How To Make Your Instagram Feed Seriously Beautiful

Raise your hand if you wish your feed looked that little bit nicer. Yep. Me too.

You might’ve noticed I restarted my feed on @zolablog a little while ago, and it really got me thinking – what makes me want to follow other accounts? Well, usually it’s a beautiful feed. Trust me, there is some feeds out there that are practically perfect in every way. Some of my favourites are @alittlebirdyblog, @arainatasmin, @freshlypickked and @vanillacraftblog (in order below)

I have a real love hate relationship with these feeds, and the beauties that they belong to. See, their totally awesome to look at, but they give me serious feed insecurity. Yes that’s a thing now.  If you don’t believe me... have you ever deleted a photo just because it didn’t get a lot of likes? Pfft. I hear you!

Anyway, back to the point. How do we make our feeds more beautiful? I thought I’d conduct a little Google investigation. Here’s what I found.

1.     For starters, you need something to take a photo of. A good place to start is a flatlay, a collage-sort-of-thing like this.

Photo credit: @emilyjaneblog

Make sure you’re getting a good quality shot. Your phone camera should work fine, but if not try changing the lighting. Natural lighting always looks best. To make your shot look extra interesting, play around with different angles. The main ones are aerial, oblique and ground. They are the names we use in Geography, not sure if it applies here, but just go with it!

Oblique

Ground

Aerial

The second step of this process is the editing. I personally find this really fun! You probably already have some editing apps on your phone you can use. I mainly use VSCO Cam and Picsart, and I know Afterlight is really popular as well.  I know VSCO Cam and Picsart are both free, and are available in most stores. Play around with different filters and effects until you’re happy. Don’t go overboard with filters though! Also, don’t forget to crop your photo into a square!

       Now its time to post your photo! If you’re going for likes, post your shot at a time that a lot of your followers will be online. Its most likely that this is at night, when people have spare time to check their feeds.

Add a cool caption to your photo, and don’t be afraid to #hashtag it, because it will get you more likes. Post often to keep your followers interested.

 

This last one is totally optional, but I find it helpful. I’ve discovered this cool little site called Iconosquare (previously Statigram). As the old name suggests, here you will find all sorts of stats on your Instagram account. Its  easy to track which of your photos are the most popular, and when the majority of your followers are active.

There’s my tips for beautifying your Instagram feed! Have fun with your photos! Let me know if you take any awesome photos after reading this. You can contact me on Instagram direct. Also, be sure to follow me @zolablog, to keep up with my photos as well :)