Have you ever seen someone’s Instagram feed and wondered how the heck they managed to make it look so coordinated and well put together? Well it’s easier than it looks with a few tools and taking a little time to work ahead.
EDITING - nothing is real and it looks great
Lightroom - bring out the best in your photos with manual editing or downloaded presets. Sometimes the light conditions are not ideal when we snap that great moment, maybe it’s too dark or the cool edison bulbs at that restaurant actually made your face orange in the photo. Lightroom is simple to learn and has major editing power for a mobile app.
I don’t use presets for the @kelpforestcommerce feed, but I know many many people that save a ton of time and maintain a consistent brand with presets for their photo editing. These create a consistent warm or bright look for your personal or business feed. (I don’t use presets but I do intentionally choose photo that fit my colour theme and palette.)
InShot - great for a quick video edit or photo crop. This is just a simple tools for trimming video clips, and not actually for editing multiple clips into a video. But it is very useful for cropping photos (since Instagram only lets you zoom in and not crop) and simple edits, like rotating an image or adding text.
PLANNING - make your life easier
Preview - this app beautifully displays your feed so you can plan it out ahead of time! This is the best way to create a well designed feed for users that are creating their content as they go. Use color or content to organize your feed, move your posts around until you have the look you want. I find this to be very inspiring for creating content because I can look at my Preview feed and see that I have 3 cat photos and 4 coffee photos schedule for the next week, so maybe I’ll throw in a selfie to break it up (for real my personal feed is a lot of my cat and a lot of coffee.)
Plus, Preview it has great hashtag suggestions that are relevant and categorized for easy searching.
Planoly - similar to Preview but it also automatically posts to your feed AND your story! Unlike Preview, Planoly has a calendar view, which makes scheduling for the month much easier. This app is better for users that are creating their content ahead of time.
GET CREATIVE - social media is for fun, act like it
LifeLapse - make some creative content and engage your audience. We are so overstimulated on the internet that if your brand and your business don’t stand out, you might as well just go home. Get creative, try new things, see what works, and definitely have fun doing it!
