rather than focusing on selling your product, create content with a story (characters, conflict, and climax included).
You can tell stories about your brand, values, company culture, and customers in your Instagram captions.
For instance, instead of promoting its product, Airbnb highlights the experiences its customers have.
If writing compelling copy isn’t your strong suit, you can use generative AI to create on-brand captions. Just insert the right prompts.
Instead of text, you can also use Instagram’s visuals for your strategic storytelling. You can post pictures or even videos. Apart from in-feed videos, Instagram has thre other video formats you can use – Stories, Reels, and Live.
When posting your Instagram visuals, think of a storyline that will tie all of them together. :Let’s say you have a Story that highlights your product features, like the one by GoPro below:
Then why not post a Reel that highlights how that specific product was conceptualized? Publish Instagram pictures that show the people behind the product creation, too. Viewed altogether, the two videos and pictures tell the same story: that the Hero10 Black camera is a great product. It’s the product of ingenuity and hard work.
4. Plan Your Content
Strong Instagram aesthetics don’t just happen. If you want your Instagram page to look professional, you must schedule content in advance. Content planning defines the what, where, and when of content publishing.
Content planning helps you organize the content creation process so your Instagram aesthetics look curated and not disconnected. It prioritizes content by aligning it with your social media strategy goals. Finally, it reduces the stress of last-night brainstorming for holidays you may have forgotten, minimizing the chances of compromising the look and feel of your feed.
Your content plans should include the subject matter you will cover, the types of content you will post, the posting format you will use, and a content calendar. If you’re starting out, you’ll want to plan for content to be published at least once a week. Then as you gain more resources, create a plan that allows for more frequent publishing. Hootsuite recommends posting three to five times a week.
When planning your content, make sure you also ensure content variety even if their overall look and feel are the same. So, if you publish an Instagram Story in week 1, for instance, you might want to post a Reel in week 2, and so on. Consider content aligned with specific holidays, too (posts for Christmas, Easter, etc..)
Although your content plan is there to guide you, it shouldn’t be set in stone. Customer trends change, and you should find ways to keep up with trends without alienating your target audience. For instance, how would you show solidarity with hurricane victims when your Instagram aesthetics is a playful color theme? You probably have to change your Instagram profile’s look even if it wasn’t in your content plan.
BONUS TIP: Ensure Instagram Visibility through Engagement
Having a pretty feed design that ensures brand recognition is one thing. But how can you ensure brand recognition with your cohesive Instagram aesthetic if your posts aren’t visible to users?
That’s why engaging with your audience is just as important. The more Instagram engagement your posts have, the more visible they are to followers. You can use Instagram Stories’ engagement features, like polls to drive Instagram interactions. You can also link to content on other platforms and tag partner accounts to let them know you’re talking about them. Use hashtags, too.
Don’t forget to measure the performance of your Instagram page. Social media analytics and A/B testing tell you if your cohesive Instagram aesthetic and overall content strategy are actually driving engagement. So, if, based on your data, they aren’t, you can make the necessary changes to your strategies to ensure visibility.
Conclusion
Beautiful and cohesive Instagram aesthetics don’t happen by chance. They require strategy, planning, and consistent application of style guides. We shared four tips to help you make an on-brand Instagram aesthetic.
Choose a theme or color palette and stick to it. Also, pay attention to feed composition and editing. Don’t forget to plan your content. These three tips help ensure your new content matches existing posts and your feed looks like a curated collection instead of a grid of disconnected moments.
Make sure you use strategic storytelling, too. It allows followers to connect and engage with your brand. As a bonus tip, to ensure Instagram visibility, engage with your audience.
It’s that simple. Hopefully, you’re inspired to start creating your own beautiful feed. Good luck!
