Instagram is a great platform for sharing video and photo content with your followers. It offers you an opportunity to further connect with customers, current and potential. Since its April 2012 launch, Instagram has continued to grow. Over a billion people from all over the world use Instagram every month. There are about 140 million users from the US and that number is growing every day. The average user is on the platform for about 30 minutes every day. That’s the perfect amount of time for your business to get its name out there, build connections, and hopefully, gain more followers. That’s why what sort of content you post on your business Instagram account matters! Not only does the content and its design matter, but having an Instagram theme.
What is an Instagram Theme?
An Instagram theme is the overall aesthetic, look, or feel of your account. Keeping a consistent feed can help your brand improve your account aesthetic and create a lasting impression on followers. Think of your Instagram feed as a personal portfolio that reflects who your brand is and what purpose it serves. There are many different types of themes your brand can try out. When creating a theme, it’s important to think creatively about the designs and colors. Some basic themes many brands use are:
- Black and White
- Bright Colors
- Minimalist
- One Color
- Two Colors
- Heavy Borders
- Pastels
The list goes on and on, but the important thing is that the theme of your feed should reflect your brand’s personality and what your business does.
Why Have an Instagram Theme?
The goal of having an Instagram account for your business is to gain more followers. Having an Instagram account that presents a consistent theme and appealing aesthetic, can help you do just that. Over 80% of Instagram users follow businesses on the platform. Instagram is a fantastic space to showcase your brand and all it has to offer. In fact, two-thirds of profile visits for Instagram Business Accounts are coming from people who don’t follow your business yet. This is because so many people use Instagram to research products, services, and businesses. Over 50% of Instagram users do their product research on the platform. Many consumers are turning to social media as a way to further research various brands versus Google. A strong social media presence, not to mention an attractive one, can help prove your credibility and make your product or services more desirable. If you want your brand to stand out and get the attention of other users, it may be time to incorporate an Instagram theme for your business!
How to Create an Instagram Theme in 6 Steps:
Creating an Instagram theme can seem a little overwhelming, but the opportunity it presents is well-worth diving in. When going through each of these steps, keep in mind what your brand is all about. What does it represent? What makes the most sense for your business and what it offers? What is the main demographic you’re trying to target? How can you enhance or emphasize the visual elements of your brand? All of these can have an impact on how you create your Instagram theme.
The easiest, and sometimes most efficient, way to pick a color scheme is to use your brand’s colors. An example of this is our own Instagram feed! Check it out (@greenline_mktg):
However, using your brand’s colors is not the only way to create a great theme. You can pick any one, two, three, or more combination of colors that best fit your brand. The key is to keep it consistent in your content. Check out these other brand examples:
2. Think About What You Want to Convey
You want to show potential customers what your brand is all about. This means thinking about what sort of things you want to show or values you want to convey. However, it’s important to focus and zone in on one main subject. If your brand is posting about things that don’t really matter to your buyer personas, what’s the point? Think of it as the cocktail party rule or the 80/20 rule. This means that you talk about yourself or your brand, in other words promoting, 20% of the time and 80% on meeting the needs of your audience. What will resonate with customers the most or draw in a larger audience? Most accounts that do have a lot of followers are known for sticking to one specific area, industry, topic, or whatever it may be.
We don’t mean every post needs to look exactly the same. However, you should follow a similar pattern in how you organize and design your content. Using elements of both photograph and graphics can create a balanced combination that contributes to a successful theme. For example, if you’re trying to stick to a more minimalistic theme, incorporating simple photographs with minimal color or illustrations with your color scheme would make a great theme for your brand. Another example would be if you're doing a black and white theme, obviously, a colored picture in the mix would look a little strange.
Once you’ve begun to post theme-based content, take a step back and make sure your feed is balanced. By that, we mean your content should carry the same lighting or ‘feel’. This means editing your pictures in a similar fashion or style. Your feed should offer the perfect balance of pictures. Don’t post the same type of content over and over again. That’s not interesting for you or your followers. It may be tempting to repeatedly promote and post pictures of your product or service. However, it’s important to also mix in inspirational quotes or lifestyle content to offer a more holistic view of your brand.
The whole point of an Instagram theme is to post in a way that is aesthetically pleasing and consistent. That’s why scheduling and planning out your content in advance is so important. The layout and order of how you post your content matters, as well as how often you post. If you start off posting more than once a day, your followers will expect that every day. There are some great tools that can help you more effectively layout and plan your posts. This way you can see what they will look like in your feed before they actually go up!
6. When to ‘Break’ From Your Theme
Obviously, you can’t stick to your Instagram theme at all times. Things like holidays, big announcements, and newsworthy info could be reasons you need to break away from your Instagram theme. Incorporating holiday colors like green and red for Christmas or red, white, and blue for the Fourth of July are examples where you might need to take a break from your theme. However, this doesn’t mean you can’t go right back into your theme after the event! Look at the La Croix Instagram feed for example. They mainly use bright, fun colors - but for the Fourth of July, they incorporated an image with red, white, and blue. That’s totally okay! Don’t feel like you’re glued to your theme forever and can never post other, relevant content for your business.
How to Incorporate Creative Design:
So we know what a theme is, why consider implementing one, and how to get started, but how do you know what sort of designs or content to post? It can be hard to generate creative ideas for post designs. You don’t have to start from complete scratch! There are incredibly helpful resources that offer templates for Instagram posts and allow you to edit the designs to your liking as well as add in your color scheme. Some great ones to try out are:
These tools can be a great way to take out the intimidating factors of creative design, but don’t be afraid to add your own twist and flavor to your Instagram content. After all, that’s why people are following your brand. They want to see the unique type of content you offer.
At the end of the day, implementing an Instagram theme can only benefit your business. It can help your brand appear more professional and organized, which is important to customers. An Instagram theme that matches your brand and has an aesthetic feel is what users are looking for. Don’t be afraid to niche-down and make yourself stand out against the competition. Find a theme that’s right for you!
