How to Make Your Instagram Aesthetic Stand Out in 2024

Believe it or not, 50% of the human brain is devoted to decoding visual signals. We consume content with our eyes first and brains later. This is a primary reason why aesthetic-heavy platforms like Instagram have captivated the hearts and eyeballs of billions. 

To succeed on a platform like Instagram that’s inundated with high-quality visuals and imagery, your brand needs to look good and “vibe” right. An appealing, cohesive Instagram aesthetic helps you grab mindshare on the cluttered platform, ensuring you attract the right audience and delight them with a positive first impression. With repeated exposure to your brand’s identity, click-happy users gradually start associating you with your visual elements not only on social but every public platform. Clearly, you need to apply good thought and strategic planning to develop an Instagram aesthetic that’s “uniquely you.” That’s what you will learn in this article. Let's dive right in. 

What is Instagram aesthetic?

Instagram aesthetic refers to the overall theme and presentation of your Instagram content - colors, filters, highlight covers, fonts, grid and other visual aspects that define your social media brand persona and identity. 

Think of your Instagram profile as a storefront in a crowded mall. The entrance and window displays are critical to pulling customers, right? That’s exactly how aesthetic works on Instagram – your profile’s aesthetic will attract potential followers and drive organic growth for you.  

Let’s understand with an example. Tala is an activewear-inspired fashion brand that’s passionate about sustainable living. It’s little wonder that Tala’s Instagram aesthetic is dominated by cool-toned and earthy colors; nothing too popping or unnatural. It features regular women (not professional models) in its content which celebrates body diversity and inclusivity. 

Tala’s models are caricatures of real life in casual forms - just like you and me. 

At one glance, Tala conveys that it lives and embodies its core brand values and this ingenuity is sure to win hearts, if not followers on Instagram! 

Similar to Tala, there are countless brands killing it with impressive aesthetics on Instagram, not just for earning top-of-mind advantage but many other reasons. 

Why should brands care about Instagram aesthetic

On a platform where brands and individuals compete for limited audience attention, you gain a lot by nailing your Instagram aesthetic. 

Spotlight your brand personality 

Visual aesthetics is the perfect way to communicate and reinforce your brand personality and mission. What people see is who they assume you are. A disjointed Instagram grid might signal disjointed services and scare away prospective followers (and customers). Ideally, your aesthetics should be so distinctive that it is identifiable from a mile away.  

Take a cue from Google Earth. One look at its Instagram page and you know exactly what you are going to get: satellite imagery of the Earth and immersive aerial maps. 

Become a follower magnet 

A strong, consistent and recognizable aesthetic will draw the right people to your profile. Instagram is not just an image-and-video sharing platform, but a powerful marketing tool that can be leveraged to attract leads. A harmonious Instagram aesthetic that resonates with your target audience can work as a lead magnet, converting casual profile visitors into followers and leads.  

Take a leaf from the Instagram marketing playbook of La Bruyere Farm. A combination of greens and earthy shades transports you to the quiet natural retreat – wind in the trees, gentle sunsets, open-air luxury. The brand takes on a personality that nature and luxury enthusiasts will find irresistible, be tempted to scroll, like posts or even follow the page. 

Create content like a pro 

An established Instagram aesthetic simplifies content creation. How, you ask? A brand that chooses to pursue a minimalist aesthetic can rule out bright colors or extravagant displays of any kind. With a laser focus, the brand can create or curate content that aligns with its overarching aesthetic, saving time in putting together themes, image concepts, video scripts, color selection, lighting, alignment and so on.

How to create a cohesive Instagram aesthetic

There’s some pre-work you need to do before developing your Instagram aesthetic.  

All effective social media strategies begin with audience research. It’s no different for crafting your ideal Instagram aesthetic. You must “listen” to your target audience and gauge what they want and need from brands. When implemented strategically, Instagram social listening provides real-time access to your audience's brand affinities, preferred influencers and hashtags. This goldmine of data will help you determine which aesthetic elements work best in your niche. 

While social listening can offer invaluable insights, implementing it across audience segments can be tedious. There are billions of Instagram profiles, comments and keywords to examine, and extracting insights from this heap of unstructured information requires a specialized tool, like Sprinklr. 

Sprinklr is built to understand and process unstructured data from online and traditional channels, one of them being Instagram. It surfaces the content themes and hashtags prevalent in your audience and your niche. Just follow them and you’ll see exactly what kind of aesthetics are winning in your domain.

Among other abilities, Sprinklr can: 

• Track visual mentions, even when the user does not tag the brand.  
• Track relevant keywords and phrases to find relevant conversations.  
• Surface relevant themes and trends using the added abilities of generative AI. 

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Step 1 - Establish your brand personality

Audience research yields deep insights about your audience, competitors and content themes. Armed with this information, you can establish a distinct personality or persona for your brand.  

A social media persona embodies the distinctive and steady character your brand displays across its social media channels. It encompasses the way your brand communicates, its core values and its engagement with its audience. These elements collectively forge your digital persona and influence the audience’s impression of it. 

Building a unique brand persona humanizes your brand, makes it recognizable and plays a vital role in engaging your social media audience. Think about all the prominent brands in any niche and you will notice they all have distinct personas. Nike stands for inspiration and a never-say-die attitude, Red Bull for energy and competitiveness, Oreo for playfulness and creativity, and the examples are endless. 

To determine your persona, ask yourself: 

• If I were a person, how would I describe myself in one line? 
• What are my core values and ideals? 
• Why should people follow me? 

 If you’re still struggling to style a persona for your brand, consider these templates as a starting point: 

📣 The informer: You thrive on providing valuable information to the audience in the form of industry news, updates, educational content, trends, research findings and so on.   

Example: National Geographic, The Economist   

🎵 The entertainer: Brands with this persona utilize humor, entertainment and relatable content to delight their audience. They use wit, clever wordplay, memes and trending humor.   

Example: Taco Bell, Old Spice 

🔗 The connector: Brands with this persona build relationships, engage in conversations and foster community. The brand actively responds to comments and talks directly to their audience.  

Example: Airbnb, Lululemon 

💡 The thought leader: Brands with this persona prioritize sharing their expertise, insight and innovative solutions with the audience. They offer articles, whitepapers, case studies, and fields results. 

Example: IBM, Harvard Business Review 

Step 2- Develop your style guide

The next step is creating a style guide that can be used across the board to deliver a consistent brand experience and reinforce your persona on social media. When your in-house, remote, distributed and agency partners - all speak in the same voice, your messaging is amplified enough to cut through the noise and reach the right eyes and ears.  

A social media style guide is an essential document that details your brand’s stylistic preferences on social media platforms. It covers aspects such as your brand’s voice, choice of words, hashtags, community interaction rules and visual branding. For the purpose of this article, we will focus solely on the visual branding aspect, which encompasses: 

• Typography: A strong social media presence heavily relies on typography, which is the skillful arrangement of text. It enhances legibility, sets the tone, and ensures uniformity. The right choice of fonts ensures that content is accessible to diverse audiences, establishes order and adds an element of visual appeal.  
  
  Bear in mind that typography transcends the mere selection of attractive fonts. It’s about crafting an experience. When you develop your brand font, you’re not just tidying up text — you’re defining how your brand is viewed.  
   
  There are brands who have etched a unique identity on the dint of their typographic elements alone. The New Yorker has a very distinctive font that has, over time, become closely associated with the brand.  
  Pre-define the acceptable fonts in your style guide so creative teams can go about making content without having to worry about the aesthetic every time.
• Color palette: A well-chosen color palette can harmonize your Instagram feed, spotlighting your brand values and driving recognition and recall. Circle back to Tala’s example, recall how the earthy, neutral hues reinforced that the brand stood for sustainability and eco-friendliness.  
  
  Colors also have the power to evoke emotions and set the mood for your content, which is why brands like Netflix use bold red and black to stand out from the pack. Your style guide should provide details on colors that are brand-approved, colors that can be tolerated and colors that are unacceptable.  
  
  There are certain dos and don’ts associated with color selection: 
  • Avoid overcomplicating by picking too many colors or complex color schemes that will confuse the audience and make your grid chaotic. 
  • Inconsistent color application can lead to disjointed brand experiences, so use the same palette in all your formats – posts, Stories, Reels etc. 
  • Consider accessibility to ensure your content is readable by diverse audiences, including ones with visual impairments. 
  • Prepare a mood board for visual brainstorming. Decide on colors (based on color psychology), pick complementary colors (using a color wheel) and combine them with textures, patterns and tints to get the desired palette, like below: 
    
• Filters: Creating a signature filter and using it across posts is a great way to present visual cohesion on your Instagram profile. Remember, the goal is to choose filters that complement your content and create a consistent look for your feed. It’s not just about the individual picture, but how the pictures look together as a whole.    
  
  Here are a few quick tips for filter selection:  
  • Adhere to your brand persona. Pick filters that emphasize your persona elements, which can range from opulence, minimalism, vintage, bohemian or outdoorsy.  
  • Analyze your subject: Different filters work better with different subjects. For portraits, you might want a filter that enhances skin tones, while for landscapes, a filter that brings out the blues and greens might be ideal. 
  • Lighting conditions: Consider the lighting in which you usually shoot. Some filters are better suited for low-light conditions, while others enhance bright outdoor light. 
  • Filter strength: Always adjust the strength of the filter. Sometimes, a subtler effect can be more powerful than a full-strength filter.  
    
    While staying true to your style, it’s good to be aware of trending filters and adjust your strategy accordingly. Also, closely watch your audience engagement to know what’s working with them and what’s not.  
• Grid layouts: Grid layout refers to the arrangement of posts on the Instagram feed. Each post represents a tile on the grid which can be arranged smartly to give a cohesive feel to your Instagram profile and help you plan content in advance. 
   
  When it comes to layout selection, the world is your oyster. You can create checkerboards, jigsaw puzzles, diagonal/horizontal/vertical lines, etc. and really play around with your grid. It’s also a good idea to use thick solid borders on tiles for a neat, uniform look.

Compile all the above visual elements in a proprietary social media style guide (examples below) and share it with all internal and external stakeholders to ensure uniformity. For inspiration, look at Skype’s and Mailchimp’s style guides below.  

Step 4 - Use templates for consistency

While grids govern the overall look of your profile page, templates do the same for individual tiles or posts. To put it simply, grid + template = appealing Instagram aesthetic. Building a ready-to-use template library helps your teams create brand-compliant content efficiently. 

Ideally, you should create different templates for different content formats and build them with the grid in mind. But if that’s a challenge, feel free to customize Instagram templates on websites like Canva. You get tons of options specific to niches, events, color palettes and more. 

Source   

Step 5 – Think beyond posts

Your Instagram profile comprises multiple visual elements apart from individual posts and grids. Profile pictures, highlight covers, stories, reels and IGTV are other foundational elements that should be painted with your style guide to deliver a cohesive brand experience. Repeated exposure to the same visual elements drives brand recognition, which is so important on ephemeral social media platforms.  

• Profile picture: Brands can use their logos and individuals their headshots on uncluttered backgrounds with circle cropping for best rendition on Instagram. Using brand colors is preferable and so is regular updation to keep up with seasonal trends, special campaigns and grid changes. 
• Highlight covers: Unlike Story covers, highlight covers are evergreen hence a fantastic opportunity to put your brand aesthetic centerstage. Choose complementary colors, stick to a theme/motif and always preview your covers before posting.    
  
  Looking for inspiration? Watercolor and wallpaper manufacturer Farrow and Ball nails its highlight covers with abstract paint swirls that showcase its product range. 
  
• Stories: They last for a day, so you can afford to be a little experimental, yet do not depart from the primary aesthetic. In other words, if your brand sells high-end haute couture, your stories should not feature neo-goth or cyberpunk aesthetics. Use stories for visual storytelling, apply compliant filters and overlays and ensure any constituent interactivities (polls, Q&As) are style guide compliant. 
• Reels: Reels have their own tab on your IG profile and are inherently discoverable via the Explore page, hence pay special attention to their aesthetics. Use the same colors, typography, editing style and filters as prescribed in your style guide. Don’t forget to customize the thumbnails and music clips as well. 

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Step 6 - Plan ahead

Planning your social media content calendar helps streamline content creation, so everything adheres to your predefined Instagram aesthetic, content duplication/grid imbalance is avoided and adjustments can be made on the fly without disrupting the content flow.

Measure the efficacy of your Instagram aesthetic

• Use engagement metrics: Engagement metrics such as likes, comments, and shares are the first sources of performance data for your Instagram aesthetic. Track engagement numbers before and after implementing a new aesthetic, preferably three weeks after publishing the first post in your new aesthetic.  
• Use polls to gather feedback: You can simply ask for feedback by creating an Instagram poll with questions like Do you like what you see? Dark mode or not?Minimalist or OTT? 
   
  For open-ended questions like What keeps you scrolling on a profile? the answer options should be straightforward -- the jokes, the photos, the slo-mo Reels, the mascot, the music and so on.  
• Solicit customer feedback via DM: Adding to the previous point, brands can also directly ask customers and followers for feedback on DM. Since it’s not possible to DM every follower, use the Broadcast Channel feature to engage with followers at scale. Once you receive all the answers in your Broadcast Channel, you’ll have to sift through them to identify patterns and preferences.  
• Do the scroll test: The scroll test will reveal how fast users are scrolling through your feed. If they scroll through somewhat slowly, it means they’re stopped to look at posts or the grid. If the scroll speed is high, then you can safely assume that nothing is catching their attention which is a veritable red flag.

Decrypt Instagram marketing with Sprinklr

Sprinklr offers actionable insights into social media impact. Sprinklr's comprehensive analytics, real-time monitoring and sentiment analysis capabilities provide invaluable support in determining the effectiveness of elements like the Instagram aesthetic of a specific brand.   

Sprinklr dives deep into performance metrics, comparative analysis, campaign tracking and robust reporting to help you: 

• Schedule posts and manage content across all major social media platforms   
• Monitor brand mentions and social conversations in real-time   
• Engage with followers and respond to comments and messages   
• Run targeted social media advertising campaigns   
• Track key performance indicators (KPIs) and measure social media ROI  

Check out a few success stories to explore how Sprinklr has been helping brands across the globe to manage their social media marketing effectively 👇  

Sprinklr has been helping brands across the globe to manage their social media marketing effectively

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