Mastering Instagram with Engagement Pods and Branding

The first step to branding yourself or a business on Instagram is finding the right color scheme. Once you find out what colors represent your account well, its important to stick to these colors, and avoid straying away from them in your posts. This gives your followers familiarity with your content, gives your feed consistency and subconsciously makes your collection of photos more appealing. They do not all have to be the exact same, with the same lighting and colors that match down to the hue – as a matter of fact, this is something you want to avoid. A little variance is good for your brand.

Now that we know what colors we want to brand our Instagram account with, we are going to put them to work. One unique way to make an Instagram account stand out among others is to use your logo for your main account image.

Obviously, many people do not have the means to produce a quality logo themselves – much less the know how. One of the best providers for logo design (especially with brands & social media personalities) is Peach State Design.

Peach State Design is a well rounded graphic design firm with experienced logo designers, inexpensive pricing and they do amazing work. They can be as creative as you want them to be, they can also be classic and professional - if that’s what you’re going for, or they can be obscure and abstract. They usually hit the mark on whatever vibe defines you and your brand.

If you do decide to create your own logo design, you can find valuable resources from Adobe for relatively cheap at Adobe.com – The creative cloud has some of the most innovative and groundbreaking programs and applications in the graphic design industry.

One of the tools adobe offers that is extremely useful for Instagram branding is called – well, Adobe Color. This web application can be found at color.adobe.com, and is available for free to the general public.

There are 2 things Adobe color does that makes it such a valuable resource for Instagram branding. The first is the explore page, which has current trending color palettes and the option to search for a word or keyword of a specific theme you are looking for.

For instance, if you are looking for colors that represent summer – you can type summer into the search box.

(See Below)

The other useful tool in adobe color is the “Create from an image” uploader. This essentially scans the photo, finds the primary, most accurate and dominant colors that make up the photo and creates a custom palette out of them.

The colors can then be adjusted from that if needed. From there you can save the palette, or copy useful information from the colors like the hexadecimal color codes (which are used commonly across the web as a standard index of color identification).

Now, before we go any further – let’s talk about something that needs to be understood, even if you don’t agree with it.

If you are reading this blog, it’s because you probably are part of (or are considering) joining an Instagram engagement pod. This is good, because engagement pods are beneficial to all parties involved and have proven to be very effective. However, you shouldn’t have to go through 20-30 minutes worth of liking and commenting on stranger’s photo’s - just to get engagement back on yours. If you don’t mind it and have the time and want to do that for the rest of your life, then so be it.

Go ahead.

But the goal here, should be to grow your account large enough that your stuff gets attention regardless of when you post it, and how much time and effort you have put into engaging on other people’s stuff.

THIS IS WHERE 95% OF INSTAGRAM USERS MISS THE MARK.

There are 1.1 billion users actively using Instagram every month. There are so many people in the world that are just as unique, cool, and trendy as you are. This may be hard to hear but you are more ordinary than you think. Yes, you may be pretty. Yes, you may be stylish. Yes, you are probably funny and artistic and creative… But there are plenty of people out there that are (more or less) just like you.

No matter how hard you work on your Instagram game, you are not going to get anywhere anytime soon if you don’t separate yourself from everyone else. This isn’t solved by learning how to use photoshop or buying a nice camera.

This is different.

Rule 1:

Stop watching instructional YouTube videos, googling things like “Instagram strategies” and trying to figure out all the tricks to having a good IG account. You aren’t going to find any useful information by doing this, thousands…possibly millions of other people have taken this approach, watched the same dumb/click-bait type videos and learned basically nothing new. This isn’t a tutorial type of situation. Every person will say the same thing, which usually is some recycled garbage like “find your niche, post at the right time of day, use hashtags correctly…” and yada…yada…yada.

Been there done that.

Rule 2:

Think outside of the box. Not just for posting content, but in general. If you are truly dedicated to your Instagram account and its growth, don’t try and be unique in just one aspect of your personality.

Be unique in every way possible.

Let me clarify what this DOESN’T mean, and then try to explain what it does.

Being unique does not mean that you SPELL YOUR NAME IN ALL CAPS

or google search “Instagram Bio font Generator” and use some stupid font

𝓁𝒾𝓀𝑒 𝓉𝒽𝒾𝓈

or

𝕝𝕚𝕜𝕖 𝕥𝕙𝕚𝕤

for your name or bio.

Being unique does not mean that you take pictures in neat places, of neat things or with expensive stuff like a nice sports car. This is literally half the people on Instagram.

Being unique does not mean that you find irrelevant quotes off brainy quote by Marilyn Monroe or Bob Marley and put them as your captions. Again…This is literally half of Instagram.

At this point you may be wondering, “How the hell am I supposed to stand out then?”

You stand out by living a real life. Doing things that people relate to in a real-world setting. Rather than trying to make people admire you because you took a neat picture on a beach, take a neat picture on a beach doing something interesting, rather than just being hot.

Take surf lessons, build a sandcastle, hang out with a homeless person, pick up trash… Anything but take a photo that only glorifies yourself and gets a instinctual reaction of “bleh, its ok but I’ve seen cooler” from the person who views it.

Quit following trends. Fashion trends, food trends, travel trends etc. This is easy to say but hard to do. Set the standard and stick to it. Instead of a perfect picture of some vegan burger at some cool restaurant, take a picture of you stuffing it into your face or something… Maybe it catches on, maybe it won’t… At least it’s different.

Branding yourself isn’t easy. Branding yourself isn’t fun at times but branding yourself and sticking to the portrait you paint is vital. Don’t be afraid to change things up if they aren’t working but remember that consistency is what will separate you from the crowd.