Instagram was launched in 2010 and currently has more than 500 million users globally, making it one of the most popular social media platforms on the Internet. More than 95 million videos and images are shared on the platform daily. The content attracts more than 4.2 billion reactions in the form of daily likes, shares, and comments. With an ever-growing community and plenty of user engagement, savvy brands are still using Instagram as the cornerstone of their social media marketing strategy. Your instagram aesthetic is crucial because that is the base of building your brand.
The unique social media platform focuses more on visual content, which users share, like, comment and post on their profiles. Instagram gives brands a high level of exposure which is crucial for brand awareness. When you access the platform, you will notice some business accounts have more followers than others despite both being top names in their industry.
Why is this?
Instagram is a visual platform, and users flock to accounts which have outstanding and unique aesthetics. The aesthetics you use should always resonate with your brand voice, tone and identity. Posting beautiful images or captivating videos isn’t the only way to capture the attention of the Instagram online community. Brands that want an eye-catching and captivating profile must have a unique and distinct brand aesthetic that carries their brand message, speaks to their audience’s sensibilities, and remains consistent enough to be recognizable as such. They will also need robust community management and a solid posting strategy to maintain relevance both in the algorithm and in the attention graph of their audience.
Your brand aesthetic’s primary goal is to showcase your brand’s unique identity while still remaining accessible and relatable to the user. Brands that have managed to create unique brand identities using Instagram aesthetics have plenty of followers and continue to attract more attention across the platform because they demonstrate professionalism, artistry, and a command of the medium in ways that users of the platform respect and appreciate. The Signal team has created a simple guide to help you create the best Instagram business profile with an eye toward memorable aesthetics and lasting emotional resonance.
Instagram Aesthetic Ideas
Every business needs a unique brand identity and voice in the market. Customers and prospects should be able to identify your brand instantly in every piece of content you post. Businesses with a strong brand identity and voice have a stronger connection with their customers. Your brand identity should also align with your target market. The goal is to make an impact on them and remain recognizable for who and what you are as a brand.
Digital marketers frequently mention an Instagram profile’s “aesthetic” when talking about the importance of brand identity on Instagram. But what does Instagram “aesthetic” mean? Instagram “aesthetic” refers to the overall visual impression Instagram users have about your brand when they interact with your Instagram business profile. What feelings do visitors have when they visit your profile? What is their cohesive concept about your brand? What colors, motifs, and imagery does the profile use to evoke a certain feeling or impression?
Brands need a seamless aesthetic that aligns with the brand’s voice, identity, values, goals, and audience. Instagram is one of the digital platforms where you want to achieve maximum brand awareness, and your Instagram “aesthetic” needs to be a top priority. Building a mind-blowing Instagram aesthetic, which will attract many followers, takes time, creativity, and strategy. Creating an unforgettable first impression on your prospects is vital on Instagram, as users can increase brand awareness by sharing, liking, and commenting on business profiles they love.
The following tips will help you grow and improve your business profile’s Instagram aesthetic.
What is Your Brand Identity?
Your business can’t create a functional Instagram aesthetic if you haven’t identified your brand identity and voice. The main goal of the Instagram aesthetic is to communicate the brand’s identity to the online community, so knowing what you’re trying to communicate is the first step.
When stating your brand’s identity, the following factors are essential:
- Voice and Tone
- Core values
- Mission and Objectives
- Colors, Imagery, & Mood
Your Instagram “aesthetic” is dictated by the content on your feed. Every piece of content you post or share on your feed should align with the brand’s identity. They should also reflect the brand’s image and purpose, creating uniformity in the mind of the prospects. Most memorable brands maintain their own set of colors, fonts, taglines, and iconography, which consumers use to identify their brand in any content.
Posting random content on your feed will confuse your current customers and mislead your prospects. Prospects and customers will find it hard to commit to your brand, and with time you will lose followers. When prospects experience confusion and inconsistency on any brand, they tend to start questioning the business’s values, quality, and goals… which leads to unfollowing and forgetting.
Identifying Your Target Market and Catering to their Needs
Social media marketing requires the use of several different social media platforms. Each of these platforms is used in a unique way by its user base, who come to each platform in a certain state of mind and with certain needs. The user persona you find on Instagram differs from the user persona on Facebook and Tiktok. Your Instagram feed is meant to communicate to your target market using the trends and styles unique and familiar to Instagram, not a cookie-cutter copy-paste from every other platform.
Identifying the target market is essential. You can use various demographics to identify your target market. Popular demographics include; gender, age, location, income level, and education level, as well as interest and buying patterns. Consumers with similar demographics using the Instagram platform will value the same content and easily share relevant content with each other. Your content should pull your target market together and keep them engaged and connected with your brand.
Instagram has a consumer insights feature that explains how users behave when they visit your business profile. Which content has the most likes, comments, and shares? This information helps you identify what matters most to your target audience. The content you share to your feed should directly reflect the target market’s interests while maintaining the brand’s identity.
The main focus is ensuring your content is useful and valuable to anyone who visits your Instagram business profile. Instagram followers are likely to consistently follow an Instagram business profile that provides them with helpful information, or otherwise meets their needs when they’re on the platform. If they’re there to shop, cater to that impulse. If they’re there to learn, teach them. If they want gorgeous photos, oblige.
Creating a Unique Story with Every Image or Video Post
Instagram is a very visual platform, and videos and images are the top content options consumed. These images and the text that accompanies each post should tell a carefully crafted story about your brand and its relationship to the user. Stories have a way of engaging your audience more profoundly, bridging the gap between the consumer and the product. That’s what good advertising is all about, afterall.
Suppose you are posting a video about a product. The bland and boring approach is to post a photo of the product with a price tag and a stock description in the caption. Obviously this is the easy approach, it’s very familiar to retailers. But this doesn’t connect with anyone. Instead, post a video showcasing the product in use with a satisfied customer talking about how much it has improved their life. In the caption you tie their comments to your brand message and why you make these products to perfectly suit and support your customer. This post will perform extremely well compared to the boring catalog post described first.
Tell them a story.
We’re online to be social – with each other and even with brands. Invite your prospects into the brand’s life and connect it to their own lived experience. When you attach your posts with narratives, you connect emotionally with your target market. Give preference to your brand’s identity in your post, making it more relatable and valuable to the target audience.
Narratives on social media posts are very instrumental in nurturing customer loyalty. Successful brands like Nike and Apple always have impressive narratives on all their Instagram posts, inviting the audience to learn and understand more about the brand’s products and people. Even though Instagram doesn’t limit the length of your text, it’s essential to ensure the narrative isn’t too long or too short. It needs to be the perfect length, which keeps the prospects engaged and well informed.
Picking a Filter, Filler and Color Pallets
Social media platforms have enabled users to edit their visual content with many features. You don’t need to be a professional photographer or videographer to edit your visual content on Instagram. At the same time, there are many visual editing options on Instagram, and it’s essential to stick to a specific color pallet, filters and textures that align and communicate your brand’s identity at all times. The strategy will ensure you maintain the much sought-after consistency in your Instagram feed.
You can implement two to four fillers on all your content to tie the post together and improve the feed’s look. Try desaturating the images, sticking to white backgrounds, and using pops of colors. Every brand has its color combination. The color pallets, filters and fillers can also be used to be part of the story being narrated by your brand on your feed. They should easily blend the background of your post without taking the attention from the post.
Sticking to Content That Shows the Brand’s Core Values
In the previous pointers, we have focused on the importance of having content that resonates with and represents the brand’s identity and values. Many brands find it challenging to create marketing content on social media platforms which show their brand’s identity and core values.
Brands can use Instagram marketing to show their products and services to their target market. The marketing posts need to have inspiring and eye-casting images that showcase the products uniquely. Being creative with your posts is very important. You can easily encourage your prospects to “market” your products when they create content featuring your products. Recreation of your content by users enhances brand awareness while providing your brand with highly coveted user-generated content, or UGC.
The sharing features on Instagram are a good source of outsourcing user-generated content from your prospects, which is unique and authentic. Your brand can use user-generated content to increase and build brand trust. Instagram allows users to share and repost content, but the content can still feature the original creator’s profile, and they can tag the original creator too.
The user-generated content is unsolicited customer reviews which are very effective. Brands should have a welcoming and appreciative strategy whenever they get user-generated content. Failure to appreciate prospects when sharing your content might discourage others from sharing it.
Planning Ahead
Businesses and brands should always have a plan when implementing any marketing strategy. Your Instagram aesthetic is part of your social media marketing strategy, and you need to have a plan to ensure it remains consistent and appropriate across all channels. Businesses that have well-organized Instagram feed aesthetics have a plan which was used before they started the journey of building their feed’s content grid. Some brands have taken months, while others have taken years.
You can base your plan on seasonal, monthly, biweekly or quarterly timelines. Planning requires a content strategy that incorporates your goals in a diverse array of content categories and post types so that you have something for everyone. Are you trying to create a unique theme for your aesthetics or from your content? Most influencers have mastered the art of having a plan when posting content to boost their Instagram aesthetic. Planning helps benchmark the content’s consistency and stick to the brand’s identity.
Creating Branded Hashtags
Hashtags are beneficial in reaching new audiences when using social media marketing. Instagram users always use hashtags in all their posts to ensure their posts are among the top search options and attract more likes and followers. Hashtags increase user engagement and interaction in specific niches. Many business profiles have capitalized on using hashtags to attract more users and engage with other like-minded profiles.
Instagram uses hashtags as one of its primary search options when users are searching for content. Users can also follow specific hashtags so that posts in that category show up on their feed. Therefore it’s imperative to use relevant and trendy hashtags in your posts. However, brands can also create unique hashtags that only identify with the brand’s identity.
A branded hashtag will be unique to the business. It personally appeals to your target audience, catching the customers’ attention and reminding them about the brand’s identity. Branded hashtags are very effective for promoting a product or an event, where you select from or communicate with users that utilized the hashtag on their own posts. You can also use them in various digital marketing channels to create consistency in brand identity.
Get Started on Your Brand’s Instagram Aesthetic
Having an eye-catching feed takes time and focuses more than just posting content. Your Instagram feed needs to tell a story about your brand to every visitor who comes across your profile. A story takes time to write and has many pages. Therefore your Instagram feed will need consistent content relevant to your target market and aligned to the brand’s identity.
An Instagram feed is critical in determining whether a user wants to know more about your profile and content. Your Instagram feed should give as much information as possible about your brand and your products and services. An aesthetic that is easy to understand and resourceful ultimately attracts more organic traffic on Instagram and followers.
Need Help Developing Your Instagram Aesthetic?
Chat with our creative team here at Signal to learn how you can leverage our creativity, experience, and skillset to build your brand’s power and influence on Instagram and other social media platforms!
