If you’re into Instagram, you’ve probably heard about “Instagram feed goals” before, and you’re one of the people chasing the title.

If not, I’m going to update your Social Media culture right now: in Instagram language, being called “Instagram feed goals” is one of the highest labels you can get. The term is used by Instagram lovers to define that Instagram account close to visual perfection. 

From Kim Kardashian to Nike, everyone’s got an Instagram strategy nowadays.

Even the girl next door is not so next door anymore because she’s been initiated in this tight circle of Instagram feed goals pro.

Are you part of that group? If not, read on.   

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Here’s a sneak peek at the article:

1. Edit your photos using badass apps.
2. Start with branding.
3. Design original and breathtaking visuals.
4. Planning your posts on Instagram.
5. Write personal and engaging captions.
6. #Hashtags.

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Have you ever caught yourself sneaking glances at someone’s fascinating Instagram feeds? Have you ever tried to grasp their technique and steal their secrets to improve your own Instagram profile page? No need to worry anymore. You’ve got to the right place: the internet’s most comprehensive tutorial for your overall feed inspiration. So, grab a cup of tea and a pen and write down these tips I’ve listed below.

Time to become a legend.

8 Instagram theme ideas to understand what “Instagram feed goals” is all about

…and maybe pick your style.

No matter if you’re selling paintings, workshops or cars, you need to stand out from the crowd. Follow along and learn how to have a good Instagram feed to get noticed and gain more followers.

@poli.bright.art

Talking about paintings, have a look at Poli.Bright.Art’s Instagram feed. She positioned herself as an artist with a unique watercolor technique. Mostly black and white.

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@jeniaporechenskaya

This creative designer’s Instagram feed is probably one of the most visually memorable things I have ever seen. The neon colors and the surprising collage of elements have marked my retina. She surely knows how to stand out, by having a good inspiration in testing out cool Instagram feed ideas.

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@kinoyoga

Another example is Kino Yoga’s Instagram feed, a Yoga teacher I’ve been following for many years now. Her brand could be summed up to “advanced yoga inspiration”  with a touch of sex appeal. Notice the bright colors, the blue tint and warm tone.

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@miss_lovelive

I’d say we’ve all got a lot to learn from fashion bloggers. Wouldn’t you agree? Here is @miss_lovelive ‘s pink dreamy Instagram feed that will make you long for a sweet and careless escape.

 

@jlo

Can we talk about Instagram feed ideas without mentioning at least one superstar? Nope. So, check out J. Lo’s Instagram feed: glamour, expensive gowns, and golden lights. Jenny from the block, you rock!  

Her Social Media team is determined to make Jenny stand out on Instagram. As you can see in the picture below, they use the puzzle technique to create huge pictures using grids (6 or sometimes 9 small picture details or parts of that photo). Added to my list!

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@naturallyella

Here’s an easy-peasy, healthy green cuisine from NaturallyElla. Notice the green color is present in all of her pictures, even if it’s a small dot. This chromatic coherence offers a visually pleasant sensation to the eye and a direct invitation to the stomach. Take a seat.

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@pepejeans

Pepe Jeans totally nailed it with this creative campaign for their sporty lightweight denim collection. They used the tennis field pattern as a background for their items. Not only does this combination make the clothes pop, but it is also an invitation to a relaxed tennis match.

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@sorin_onisor

Sorin Onisor’s photography Instagram feed is all about people and their environment. Each picture tells someone’s story. One story at a time.

The vivid colors (worth more than 1000 words) and natural light instantly transport us to those far away places.  

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Instagram feed tips

Revamp your feed and jump from ordinary to extraordinary.

Instagram feed goals tip #1: Edit your photos using the right apps

Using Instagram’s filters is so 2010. Instead, find yourself a badass editing app that was developed for that look in the first place.

• If you feel self-confident, go for Photoshop. Honestly, it’s the best photo editing tool, but it’s also the most complex app out there.
• My second recommendation is always Lightroom, Photoshop’s little brother. Actually, it’s as good as Photoshop in terms of photo effects. 
• VSCO is probably the best on-the-go app out there. And most popular. You can use it on your phone and create spectacular effects thanks to its wide range of filters and options. 

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Instagram VSCO themes & filters

As I’ve said before if you want to create a truly personal atmosphere, you must choose a filter and stick with it. The VSCO app offers a broad range of filters and settings, so you can really create a unique filter for your photos.

Have a look at VSCO’s filters & themes and pick your favorite. Remember, the filter you choose must match your brand. For example, if you’re a children’s clothing brand, you can go for a joyful pink, but if you’re a tattoo shop, you’d better choose dark themes.

The possibilities are endless, from vintage granular photography effects to a warm and summery golden tint. Have a look at the examples below:

Blue filter

This filter is perfect for travel bloggers or for anyone in love with the dreamy side of life.

Credit: Carlos Bayan 

Golden filter

A sandy golden filter like Desert, here below, can add a summery and positive vibe to any feed.

Credit: Maria Jose 

Pink & Teal filter

Teal blue is not an ordinary blue. If you like playing with blue instagram themes but would still like to stand out of the crowd, you can choose this combination of pink & teal blue.

Credit: Bailey Jacobsen 

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More Instagram editing apps:

• A color story is great if you want to create dreamy, memorable photos. Their Instagram feed looks stunning, by the way!
• Pixlr is another photo-editing app that offers a variety of features and filters. You can use Pixlr to build your own original filter and design cool instagram profile pictures.
• If you want an easy-to-use, on-the-go editing app, go for Snapseed.
• In case you’re a selfie Instagrammer, Facetune will help you adjust your photos and create flawless pictures. This app lets you improve your hairstyle, widen your smile or even whiten your teeth. Impressive, isn’t it?

Instagram feed goals tip #2: Branding

Define your Instagram personality & develop your Instagram theme.  

One of the key steps in creating a powerful Instagram feed is to define your brand. Assuming you don’t already have a brand, you can start building one right now. Start writing down a few keywords to shape your brand’s personality. This could really help you define the kind of persona you want to convey out to people.

Ask yourself these questions:

• What would my brand look like as a person?
• What is the personality of my brand?
• Am I bringing something unique and original to the market?
• What are my brand’s values?
• Do I have a mission statement?
• What is my brand’s voice? Friendly, Serious, Self-confident etc..?
• Who is my target audience?

If you already have a brand, just adjust your brand’s values, branding, color palette and atmosphere to Instagram.

 

A. Find a unique concept. Position your brand. Define your niche.

Great brands have always had extensive research and long brainstorming sessions behind them. That’s how they’ve spotted the opportunity, the niche, that group of people that could potentially resonate with their brand’s story and buy their products.

That’s what you have to do as well, in your small scale marketing laboratory: define your niche, find a unique positioning and come up with an original concept.

 

B. Offer an emotional experience to your visitors. 

Instagram is all about visuals, but it’s also about emotions. Visuals and emotions are interconnected. We are all driven by emotions, whether we admit it or not, and Instagram is the place where we look for inspiration, role models and for connection with others.

So, keep this in mind when setting up your Instagram style. Remember emotions can be triggered by visual stimuli such as faces, aspirational symbols (fashion items, cars, jewelry, buildings), colors and design.

Offer an emotional experience to your visitors every time they land on your Instagram feed. Create a positive vibe with the help of colors and convey your heart’s enthusiasm using personal and catchy little captions. Whoop it up all over the place!

C. Create a unique brand atmosphere. 

I cannot stress enough the importance of emotions on Instagram. Talking about feeling, we must fully understand what triggers people’s reactions and what causes them to have positive emotions or feelings of aversion.

Generally, we are drawn to brightness (Sun), openness (smiles) and joy (colors). Conversely, we feel a sense of aversion towards darkness (night), closure (sad faces) and sorrow (grey, black and white).

It takes up to 3 seconds for someone who lands on your feed to decide if they like the page or if they dislike it. That’s why we should think of the Instagram feed as a whole. We should think of it as a brand’s visual universe, a unique world with a unique atmosphere. Here we invite people to immerse themselves in our world and get a taste of it.

A brand’s atmosphere is made up of small details like faces, products, pictures, colors, patterns, compositions, filters, design and so on.

So let’s talk about these tiny details that play a huge role in reaching that long craved “feed goals” title for your Instagram business account.

 

D. Put together your visual theme.

An Instagram theme is mostly visual. Now, as we are not all certified artists, we may lack some art fundamentals like the composition, harmony of colors and shapes. But, hey, this is not rocket science! Everyone can pick up some basic art skills and create a stunning Instagram feed! 

Here’s what you need to consider:

• Add white borders to make your content stand out!
• Choose a theme and stick to it to create engaging content and a beautiful feed.
• Make sure you stay consistent with your color scheme

E. Composition.

Go start research to see how Instagram’s best feed goals are composing their photos and learn from them. Observe the angles, the elements of the photos and the dynamic of the elements. If you find it too hard to grasp, enroll yourself in a photography course. It will upgrade your photography skills from smartphone pro to camera proficient.

Check out these photography courses available online:

• Fundamentals of Photography
• Fine Art Photography
• Photography Masterclass
• Photography Composition & Portrait Photography for beginners.

Also, there’s another dimension to composition you must take into consideration. The composition of your Top 9 Photos that are shown to a visitor who lands on your feed. 

Your Instagram photos and videos must always go hand in hand with each other. 

They should match when they are listed on the same row as well as when they go one above the other.

 

F. Define your color palette.

Some people use neon colors to build a memorable visual identity, others prefer pastel colors to create a sunny, positive mood.

Choose your own palette that suits your style.

Use Coolors’ tool to generate your own palette.  More on colors and color palette, in a future post, so stay tuned!

 

G. Edit the photos.

Find a filter and stick with it. Your filter will become your trademark. Whether you emphasize a pink hue or you prefer to go for blue teal, use it for all of your pictures. It will create that special and unique mood. Here are a few special effects:

• Brightness – Go for brightness if you want to convey positivity, happiness, and freedom. If you’ve got a travel or fashion blog, brightness will suit your style just fine.
• Saturation – If you want to go for vivid, bright colors this adjustment will help you achieve that.
• Warmth – Changing the photo warmth from grey to a golden tone can make a huge difference. Adding warmth to your pictures will make them alive and appealing.
• Contrast – Use contrast if you want to give your pictures that memorable dramatic effect. It’s also suited for a romantic atmosphere.

Talking about effects, we need to go through a list of apps that will help you edit your photos for that “feed goal” effect.

Instagram feed goals tip #3: Design original and breathtaking visuals

There are times when you just want to share your Aha! moments with others and get the epiphanies you’ve had out there on Instagram. You can create stunning Instagram stories online featuring both text and visual elements with Bannersnack’s easy-to-use Instagram post creator. You can add your own text or pictures, choose from a variety of ready-made elements, backgrounds, textures, and stock images.

Have a look at this Instagram poster I’ve created in about 3 minutes.

 

Start Designing Free

 

Instagram feed goals tip #4: Planning your posts on Instagram

Here we are, planning the posts. It’s time for us to have another talk about the Top 9 Posts.

If we want to hit the charts of the best Instagram feed goals, we need to understand the importance of the Top 9 Posts shown to a user landing on an Instagram feed.

These Top 9 posts are crucial in determining a user’s decision regarding your feed. Not everyone is willing to scroll down the feed. Most people believe that “what they see is what they get”. In other words:

Your Top 9 posts are representative of your Instagram feed flow as a whole.

Therefore, you have to pick each and every post carefully, reflect on how your posts go with each other and always check your first 9 posts to see what they look like. If you think you’re being too subjective about this topic, ask your friends for feedback.

 

Plan your feed using one of these apps.

Unum is probably the best Instagram planning app. A real game-changer. With Unum you can schedule your post, pre-visualize what they look like as a whole, make changes and organize your posts into a jaw-dropping feed.

The Preview app will help you plan your posts and it’s also extremely easy to use. Have a look at the tutorial here.

Planoly is another amazing app to easily plan your posts. And the best part: it comes with analytics too! Discover Planoly here.

Instagram feed goals tip #5: Write personal and engaging captions

An Instagram post without a caption is like a movie without a title.

That’s why taking the time to write authentic captions is so important. Telling the story of the photo is as important as getting the photo up on Instagram. So, here are my 5 tips to writing catchy and engaging captions to your audience:

• Be authentic. Share true stories from your life. Keep this principle in mind first when writing the texts and the engagement second. Engagement will come. Remember, the most successful people in the world have always been true to themselves: Oprah, Steve Jobs or Elizabeth Gilbert.
• Be personal. Share your thoughts, visions, and dreams. Someone will fall in love with your universe.
• Create your own writing style. Let your personality shine through your words.
• Be positive. People come to Instagram for inspiration and for a positive experience, so leave your grudge and criticism elsewhere.
• Inspire. Share your journey with others whether that may be a fitness boot camp, enrolling in a weight-loss program or joining a yoga retreat.

Instagram feed goals tip #6: #Hashtags

And last, but not least, hashtags. Instagram’s tiny huge secret in becoming discoverable. You can have an amazing Instagram feed but if you don’t use hashtags, you’ll find yourself investing your time and effort in a secluded feed… all for yourself.

Hashtags can help you gain visibility across Instagram, provided that you use relevant keywords.

The right number of hashtags.

While it’s ok to include 2-3 hashtags to your Facebook and Twitter posts, Instagram posts may need a little more hashtags to help you reach more people.

You can use between 11-30 (maximum number allowed) hashtags per post.

According to QuickSprout, 11+ is the optimal number of hashtags per post.

 

I hope these tips will help you to create the Instagram feed of your dreams. Now you have all the knowledge you need to jump from ordinary to extraordinary and get yourself into the exclusive world of top Instagrammers. Do let me know how the revamping process worked out.

Have a blast creating the next feed goals phenomenon!