At the same time, you’ve probably noticed just how competitive things can be. Many brands struggle to stand out. It’s important to always be on the lookout for new ways to boost engagement. That brings us to the topic of filters.

Do Instagram filters add any value when it comes to engagement? They do, but it’s important to follow some best practices to get the results you want.

First: What Do Filters Do to Increase Engagement?

Instagram filters can increase the number of comments and shares your posts receive. Specifically, research published by Yahoo Labs shows that Instagram posts with filters are 45% more likely to receive comments. When used correctly, filters can make images more attractive and engaging. 

If you are trying to draw attention to your products, Instagram filters can enhance image quality and add clarity to your product pictures. There are also AR filters that allow your followers to interact with your posts like never before.

Instagram Filter Best Practices

Filters are a powerful engagement tool. Unfortunately, like any other tool, they can be misused. This misuse can cause your Instagram video marketing and other strategies to fall flat. These tips will help you get better results:

Choose Filters that Fit Your Branding

There are plenty of fun, engaging, and popular filters available for your Instagram pictures and videos. Be selective when you choose which ones you will use on your Instagram posts.

Don’t select filters simply because they are popular or they have gotten good results for other brands. The filters you choose should make sense within the context of your brand identity. 

For example, if your visual branding tends to be bright and colorful, the filters you use should work with that. You wouldn’t want to select a filter that gives your images a gray or antique look.

Don’t Avoid Filters Because You Aren’t Getting Viral Results

You can use Instagram filters for free. So any positive results you get equal a good ROI. There’s no need to avoid using filters simply because they aren’t causing your posts to go viral. Instead, think of filters as a way of nudging your engagement numbers in a positive direction.

Excessive Use of Filters Can Raise Suspicion

Social media users have a contradictory relationship with filters. On the one hand, they absolutely engage more with posts that use filters. Users enjoy AR filters and seeing the results of placing them on their own posts, as well as viewing filtered posts from brands.

At the same time, people often see filters as inauthentic. In fact, more than 287 million Instagram posts use the #nofilter tag. However, 11% of the posts that use this tag are actually using at least one filter.

So don’t overuse filters or layer too many in a single post. Absolutely don’t use filters in a way that misrepresents the product you are trying to showcase.

Filters Won’t Reverse Terrible Production Values

If used correctly, filters can enhance the more attractive elements of your posts. They can make images and videos more attractive, add cool engagement elements, and cover up some minor flaws that come from slight imperfections in photography and videography. 

You can even use them to highlight features you think your audience will find appealing.

Just make sure you understand that filters can only do so much. In some cases, rather than using a filter to cover or attempt to repair poor production values, it’s best just to start over with a better image or video.

Consistency Helps

Instinctively, it may seem as though using a variety of filters is the best approach. You might think that would be more likely to attract engagement and make your posts more interesting to your followers. However, in many cases, that simply isn’t true.

About 60% of the top brands on Instagram use the same filter across all images. This uniformity is maintained because the effects created by filters can truly become a part of your brand’s visual identity.

Research the Filters You Plan on Using

There are several filters to choose from for your Instagram posts and even more for your stories. Before you settle on the ones you want to use, do a bit of research. Learn how other brands in your niche are using filters and what results they are getting in terms of engagement.

The post Are Your Instagram Filters Helping or Hurting Engagement? appeared first on Tech Today Info.

Balancing a good amount of engagement and follower count would always be ideal. But which one matters most when it comes to Instagram? Before you buy Instagram followers to increase your number, identifying your priorities would help you focus on one thing and improve your Instagram growth.   

Increasing Engagement On Instagram 

Instagram engagement relies on how your audiences respond to your posts. The more people you have replying and interacting with your Instagram activity, the more you can have an active page and community. Increasing engagement on your Instagram account will make your page look more enthusiastic since you’re confident that your posts and content can always be a platform of discussion, whatever the topic or your account’s niche.  

Having an engagement with your audience or community can help you control the flow and volume of posts that you will be posting on your page. Posting multiple posts in a short period will not help you reach the engagement you are looking for since many things are happening on your page, and some of the posts may be ‘skipped out’ by some of your audience. To help you out, listed below are some guidelines you might want to follow:  

• Ensure to engage with your audience by replying to or answering their comments. This way, they’ll know that you want to engage with them and not just look at them as ‘followers.’ The more you engage with your audience, the more engaging they will become. You can do this by replying to their comments and answering their direct messages on your account. Even a simple ‘heart’ reaction to their positive statement would be helpful.  
• Keep things positive on your page. The world is full of negativities, and your audience doesn’t want to see something like that on your page. Positivity translates to an engaging community. You can post optimistic quotes, ask for an opinion, and even try to initiate a conversation with your community. Ideally, keep everything light and playful, attracting more audiences to interact with your posts.  

Increasing Follower Count 

Instagram always shows the follower count of a profile, whether a private account or a public one. Having a large number of followers will make your page look credible and make other people follow your profile and think that you’re legitimate and more people already trust your service. The more followers you have, the more people will get curious about your profile and make them check out your page, which could help to convert into sales.  

Some people say that you could post anything you like on your page, but if you want to increase your follower count, that’s not always the case. Posting outside your niche will cause your followers some confusion since it is one of the reasons that they tap on that follow button. Make sure to post what you like and what your audience expects you to post. Apart from buying followers like from Pathsocial, and below are some ways to increase your follower count:  

• Make sure to create a schedule of when to post and what to post for your audience to understand what time the page is active and what different topics are being discussed on your page. That way, your audience will know that your profile is still active and in the works. The best time to post is around 10 AM to 4 PM since this is the most active Instagram activity on a weekday.  
• Make sure to stick to your niche. Posting different things at once will confuse your audience and may cause you to lose followers. While it might be tempting to post something you think is funny, post it on your account as your business account should be well optimized.   

What You Need To Prioritize 

As you know some helpful tips on how you can increase your follower count and engagement, you might wonder which area you need to prioritize. To make it short, having a high engagement count matters the most for a business page.   

And having an engaging profile is what you should prioritize. If the audience likes your way of communicating and engaging with them, they’re most likely to share them with their friends, families, and colleagues. It will help you reach your next goal, increasing the follower count.   

Thus, always remember that a high follower count doesn’t always translate to an increased engagement page. There are a lot of pages with a large number of the following, but you can also see there are limited people who like and comment on their posts. It is why you need to make sure that you are trying to build first an engaging audience and community that constantly interacts with posts and stories.

Takeaway 

As you build your Instagram account, prioritizing your engagement is highly important as it makes your company look credible and trustworthy. With an engaging community, the increase in your following count will follow.  

The post Engagements vs Follower Count: Which Matters Most On Instagram?  appeared first on Tech Today Info.

There is an opinion that writing text posts is long and difficult. The purpose of this article is to prove that writing a post and engaging an audience can be easy if you know a few steps and follow our algorithm. It is enough to make two or three publications, based on our recommendations, and the skill will be pinned.

Rules for writing posts for social networks

Some experts argue that each social network has its own specifics and you need to write for them in different ways. Others believe that the main thing is the interests of the audience, and the platform itself is secondary and there is no need for separate instructions on how to write a post for a specific service.

We will consider universal recommendations suitable for writing posts on any social network.

How to find an idea

First of all, you need to choose an interesting topic: often the problem with most bloggers or business accounts is the lack of ideas. Notice interesting things around, get inspired by news in the field and in the world, write down topics, because ideas come unexpectedly! So you don’t have to waste time searching for a topic.

Purpose: How can you help the reader?

Having chosen a topic, you need to set a goal. What will subscribers find out? Why is this information useful?

The formulated goal will make the text coherent and structured. If there is no clear goal, the author starts trying to “embrace the immense”, the thought jumps from one to another, the reader does not find an answer to the questions, gets bored and scrolls through the post. Focus on the needs of the audience, do not focus on your own interests.

Work through this point by choosing a strong goal that will keep the audience. You can buy real Instagram followers and it will be useful for you, but the main thing is to keep new readers with interesting posts.

Decide what to post about: pick one narrow question and answer it. Also, the chosen question becomes a good title.

Where to get ideas for posts:

• texts in blogs with the same subject;
• credible expert articles;
• videos.

Write the correct structure

Although some writers’ longreads get thousands of likes, people on social media usually like short texts more than long ones because they want to have fun, not delve into a complex article. Therefore, it is important to highlight the theses and create a structure based on them. The structure smoothly leads the reader through the text, summing up the results.

Formulate the thesis of each point and come up with approximate subheadings:

• title and abstract (announcement, preamble) include the main topic and, possibly, an amplifier (for example, if you want to show that even beginners will understand the material, or if you need a provocation);
• the introduction formulates the main question, reveals why it is important and how the post will help;
• the main part is the answer to the question;
• the end is a summing up, an invitation to a dialogue or an incentive to purchase a product.

Writing a draft

At this stage, the basis of the text is prepared according to a given structure. Expand the basic concepts, find and add facts, convincing examples for the audience. At this stage, do not try to write a beautiful text. Now it is important to collect and organize the necessary information.

The size of each section should correspond to the importance for the disclosure purpose. The optimal post length is 2,000 characters. The introduction should not exceed three hundred characters. It’s better to quickly start talking about the main idea so as not to waste the audience’s time.

At the end, add a call to participate in the discussion in the comments or share. Read the draft. Simplify complex expressions, get rid of unnecessary introductory constructions and repetitions. Go over the text, make sure you haven’t missed anything from the planned structure.

How to write interesting texts that will be shared

The best effect is given by posts that subscribers share with friends. What motivates people to send someone a publication or repost?

Self-presentation. People repost content that supports their image. Therefore, athletes share motivating pictures and descriptions of training, and a novice entrepreneur will definitely repost articles on the topic of business and self-development. This allows you to show your friends your values, goals, and beliefs.

Powerful emotions. It can be delight, indignation, sadness, hatred, whatever. By making a repost, a person expresses his attitude to a resonant event.

Belonging to a team. Many people tend to be interested in what is important to others. For this reason, popular news, new memes and comments on scandalous topics are spreading.

Benefit. By sharing cases and life hacks, people feel that they are helping others. Another reason to repost such a publication is the ability to save it and reread it later, as the need arises.

The post Writing a beautiful post on Instagram appeared first on Tech Today Info.

Therefore, it is not enough to know what you can post on Instagram, but it is also important to know how exactly you need to post them to make it successful on this popular photo and video sharing platform.

There are a few specific ways to take the photos and edit them to meet the requirements of the platform and make your content successful.

• Unlike other social media platforms, Instagram needs a much simpler layout. This, however, asks for a better focus on the quality of content rather than the quantity.
• The Instagram platform is great for engagement just because of its photos. This means that you do not have the luxury to post mediocre content and expect a considerable increase in the follower count, get free Insta likes and great engagement.

You will need to do the very best to ensure that the images are of high resolution so that it looks good and attractive on your Instagram feed.

Types of photos

Typically, there are three specific types of images that you can use to post on the Instagram platform. These different types of images will have different types of resolutions as well such as:

• The square images should have a resolution of 1080 x 1080px
• Landscape images must have 1080 x 566px and
• Profile images should be of 1350 x 1080px.

Irrespective of what size and resolution of the image you upload, every image on Instagram will be shown as a square image in your profile feed.

Taking a great photo

No, it does need the costliest and the most sophisticated SLR camera of the most reputed company to take a great photo to post on Instagram. If you do not have one, do not worry, you can capture great photos with your smartphone even. It will be perfect and high-quality as well.

Thanks to the phone camera technology that has become so advanced in recent years that it can give serious competition to even the best thousand-dollar camera manufactured by a world-renowned brand. That means amazing photography is no longer a forte limited to those professionals who hang a costly camera around their neck. It can be yours too using the small gadget in your pocket that you use for communicating primarily: your smartphone! This is how.

Focus on the rule of thirds

The best way to capture the best photo that will drive follower growth and engagement on Instagram is to follow the rule of thirds. If you do so, it will improve your photo composition almost instantly.

• Simply turn on the camera grid lines
• Aim properly to place the subject at the intersection of a set of vertical and horizontal lines and Click.

Simple! This is the rule of thirds technique mostly followed by professional photographers, painters, and illustrators.

This is one of the best techniques because when you place the subject off-centre it will create a slight imbalance which will catch the eyes of your viewers.

Use a single subject

Always stay away from a crowded background when you take a photo for your Instagram post. This is because:

• Your subject will be lost in it otherwise and
• It may even confuse your audience.

Even if you use multiple subjects with no background in the frame it will only distract the viewers as well as your photo from the focus of the shot.

Therefore, focus on a single subject in each of your photos and remove distractions, if any, by cropping them out. Always find a clean background to shoot your photo against.

Negative space and perspectives

You must also take advantage of negative space, ore empty space, around your subject to the fullest to shoot a great photo. If you leave such space the subject will draw more attention to the required focus of the image. It will also prevent your photo from looking crowded.

As for the perspectives, you should look for the most interesting ones. Usually, people are used to seeing things at and from their eye level. If you want to create fresh, unique and interesting photos that will look good in your Instagram feed, shoot from different perspectives.

You can change it to a bird’s eye view or worm’s eye view to make it more appealing. Make sure that you experiment with different angles until you find new and better perspectives for even the most common sights.

Symmetry and patterns

Both symmetry and patterns should be leveraged when you take a phot. This is because the human eye is normally and naturally drawn to objects and shapes that are symmetrical. Therefore, sometimes, it is good, if not the best, to break this common concept in photography.

• You may look away from the rule of thirds and centre the subject in your frame and
• Use leading lines.

People are also naturally drawn to patterns that can be man-made, like a tiled floor or natural like the vines on a wall or flower petals. Break this pattern with your subject and composition to make the photo really interesting.

The light factor

Light is an important factor for a photo.

• You cannot take a photo in complete darkness. You will not only have anything to focus on or aim at but it will also make your subject look weird, if not lost in the darkness.
• Standard overhead lighting, on the other hand, will create shadows and highlights that will cause unwanted light and dark areas in your photos.
• The best way is to use the soft natural light of the outdoors half hour before sunrise or sunset or placing the subject next to a window.

Now that you have your pictures, edit it using Instagram filters and post it to see greater engagement.

The post Proven Techniques To Take Photos To Post On Instagram appeared first on Tech Today Info.