This week on MIP we are talking all about aesthetic and cohesive feeds and on this MIP mini I break it down for you in less than 10 minutes!
Notable timestamps & links
1:10- First step to a cohesive feed
2:25- Editing and aesthetics
6:22- The final step to a cohesive feed and captions
Apps mentioned:
Editing- lightroom, VSCO, A Color Story
Planning- Planoly, Plann, Preview, Unum
My blog post on popular presets:
http://www.theblushingbluebird.com/create-eye-catching-instagram-aesthetics-with-presets/
FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Speaker 1: 00:00 This week. We are talking all about cohesive Instagram feeds on the mommy influence her podcast. If you haven’t checked out my last interview with Sophia El Rae, make sure you do because she is such a queen at an aesthetic feed and I think she offers so many great tips and insights on today’s myth mini. I’m going to share with you a few tips for how you can achieve a cohesive and aesthetic Instagram feed.
Speaker 1: 00:31 You’re listening to the mommy influence or podcast where we dive into motherhood, social media marketing and hear from inspiring Mommy influencers, brands and industry experts to bring you the inside knowledge, tools and strategies to grow your influence in business through purposeful online content creation. I’m your host Christy keen and I’m a navy veteran and registered nurse. Turn stay at home mom turned full time to motherhood influencer on track to be a six figure earner this year through social media marketing alone. So come in and cozy up mamas and get ready to take your influence to the next level.
Speaker 1: 01:08 Okay Mama is the first step to having a cohesive feed is to have a cohesive personal brand and message more than the pretty pictures that you post and the color scheme that people associate with you. They want to know what to expect when they come to your Instagram and what your message is going to be. A few influencers that we have interviewed on the podcast here have mentioned a good strategy for this, which is to have an overall umbrella about what you share and then to pick about three to five topics that you stick with within that umbrella and kind of stay in your lane with it. So for me, for example, I would say my general big umbrella would be motherhood. And then underneath of there you can come to my page and expect to see a lot about hearing loss and cochlear implants as it’s a huge goal of mine to raise awareness for that because of my daughter Charlie.
Speaker 1: 02:00 And secondly, you’ll see a lot of messaging around creating purposeful online content creation since that’s what I have created this podcast around. And thirdly, just the fun motherhood things that make life easier and fun when you are in the thick of raising three small little ones. So the first tip is just to be cohesive with what your message is. Now let’s get into aesthetics, which I know is what everybody is hugely asking about. I get so many questions every week about what preset I use for my photos, how I get a pink color scheme. And I’m sure a lot of other influencers with cohesive feeds get similar messages. So the first thing I would say is to look at your lighting and the mood of your overall photos. Are you somebody who wants a really bright, crisp, clean look or are you somebody who likes the moody, Darker, more emotional images?
Speaker 1: 02:55 I would say that would be my first place to start when it comes to editing. The next step be to find a preset or filter that you like and use it on every photo. And this is a really big time management tip for me because once I found a preset that I like and I will share with you, I use the Alexa Jean Indoor preset on pretty much all of my photos. Once you find one that works for you and the colors that you like, it just, you basically just hit one step, you hit one button and it’s ready to go. When it comes to finding a preset or filter that works for you, there’s a few different resources. First of all, a lot of influencers are creating their own businesses out of making their own presets and Sophia el Ray talked about that a lot on our last podcast and I think it is incredible how well that business is doing for her and the presets are so beautiful and RC and feminine and I will link her presets as well as a blog post I have done in the past of other really popular presets that a lot of the Instagram accounts that you look up to are using.
Speaker 1: 03:55 There are also a lot of apps on your phone that are free or have a small charge or subscription rate that create really beautiful photos of very popular. One on Instagram is Fisco VSCO and I’m pretty sure a lot of mommy bloggers use m five I’ve heard a lot of people mentioned that one. I haven’t used this go very much in the past, but I do like that you’re able to edit your videos on it as well, so that makes it a little bit special. One of my favorite apps that I use for editing is a color story and there is a folder called flashes of delight. Cassidy is my favorite. I will go ahead and tell you that right now. I usually put Cassidy on all of my photos and there’s also another one called Cardigan lucky that I’ll put on all my photos that gives it a little bit more of a pink tinge, but there are so many fun wants to play around with him there as well as effects and you can also edit your videos in a color story as well.
Speaker 1: 04:55 And then finally, a lot of the presets that you will buy from an influencer or from an Etsy shop because there are a lot of really affordable presets on Etsy. Um, most of them require Lightroom to edit. The mobile light room is free. The one on your computer does cost money. I personally have an Adobe creative cloud account where I have my desktop light room paid for, but there are ways to go around editing on light room for free through the mobile APP. But just make sure you’re paying attention to that when you do buy a preset. And then finally with the editing, the color scheme, as I mentioned, I get a lot of questions about how I keep a pink feed, but if you look at my feed, you’ll notice that I make sure that I include pink elements within the photo. So I think that is what makes it look more pink.
Speaker 1: 05:45 It’s making sure maybe the girls have a pink bow on or a pink outfit, or maybe there’s a pink blanket in the background. Something like that pulls the color into the entire feed if you want Greens. A lot of outdoor grass scenes are beautiful. Um, it just depends on what you’re looking for. It’s as simple as pulling that element into your photos and post processing. You can increase the saturation and change the tones of the color a little bit more. I changed my reds to be a little bit more pink. Um, but that’s just something you can play around with and get a feel for. And the final thing I’ll talk about for getting a cohesive and aesthetic feed is to really plan your feed. So there are some apps that are available where you can, instead of posting as you take the picture and in the moment you can pull the photos into a feed and see what your Instagram would look like.
Speaker 1: 06:45 I personally use [inaudible] and I do pay a monthly subscription for this service. And basically I’m able to put my photos that I’ve edited into a feed, move things around, plan my captions ahead of time. So then again I’m able to keep my photos cohesive and I’m able to keep my messaging cohesive. I don’t know about you guys, I’m just not good at coming up with captions on the fly. And if I did, I don’t think my messaging would be as linear. So I liked that I can take the time to really be intentional and thoughtful about how I’m going to caption a photo, plan it for later, and then when it’s ready to go, all I have to do is hit save and post now. And I will link planfully in the show notes as well as a few other similar apps that people have shared with me.
Speaker 1: 07:39 Those would be later plan, PLA,N , n preview. And I don’t know if I’m saying this right, but unum, you n, u, m, those are other popular ones that people use. I hope these tips were helpful for you. So is it completely essential to have a cohesive feed with the same presets and everything very aesthetically pleasing? No, it’s not essential, but I definitely think that it helps and I myself can say that once I started having a more consistent feed, I started growing a lot quicker. And I think brands also really appreciated that and they knew what to expect from me and from my content whenever they reached out to me. So I do think it does play a big part, and it’s something for you to consider as you work on growing your influence and improving your content creation. If you liked today’s episode, please subscribe and leave a five star review. And don’t forget to head over to the mommy influence their podcasts insiders group on Facebook. And tell me all your favorite tips for anesthetic feed and let’s really dive into the conversation a little bit more. Bye guys.