I use these apps for my Instagram ALL. THE. TIME!

You see other feeds and even insta-stories and you love the look of them, but you just aren’t sure how to get yours to look beautiful and cohesive but in your own style, right? These are the top apps that I use all the time and I don’t think I could give up when it comes to have a beautiful feed that fits my brand!

First of all, it’s hard to know how your whole feed is going to look ahead of time when you’re posting, so using a feed planner has been super helpful for me, as a visual person, to see how photos are going to look as a whole once I post them!

Visually Plan Your Feed with…

UNUM

Free

https://unum.la

Your feed is the first impression your potential followers have of you and what you do! When they land on your feed, you have just a few seconds to make them feel a certain way before they decide to follow or become uninterested. Even being authentic and showing more of the real-life stuff and not just perfectly curated and professional images, you can do that in the right way or in the wrong way! I plan my feed in UNUM so I can make sure the overall look isright for my brand. Some of my images have a golden backlit look, and some have a darker, moodier feel, and some are indoor lifestyle. I lay my images out in UNUM so the same type of image isn’t butted up against another because that pulls your eye back to that spot over and over and can be distracting. Also, I will space out images based on if they are an up close more detailed image or a pulled back wide shot, and then also I pay attention to alternating images with negative space and the ones with more going on in them.

Editing Your Photos

Lightroom Mobile

Free for mobile

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/adobe-lightroom/id878783582

     

From a branding perspective, you want to align your editing with your brands vibe and voice. If my business is a spa and I want my clients to come to my spa to feel peaceful and calm, I am not going to edit my images to have colorful, loud, overly saturated images, I am probably going to edit to have more natural earthy tones or clean whites. You also want to have an editing style that people can start to recognize as yours, you don’t want to change it up and have bright crazy colors one day and then muted tones the next. You want to define your style. If you do want to change up your editing style, make the decision and slowly start to fill your feed with the new style. Even though I have the different types of images (some backlit and golden light, some moody and earthy, some indoors, I can create a cohesive look in my portfolio and feed through my editing. In my brand, I focus on jewel tones and between the golden light, moody earthy images, and attention to skin tones, all of my images have a look that is personal to my brand.

Even if you are an influencer or just want your feed to look pretty, you can use these tips!

Edit Video (Tones)

VSCO

19.99/year video subscription

   

Editing video! For way too long I didn’t realize I could easily and pretty inexpensively edit the tones in my videos! If you use your phone to take video, for instance clips of your process or behind the scenes, you can use VSCO to edit those videos to also be cohesive. I have created custom video presets in VSCO that are similar to how I edit my images and so the content I am putting out goes together. I love being able to post series of images in my Instagram stories and when I have a video clip to put in there I want it to flow tones wise. Not that every single thing has to be edited, but if you feel like taking those video clips up a notch this is a great way.

Better looking stories-

UNFOLD

Free

   

This app. I LOVE it. Once you have your images edited and have a series you want to share, say your highlights from a client gallery, or a batch of images from your day, you can use this app to create a series of insta-stories without having to post each image individually in a story and having a funky crop for a vertical image or all that weird space above and below the image you’re posting if it’s a horizontal image. With this you get a nice clean background. You can choose several templates of different styles,  you can choose to use a singlmage or several in a collage, and you can add text with nicer typefaces than the ones Instagram stories offers.

Text Overlays

WordSwag

   

Free

This app is great when you have a quote or headline you want to overlay on an image! There are so many options for text and typefaces, and it’s super responsive to placing the text in visually pleasing ways, and you can click through several options if the words aren’t laying how you like them or emphasizing the right word.