HOME - Block #4. INSIGHTS
Block #4. INSIGHTS
Lesson 1: Visual planning of the profile feed
Planning your IG profile feed is not only a good way to create beautiful and structured content but also an effective method to achieve your goals.
This tutorial is not about automating the process of publishing posts but about creating a consistent visual style for your IG feed.
Visual planning solves several problems:
1. Make the account visually appealing. By planning your feed, you can arrange your photos so that they look harmonious side by side.
2. Form a unified style. It makes the feed beautiful and works for recognisability
3. Create an atmosphere. Thanks to a unified style, we can convey certain moods, ideas, and values to users. All this forms the image of your personal brand and sets the emotions that users get when they visit your profile.
The Inpreview app comes to our rescue for this purpose.
I have tried different similar apps but settled on this one. There is a free plan for one IG account, which suits me perfectly. Usability. In it, as in all similar apps, you can swap out posts to visually compose your profile feed. IG-style interface. And the most important factor that hooked me is the selection of photos for the cover of the post; it’s really convenient; just select a preview of the post, and immediately you can flip through the gallery endlessly looking for a suitable photo.
Lesson 2. The secret to the success of the top Reels
It’s absolutely certain that you can tell the difference between a fake and an original, right? It’s the same story with watching Reels. As long as you’re copying others, your content won’t evoke emotion in the viewer.
So my advice is to let trends flow through you and learn how to make content from your thoughts and feelings. The value of individualism (your real personality) is what is most important: when you broadcast exactly what you are made of, what you feel, what you love, what surrounds you, and what you think about. Being real, that’s the cardinal rule of success in everything. So if you’ve had a different approach to what you broadcast in your videos, re-strategize now. Remember, fake doesn’t work; it doesn’t interest anyone, it’s only annoying, and it’s immediately obvious to the viewer through the screen.
Readers of this course may come from completely different backgrounds, but absolutely everyone is applicable to this strategy.
Live Reels formats work well, after watching which the viewer feels a certain emotion.
You feel alive because the author touched you “” and shared his real values. You can’t achieve this effect by simply repeating trends or copying other people’s content.
Define your value to your viewers. Value is key. You have to give people a reason to follow you.
Lesson 3: How to create a visually engaging post
With each passing year, the competition for content creators on IG is only growing. And the quality of content posts is getting better accordingly. With the arrival of Reels, everyone started making videos and sharing them on IG – it’s a very powerful tool for attracting new subscribers and increasing sales on your blog. But you can’t forget about regular posts; they still work great they have their own separate recommendation feed.
In fact, the competition among those who make quality, interesting content is not so great. There is a certain regular group of such people who are driving content on IG all over the world.
Basically everyone is doing low-level content that only creates rubbish on IG. Not everyone realizes that. Most just shoot Reels every day and post them without any purpose and expect a miracle, but miracles don’t and won’t happen. It takes some serious thinking about what you’re posting, what you’re posting for, and what values you’re putting into it.
It’s no longer enough to take a picture of yourself against a tree on your fifth iPhone. Now you have to be above everyone else and do more than everyone else to succeed.
Back to posts. So how do we make visually engaging posts that are fun to look at and be inspired by and look at the details?
With the recent IG update, we all now have the option to pack 20 photos and videos into a carousel in each post. It’s best to use all 10 slots or more! The easiest way is to make the carousel a story of your trip somewhere or a story with a short clip of your past week. Out of 10+ slots, there should be 2-3 cool videos with cool music for each one (for this purpose, download some favorite tracks on your phone and overlay them on the video in CapCut), which you will want to watch again and again, sticky. The best for this are one-frame videos shot in slow motion iPhone camera at 120 fps.
It is very good to add photo or video collages to the carousel. They are interesting to look at; it engages subscribers in the publication.
But personally, I went further and specifically for posts, I make a full reel, which I stitch second in the carousel. I don’t post this created Reel as a regular Reel so that there is exclusivity of content in the created post. With this method, we create interest not only in the Reels tab in your profile but also in regular posts on IG. People become interested in anticipating your posts because they know there will be something interesting inside the carousel. They will want to share that content and comment on your content, thereby expressing their reaction and fueling the IG algorithms. And as a consequence, your post ends up in the recommendation feed, and that’s where you get the attention of a new audience. You get a new stream of subscribers to your profile; tell them about yourself. The lifetime of posts in recommendations is higher than in Reels, and there is a plus in this too.
Give special attention to the first photo in the carousel. After all, it is the cover in the recommendations feed. It is also the trigger of the whole post. The story begins with it. Therefore, the first photo should read well in a small thumbnail and cause a desire to click on it and consider what is hidden inside the post.
Personally, I get every post into my recommendation feed, but it wasn’t like that right away. To get in the recommendation feed, first of all, get your followers interested. Make your favorite audience active with your content. This is achieved through a combination of quality shot content, color grading, editing, the value you put into your content, and understanding what you want to convey to your audience through photo and video content.
Do more than the rest; put the maximum squeeze of your content into the post. To make it easier for you to do this, shoot a lot, shoot everything you think you find appealing every day. When you have a lot of content footage on your hands, it’s easier to put together an engaging post. It makes sense.
Lesson 4: Testing Reels formats
In this section I wanted to tell you that the best photo/video shot is the one you see. Shoot the way you feel, don’t look at anyone else around you. This comes with experience as you develop an eye for detail. Build your ideal image in your head or write down in notes what you find beautiful in terms of visuals. Identify 5-7 content topics for yourself that you will broadcast on your IG profile. Ignore trends, sometimes it’s so awful you think people have lost their minds.
There are different formats for submitting content to Reel. I’m going to tell you about my main content format, which is super dynamic content. I did it from the very beginning of my IG profile, thinking in advance about the strategy that people nowadays consume content very quickly. The attention retention factor and the depth of viewing plays into it.
And I’ve made the perfect formula for myself, in my opinion. This formula consists of a cool and high-quality visual photo/video + short Reel duration (4-8 seconds) + competent packaging of this content between each other in one Reel + Emotion.
But not everyone has such dynamic Reels that will catch on with your audience and make their way into IG recommendations. That’s why you should test different formats gradually.
I recommend starting with short mini vlogs of up to 8 seconds. The frames are 0.3-0.6 seconds each, depending on the sound you will use. Try to make in rhythm with the music, it’s a must!
Try to shoot one-frame Reels. But I’ll warn you right away, for this format you need a super strong visual in conjunction with some strong emotion that the audience should feel.
Test different formats, different content delivery in your Reels. When I started IG I used an aggressive publishing methodology, for the first week I uploaded 1-5 Reels a day, then waited a week and a half and analysed which Reels worked and which ones didn’t. The ones that got very few views I deleted immediately. As a result, I uploaded about 20-30 Reels a week and so I looked at which video formats worked for me and which did not. But algorithms change quickly and now I don’t think it’s worth it to move so aggressively on IG.
If your Reel doesn’t gain a lot of views in the first week, don’t rush to delete it. I have had many cases when Reel started working after 2 weeks and gained views within a month and a half. This was the case with that record breaking Reel on my profile that gained 6.3 million views. The first week it had 10k views, two weeks later it had 100k views, and within a month and a half it had grown to 6.3 million.
In general IG does not approve of deleting content, so if you really want to delete a post from your profile, it’s better to add it to the archive, it’s safer for your profile.
Try to publish a variety of content on your profile. You don’t want to post only Reels in a row. Alternate between photo posts and Reels.
Try to publish at least 1-2 posts per week. I had a few periods where I didn’t post anything for three weeks at a time. This of course affected my reach and profile stats in general. I recovered for about three months. The views dropped, and sometimes it’s not easy to get back to normal. So, if you undertake to maintain your IG profile, do it honestly and systematically.
Lesson 5: Telegram bots and neural networks
There are a huge number of neural networks on the market now, literally for any task. There are already more than 2000 of them. But I wanted to share with you what I constantly use myself. These are indispensable services for content creators. Also, my list will be supplemented by Telegram bots, which are simply necessary.
Neural networks
ChatGPT is a neural network that will help you write a script for a video or an engaging description for an IG post. Indispensable assistant. Works only with VPN. Installation instructions are easy to find on the Internet. Free service. https://chat.openai.com/
Adobe Podcast – this neural network helps make the voice on your videos sound like it was recorded on an expensive studio microphone. It also helps remove unnecessary noise. It’s free. https://podcast.adobe.com
Runwayml – top neural network for visual content creation. Includes a lot of very powerful useful tools that will surprise you. Personally, I most often use the removal of objects from the video and the expansion of the photo by the method of additional drawing. The service is paid, but it’s worth it. There are free 125 credits. https://runwayml.com/
Vmake.ai – enhances your photos and videos very well with artificial intelligence. Works quickly. Use only in extreme measures. Capture content at once with quality! The free plan has 5 credits per month. https://vmake.ai
Tensorpix.ai is another service to improve the quality of your photos and videos. I sometimes use this neuron for videos. The result is good. The free plan has some credits for testing the service. https://app.tensorpix.ai/
TopazAI – is the most powerful tool on the market that will help you increase the quality up to 8k with the help of inbuilt artificial intelligence algorithms. It will remove noise from photos and videos. It is possible to increase the number of frames on video. This is a programme for downloading to your computer. An indispensable professional tool with many possibilities. The programme is paid, but very cool. Tested personally. https://www.topazlabs.com/
Telegram Bots
@SaveAsBot – The bot will download photos, videos, reels, stories and texts from Instagram, Pinterest and TikTok in a couple of seconds. You send the bot a link and get the media file. Free bot. https://t.me/SaveAsBot
@WantToPayBot – Web application inside Telegram for issuing virtual payment cards. I often use it to pay for foreign services. Instant issuance of a card right in Telegram. https://t.me/WantToPayBot
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