With over half a billion daily active users, Instagram is definitely a hub for social engagement. While that is true, if you don’t post good quality content, you will not go anywhere on this platform.
So, the key to good follower engagement is obviously good content that people actually find appealing. But the thing is, many brands don’t know how to create those high quality and captivating photos and videos.
To make things easier for those brands, this article covers five of the best tips on the internet to create that fabulous content gets higher follower engagement.
1- Be Original:
The thing about using stock images is that though it may look tempting to put in no effort at all and still get engagement, it wears out very fast. It may even backfire on you if your followers find out that you are using stock images because they saw it some other profile or you post an image that they’ve already seen elsewhere.
So the first thing to do to get real follower engagement is that you need to create quality images of your own. This, in turn, means that you need to kick your photography game up a notch and invest in good equipment to achieve high-quality content. You also need to learn how to edit your photographs well because well-edited, high-quality photos work the best on Instagram.
If you want you can still get inspiration from stock images, but only inspiration. You need to do the rest of the work yourself.
2- Your Photos Should Have A Focal Point:
The photos that seem to work well on Instagram, or anywhere really, are the ones which focus on something in particular. Whether they are celebrity photo-shoots or just random flower pictures, you will find that every popular photo has a clear focal point that forces people to take a moment and just look.
You need to have that focal point in your photos and videos so that you followers linger to see it the way it deserves to be seen. Not to mention, if they connect with the image or it incites any sort of reaction from them, be it amazement, joy, sadness, anger or even disgust, they will let you know in the comments. This will increase your follower engagement which is what you want, right?
You can use the Rule of Thirds to get that focal point. This is a classic rule that any photographer would be able to tell you about. You imagine the photo you are taking consists of a 9-part grid and the main focus of your photo should align with the intersections of those parts. So, the main focal point would take about one-third of your photo. Make sure that the background offers good contrast and you are good to go.
3- High Resolution:
This ties in with the first point of this article. You need to invest in good equipment that capture high quality photos and videos. Here is why.
You ever wonder why you photo looks blurry when you post it to Instagram but on your phone or computer, it looked sharp. That’s because Instagram reduces the size of the image you upload and more often than not, that results in pictures getting blurred or pixelated.
You can overcome this issue by capturing high resolution images with the best focus to make your image extra sharp so that the details in your image are easily seen. If your image is high resolution and sharp, it will look good on Instagram as well, even after the size reduction.
4- Lighting:
Lighting is the most important part of your photos or videos and that ties in with the second point of this article. If the lighting is bad and you don’t have good contrast between the background and the focal point of your image, it will look bad on Instagram.
While natural light seems to work better than artificial lighting, your camera setting can play a big role in this as it can make your photo too dark or too bright. The important thing to remember here is that you can brighten up your dark photos but you can’t bring back the contrast that you want from your overly brightened photos. So, make sure that your camera settings are dark enough so that you can get the contrast you want and then you can always edit your photos to make them brighter.
5- Cohesive Theme:
When you are creating content for Instagram, it’s a good practice to stick with a certain color theme or style. The reason behind this is that when people look at your profile, your content will show up in the grid form and it looks visually appealing when your content follows a single color palette.
It doesn’t mean that you need to stick with a single color palette for your entire Instagram career. You can follow a color palette for a month, a year or anything over a couple weeks and if it gets boring, you can switch things up a bit.
I work at Likes Geek as a marketing researcher and journalist with over 5 years of experience in media and content marketing. With a demonstrated history of working in the international news and financial technology publishing industries. I manage content and the editorial team at Likes Geek.