But first, photography:

Hire a professional, if you can.

Photography is a whole other field of expertise, and I always advise hiring a professional where your budget allows — it is SO worth the investment to schedule in some shoots. Show the photographer your brand moodboard and key words, to ensure they understand the direction.

It’s also great to have some branded content on hand that you can dip into for your content creation process. Think of it as your own personal stock image library.

Depending on your brand’s purpose, brainstorm a range of ideas for your shoot: portraiture, silhouette, motion blur, product shots, work in process shots, lifestyle/candid, shots of your tools or materials, personal and family shots, close ups, food photography, etc.

Maximising your own photography process:

The rest of the time, you can apply some simple tweaks to your own photography process to help your feed look more cohesive:

1. Your photos should all reflect the same mood / evoke the same feeling as your moodboard. Pay attention to the lighting, angles and environment and use that information to replicate a similar look and feel. What does the background look like? Are there any props or are there none? Keep your key words in mind when shooting every photo. In time, you'll know exactly what works and what doesn’t quite fit.

2. Always take more images than you think you need, then cull agressively. Only the absolute best will do!

3. Use the same photography presets / filters on all your photos that have been recommended for your brand.

4. If you have an image that you really want to use, but the colours are still not looking quite right even after editing, it may look better as a black and white post. Monotone images marry well with any brand style, and it’s a great way to break up your feed and still maintain coherence. Still not looking quite right? It’s probably better to leave it out entirely, and try something new.

Right, onto the tips + tricks ...

1. Use your brand Colours in the real world

By sourcing clothing, accessories, props and decor that match your colour palette, you can help your brand colours to show up in a more organic and subtle way in your feed. Something as simple as painting your nails, adding a hair accessory, or using a pen one of your brand colours can help tie everything in beautifully.

2. Use a social media planning app

Using a social media planning app allows you to upload and preview how a batch of images will look together on your feed before they are published. Planoly or Plann are good examples. They also preview your unpublished, new content alongside your published, existing content, so your feed doesn’t miss a beat. You can rearrange the order of new content by dragging and dropping, and replace images as needed to ensure you get everything perfect.
Note: You can also schedule your content to automatically publish using these apps, but the Instagram algorithm isn’t a fan of this. Instead, I recommend you just use these apps to plan your content, and still manually post the content to Instagram when you’re ready.

3. Choose consistent themes for your content: called "content pillars".

I recommend selecting 2-6 content themes and consistently posting in those categories. They should be topics you are passionate about and can easily talk about, week after week. This will foster a natural, overarching coherence. Rotate, rinse and repeat. For example, if you’re an influencer, you might choose: Fashion, typographic quote, candid/lifestyle shot, Ad or sponsored content. Or perhaps you’re an artist: Work in progress, studio scenes, finished artworks, process videos, nature inspiration.

4. Feed vs. stories

Content on your feed should be curated to suit your aesthetic. This doesn’t mean your content can’t be candid or even ‘messy’ if that is your style, but your content should still be photographed well and look engaging and in line with your brand style and mood. You can be more flexible in your Stories and IGTV, because this is where you speak more to your existing audience. However, your feed is definitely a first impression for new followers.

5. Negative space is your friend

This means utilising space as a design element in itself. Use thick margins of space or lots of background around the focal point of your image. Your feed will look much cleaner and professional. You can still incorporate busy images with little or no space, but I recommend posting cleaner images around those for balance. For example, don’t post five busy images in a row, otherwise you feed will begin to look cluttered.