How to Make your Brand’s Instagram Content Stand Out

The aesthetic appeal of Instagram combined with it’s vast user base of around 800m makes it prime real estate for businesses looking to engage with social media marketing. More and more companies are using Instagram to reach out to new potential customers in increasingly inventive ways; therefore, making your brand’s Instagram content stand out from the rest of the inundated media user feeds is key to getting your message across.

With that said, the visual emphasis of Instagram content combined with the expedient nature of the platform’s scroll feed has meant that anyone looking to gain that edge over their industry competitors, as well as competition for feed space with every other company, needs to be producing seriously good quality content to have their audiences engaged. Professional Instagrams are rapidly becoming akin to a business card or formal advertisement campaign, and how companies express their brand on the platform will make or break whether or not they can tap into those 800m potential customers.

Here are 3 awesome tips to think about for any company that’s serious about making their content really stand out from their competition and have more users engaging with them.

Abandon the Smartphone Camera, Go Professional

The supreme reign of the camera phone has reached an apex with the introduction of smartphones. High quality screens and a wealth of apps and services mean that taking photos is easier than it has ever been. This being said, everyone has a smartphone they’re easy to use. This means that if you are using a smartphone camera to make your social media marketing content, I would seriously recommend upgrading to something a little more professional.

The reason for this is clear and simple – you are in competition for the attention of your audience when it comes to your Instagram content. People are just scrolling through their feeds skipping past a huge amount of content, and what you need to happen is for people to stop on your images and give them a little look, maybe even like and share them. Making your photos unique and distinctive, then, should be an obvious avenue to go down.

You may want to be thinking more like a professional and investing in a high quality DSLR camera. It is understandable if you are skeptical about this, especially the part where you have to fork out hundreds for a camera when you haven’t even seen it’s benefits in action. Instead of buying one you may want to start renting them from locals in your area.

There are now several platforms that allow you to borrow gear from local hobbyists and professionals. One such is Fat Lama, a new peer-to-peer rental service. The benefits of using a platform like Fat Lama over traditional rental sites are many – they are cost effective, ecologically friendly and you can get real advice from really passionate individuals. Unlike a rental shop, because it is a diverse platform you’re not restricted to just cameras, if you really wanted to stand out you could even get a drone and go aerial. Hey, you may even get some tips about managing a professional social media page to boot.

Upload Less, Get More Customers

Have you found yourself with a huge catalogue of images and been tempted to upload all of them at once. Everyone’s been there, and it can be so hard to not upload so much good stuff. Restrain yourself, however, as there is a huge negative to over-uploading.

Referring to earlier, people are usually mindlessly scrolling through their Instagram content feeds. What you don’t want is for their automatic filters to mark you out as non-valuable content which they won’t pause to look at. How do you increase the value of your images? Uploading them less. It’s a basic principle that the less of something there is, the more valuable it becomes.

Make sure you do what all good artists do and only output the very best. Yes it can be hard to say goodbye to great content, but if you’re only uploading the best of that, you’ll see a huge increase in the amount people are clicking on, liking and sharing your content.

Learn A New Skill: Professional Instagram Content Editing

If you take nothing away from this, then heed this advice nevertheless – Instagram content filters are NOT your friend. Once again, you are trying to mark your social media page out as unique, even exciting. People are so used to filters by now that they’ve almost become a little bit of a joke within the Instagram community. So if you are going to put the effort into hiring professional gear and being hyper selective with your photos, you are going to want to be edit them like a professional as well. Try a software like Adobe Photoshop, or its free counterpart Gimp.

If that seems daunting at first, there are several presets and tutorials out there to help you into the program. The point though is that you will really be doing your images justice by being able to edit them with the absolute control you need. You’ll find yourself getting the hang of it in no time, and with that you’ll be outputting great content before you know it. Whatever you do, though, Instagram filters are not the way forward.

Overall attention to detail and careful planning is key in running a professional instagram page that really lets you get an advantage over your competition. Have a look at implementing these 3 changes and your professional profile will be unique and hugely valuable to your vast potential audience.