6 Tips To Create An Aesthetically Pleasing Instagram Grid
You know when you come across an Instagram account and you visit their page and, at a glance, all of their posts on their page look cohesive and beautiful? It’s quite pleasing, isn’t it?
A cohesive, intentionally-planned grid is extremely beneficial to companies looking to grow on social media and establish a following. Our society today is turning more towards social media for lots of things. Younger generations turn to companies’ Instagram pages to decide where they want to eat, shop, get their hair cut, have their wedding… the list goes on. For many people, if they hear about a business, they will head straight to Instagram and look them up. Personally, if a company looks to be well-branded and is keeping their social feed up-to-date, I’d be much more likely to look into their business.
Maintaining an aesthetically-pleasing Instagram grid may seem daunting, but have no fear… it’s actually a lot simpler than it sounds! With these six simple guidelines, you’ll be on your way to creating a grid that you’ll be proud to show off!
Whether it’s for your own personal happiness or to benefit your brand or company, keep reading along to learn 6 easy steps towards transforming your Instagram grid and giving your followers what they want!
Presets & Consistent Edits
The simplest step of them all. Editing your pictures with the same edit will create a cohesive grid right away
If you don’t know what a preset is, here’s the gist: someone edits a picture by changing a variety of different aspects like saturation, contrast, highlights, shadows, adjusting color tones and adding different effects. They then copy all of these edits and make them into a “set” edit, that they may even sell. Presets may range from $0-200.
You then can adjust and tweak the edit of the preset to your liking in the Lightroom app.
If you’re not wanting to spend any money or having a preset just doesn’t interest you, that’s totally fine! You can still edit your pictures cohesively through editing apps.
VSCO is one of the best photo editing apps around. It’s easy to use and they offer a lot of great, free filters to use on photos. You can also edit a photo on your own and then copy all the changes you made and add it to the next picture you want to post so they can be edited exactly the same. When using VSCO, find what you like and stick with it!
Decide Your “Vibe”
What do you want viewers to take away from visiting your page? Do you want them to feel informed, encouraged, edgy, motivated? There’s a lot of different ways to incorporate a vibe and feeling into your grid. You can do this through the types of imagery you post, capture, and promote on your feed.
For example, let’s say you’re wanting to capture an edgy vibe for your audience! Going forward, you could incorporate pictures that scream “edgy” by using graphics of quotes that inspire your vibe and utilizing photos that are more dramatic and different.
Plan Out Your Grid
Utilizing scheduling tools such as Later and Planoly are key to helping you create an amazing grid layout! These platforms help you layout all your pictures and let you rearrange them before having to post! Once you’ve created a grid that you like, you can actually go in and write captions on the photos and then schedule them to automatically post. This takes a lot of ease out of the whole posting process. You can sit down for 30 minutes to an hour and plan out and schedule a whole week or two of posts! So genius.
Balance
Something I’ve found that helps create a cohesive grid is making sure your pictures are balanced. What I mean by this is when you post a simple picture, like picture of yourself against a plain white background, follow up your next post with something that’s not as simple. It could be anything from a scenic picture to you and your friends, just make sure it’s not another plain picture, unless you want a super minimal grid and you want all your pics to be plain and minimal.
Incorporating pictures that have plain backgrounds are great! It helps create a beautiful grid. A good rule of thumb would be to post one simple picture (plain background) and then your next two posts could be pictures that have more going on!
Don’t Overthink It
As cliché as it sounds, if you overthink your grid it probably won’t turn out as best as it could, and you’ll be stressed for no reason! We don’t want either of those things so try to have mindset that doesn’t take planning your grid too seriously. As you grow to learn what you like best and what works best for you or your company, it will come more naturally over time! You just have to start somewhere!
Stay True To You & Your Brand
Don’t feel like you need to copy another person or brand’s style. Create your own or carry out your brand’s personality onto your social feed. Dive into what sets you apart and run with it. This is what is going to make you stand out and stand out from the rest.
Hopefully these guidelines helped you get some insight as to going about creating a “pretty grid.” Our biggest word of advice is not to take it too seriously. At the end of the day, your Instagram doesn’t define you or your company and your followers will grow based on being yourself.
SO, remember: you are better than your Insta feed!
Making it look cute can be fun and helpful though. And if you need help, you can always check our Own Your Instagram Course or schedule a one-on-one social media consultation with us.
In the meantime, we’ll catch ya on the ‘Gram and in our weekly social media newsletter. Chat soon!
xx, The Homies