Dipping My Toe Into Instagram Branding

Photo by Evie Shaffer on Unsplash

As I am starting my own new business it suddenly dawned on me that social media branding and marketing is very important. Social media is probably the best way to reach people nowadays.

There are many social media platforms and each one is different. As an artist I turned my focus to Instagram.

Instagram is quite obviously an extremely visual social media platform. Therefore it is a good channel for a visual business like mine.

I quickly became really excited at the prospect of making my Instagram feed really unique! I saw many accounts that were simply stunning. They were unique, creative - the kind of accounts that you just wanted to scroll through endlessly. And the kinds of accounts that you really remembered even after you finished scrolling and put your phone away.

I want an Instagram feed like that.

I want to create something unique, something really amazing, something that people would just want to scroll through more and more. Something that they wouldn't forget even after they put their phone away.

But how should I do that? It became obvious to me that my vision and my skill level lived on two completely different planets.

I have no idea how to take a good photo. I don't even have any idea how to take a good photo of my art. I figured, maybe I'm not going to take any photos of my art. Maybe I'm just going to scan my art into the computer and digitize it and post it like that.

But then it doesn't really look hand made. Do I even want it to look hand made? After all, I enjoy digital art also.

There are many types of accounts on Instagram. Some share photos taken by others. Some share only photos that were taken by themselves. Some share their scanned art. Some share photos that were found on Unsplash or Flickr or different kinds of stock websites.

If I wanted to use a mix of photos that were taken by me and photos that were taken by others, would that be confusing? I have no idea.

My ultimate dream might be to make an Instagram feed where I had taken all the photos. But I also would like to be able to share cool photos that I just found on the internet that I hadn't taken. And I also want to make some Instagram posts on Canva for example, where you just take a stock photo of, let's say, a beach. Then you plast on your own phrase in a font of your choosing, let's say, "Relax!" or something like that. Then you just post it on Instagram.

Of course you can either use stock photos or you can use photos that you have taken. I think it becomes quite unclear which are which. I don't even know whether that matters or not.

I have no idea if I'm allowed to use Canva for commercial use. I think I am, because I googled it and it said something along the lines of, "You're allowed to use Canva for commercial uses as long as you use each picture only once. You're not allowed to use it again." But does that apply only to the photos or also to the shapes and frames and clipart? I don't know.

I feel like there's so much to find out. And in general, there is so much work with this Instagram marketing thing.

I couldn't be more excited, but I'm also extremely overwhelmed by all the things that I don't know and cannot yet do. I just have no idea how to make my Instagram feed look authentic and amazing and you know, like me!

That's what I'm trying to work out right now, because as a marketing channel, it is extremely important. Especially for an artist. Especially for an artist who doesn't do timelapse videos, like me. So I'm not on YouTube, for example.

I was thinking of doing a podcast as a part of this business.

So it's not strictly an art business, more like a slow living lifestyle business or mindfulness lifestyle business that I'm advocating. It's more like I want to live a magical life and to me that means slow living and a certain kind of minimalistic art and when I'm doing art, it's like a meditation for me, and I also meditate in addition to that.

That's basically what I want to do but I'm not sure yet.

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If you're interested in dipping your toe into Instagram branding as well but don't know where to start, check out the Preview App website. The Preview App is a free app that you can download on your phone. It lets you upload photos there and rearrange them in different ways so that you can preview your Instagram feed. There's also a bunch of features, such as frames and stickers and you can edit your photos as well. You can find a lot of tips and tricks about creating cool Instagram feeds on their website.

As always, really doing it for yourself is much harder than they make it look on the site. BUT if you're serious about this and Instagram is a big part of branding and marketing your business, Preview App is one option that you can try to get started.

I also recommend watching tutorials and actually learning social media marketing. It's a whole field that you can spend a lot of time studying. Chances are that in today's world you will need it.