How To Step Up Your Instagram Game

It might be a sad thing to say but Instagram has almost become like a hobby to me. I think the reason is that I just love taking pictures but if no one ever sees them it's not so much fun. If you'd like to grow your account too, here a some tipps on how to make your gallery more appealing to other users. The overall look of your gallery after all decides whether someone hits "follow" or not. So let's start!

Colour Scheme
This seems to be the most important and most talked about point in discussions about Instagram - the cohesive colour scheme. When Instagram was kind of new in the days (2013) no one cared and just posted whatever they got in front of their lenses. Today the game has changed. You can't post anything, no, it has to fit the "mood" you picked for your gallery. 
My Instagram gallery is one of the more colourful ones as I am not a 100% strict about this point and switch up the colours I use every once in a while, but I also try to stay in "my colours" - touches of blue, pink, black and green. Others are very strict on this and for example ONLY post black and white objects/architecture/outfits. This way the gallery looks very consistent and followers and visitors will know what you stand for.

Keep it Square!
There are different opinions on this issue, but I personally prefer when ALL photos are square. This way the gallery just looks neat and organized. I know, a 2x3 ratio makes a better composition possible for some photos but for these cases Instagram now offers to show the full photo when clicking on it and the cropped version in the gallery preview. With this function your gallery won't get messed up by occasional landscape or portrait shots.
I usually have my Iphone camera switched to square mode from the beginning to make sure I have everything in the pic and don't have to crop things out later.

Light is everything!
Light is really the most important thing for a good quality photograph. I rarely take photos indoors under artificial light but always try to take them outdoors in natural light. Artificial light just often times has a yellow touch which I don't want in my gallery.
But also outdoors you can hit some struggles. In winter, when the sky is grey and it doesn't really lighten up all day, it can be difficult to take a sharp and shadow-free photo. The best you can do is to turn towards the sun (hiding behind the clouds) and make sure that at least your face hits some light. When taking photos indoors, definitely stand close to the window facing it. 
In summer, there's often the problem of too much sun. When taking a photo in direct sun, your face and outfit will look very hard and there will be shadows in your eyes and around every tiny elevation. Therefore in summer you should take your photos in the shade if possible.

Get it straight!
When I see a photo that is not straight, I want to scream "No, no, NO!". PLEASE take the 20 seconds of time to use the alignment tool! It's so simple and makes such a big difference.

Using filters is a little bit out of fashion I think. Times are behind us where photos looked very unnatural due to extremely pinkish or yellowish filters. Today you want to keep it natural but crisp. To achieve that kind of result, I like to use the apps Afterlight and Snapseed. In Afterlight I adjust the clarity, brightness, contrast, saturation and temperature. Most of the time I turn up brightness and contrast (lots of contrast!) and then turn down the saturation a little bit. Particularly for architecture and landscape shots, the clarity tool is amazing.
In Snapseed you can basically do the same but for selected parts of the image, for example in a beach pic you can only brighten up the sand while the rest of the picture doesn't change.
With editing, it is again very important to be consistent in order to keep your gallery neat and overall pretty.

Diverse Content
This point really makes me sweat sometimes. You don't want to have two selfies, fromwhereistands, food pics or whatever in a row but rather mix it up in order to not bore your followers and also keep your gallery look nice. So what if you really need a travel pic for example to have as a link to your next outfit photo? In this case it helps to have some back up shots you can do as a throwback (#tb). Wherever you are, take nice photos even if you're not going to post them right away. I like to save them in a particular folder on my iPhone that I can flip through and see what would fit next.

Talking about content, you should have a concept of what kind of content you want to post and try to stick to it. I noticed that followers actually like it when a certain topic shows up repeatedly in your account. I post my outfits and outfit details (obviously) plus some travel/places and food. Others add in beauty and interior for instance. Don't try to do too much so that the users will know what you stand for at first glance.

The Caption
The little line you add under your Instagram photos is quite important - especially when your photo is a little bit "boring" by itself. Adding a witty or funny line can make such a huge difference and lead to many likes. If you're using your Instagram professionally, try not to be too promotional or informative. That's what Facebook and Twitter are for, while Instagram is supposed to create emotion and humaneness.


  1. Tolle Tipps. Ich muss ehrlich sagen, dass ich gar nicht darauf achte was und wie ich poste. Wenn ich ein Bild habe das mir gefällt, dann lade ich es hoch. Ich achte z. B. nicht auf die gleiche Farbstimmung der Bilder sondern mir ist nur wichtig dass sie qualitativ gut sind :)
    Liebe Grüße

    1. Kann natürlich jeder machen, wie es ihm gefällt. Ich achte gerne darauf, dass das Gesamtbild einigermaßen farblich und thematisch ausgewogen ist:)

  2. Du hast einen wirklich tollen Instagramaccount und ich versuche schon seit geraumer Zeit all diese Tipps, vor allem mit dem Farbschema zu beachten. Mal sehen ob bei mir auch irgendwann der Durchbruch kommt :D
    Liebst, Katja

    1. Ich schau gleich mal bei dir vorbei;) Viel Spaß weiterhin beim Instagrammen!

  3. Tolle Tipps, deinen Account schaue ich mir mal genauer an :)
    Liebe Grüße, Mona


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