Now I wouldn’t call myself the best photographer in the world or a person who has a massive following on Instagram, but recently i’ve really been upping my game with the app and i’ve seen a rise in followers and love for the images that I am posting. Today I thought share just a few tips about when it comes to editing your Instagram images and just some general pointers that may help you out.
I decided in the new year that I really wanted to interact more on Instagram and post a lot more regularly, as one of blogging goals this year is to be more interactive with you guys and I love Instagram, I think it’s a great app and you can really draw a lot inspiration from it and it’s a great way to pass the time. So here a few tips when it comes to boosting your Instagram and also some photo editing tips..
1. Know your audience – This for me is the biggest thing, know exactly what you audience like and expect from you. Look into which images are your most popular on your feed and focus on posting those types of images or images that fall into those categories. For example, my most popular images are of beauty items, my face and food – these are the types of images that I now post on a regular basis, because I know my audience will like them and thats what they are expecting of my imagery.
2. Hashtag everything! – For Instagrammers with a smaller audience (like me) I find hashtagging every photo to be so useful as it spreads your images further, to new audiences and generally just gets your images more likes. Don’t go overboard by using 50+ hashtags, just the relevant ones such as bbloggers, lbbloggers, fbloggers etc.
3. Update regularly – Recently i’ve found the more I update my Instagram, the more my account grows and more people are generally interested in what i’m uploading. Usually I will aim for at least one Instagram a day, but i’ll often put up more as it allows your account to get more exposure and thus making your account grow.
4. Never use in app cameras – Always, always use the camera on your iPhone (or whatever phone you have) as the in app camera on Instagram and other photo editing apps generally makes your images look crap and so dull.
5. Use outside photo editing apps – Instagram filters are alright, but they aren’t the best and you are very limited to what you can do. My favourite app is Afterlight, its really easy to use and it’s only 69p, which you can’t really complain about. I’ll usually just up the brightness, apply a filter or two (my favourite is ‘russ’) and then bring the contrast up, just to bring any colour back into the products within the image. I then save it to my camera roll, open it in Instagram and it’s ready to post!
6. Use stock images from blog – Often if i’m at work or out of the house where I don’t have any products/white surface to hand, i’ll take images off of my blog to post as usually these are already edited, which makes it so much easier to post on Instagram and keep your audience updated.
7. Remember the key things – It’s going to sound silly mentioning these, but just remember your basic camera skills. Use good natural light, no flash, make sure everything is in focus and a white surface is a must for clear and bright imagery.
Hopefully the majority of that made sense for you and it taught you a trick or two when it comes to editing your Instagram images and generally growing your Instagram. Make sure you’re following me on Instagram!
Do you have any other Instagram tips? – Share them in the comments!
