Your “Feed” Isn’t As Important As You Think It Is

You’re restricting your creativity and even success by putting too much energy on the appearance of your feed. 

Here’s the thing – your feed, while somewhat important, is not nearly as important as you may think. I have worked with over 40 businesses over the years, each with their own unique set of challenges, but one thing I have consistently heard from all of them was the desire to have a “pretty” feed on Instagram. Here’s the thing…

Aesthetics don’t mean 💩 if your content falls flat.

And even more than that, there’s another thing to keep in mind – most people that find your profile on IG are probably not going to see your feed. Take a moment to look at the analytics on your 5 most recent posts. Look at the reach and then look at the amount of people that clicked to go into your profile. Chances are, those numbers are wildly different. Or take a peek at your overall insights, look at your total impressions and then look at your profile views – bet the numbers also have a large difference.

It’s not uncommon for me to see a client’s post (or even one of my own posts) have reach in the thousands, but profile views in the dozens. Or total impressions over 100k but profile vies less than 1k. So what does that tell us? A few things…

1. Most users that see your posts don’t end up viewing your feed.
2. Your feed is typically not the thing that draws people into your community and into your fold, your content is.
3. You can post the same photo multiple times, on the same day, and chances are no one would notice.

Let’s dive into each of these deeper.

Most users that see your posts don’t end up viewing your feed.

Some of the largest, powerhouse users on Instagram have feeds you probably wouldn’t consider “attractive,” yet their engagment rate is phenomenal, with posts racking up thousands of likes. Why is this? Because ultimately your content is what matters the most. Put out quality content with an image or video that compliments that content, bare your soul and teach your audience something of value, and you’ll find that over time these posts generate more leads than a pretty, overused quote.

The one biggest exception to feed aethestics falls into the hands of influencers. In general, influencers are creating an experience for their fan base from start to finish, but for most of us service providers or even product providers, the content you put out there on an individual level is more important. This means your copy, hashtags, keywords, and imagery for that specific post should take up more of your energy than obsessing over the feed as a whole.

Your content is what draws people in, not your feed.

A popular quote that everyone shares is great for an initial influx of likes but rarely results in conversions. However, a well thought out, informative or useful piece of content may not receive as many likes or as much reach, but for the people it does reach and resonate with, those are more likely to convert into leads and eventually into customers.

What it comes down to is: Would you rather receive hundreds of likes on your post but no conversions, or would you rather lock in conversions even if it means far fewer likes? I know my vote goes to conversions.

Content can be reshared, carefully.

One thing I hear from so many is resistance around sharing the same image or same content more than once on social. Here’s the thing, you could share the same post at three different times on the same day, and you’d likely hit a completely different audience each time. There’s a few reasons for this, the biggest one being that different people are online at different times. Even more than that though has to do with the relevancy of your post – the more relevant and the more people that engage with it, the further it’ll go and the more likely it is to be shown. If we post the same post at three different times, but during two of those times an audience is online that doesn’t resonate with your post, it’s likely to not go as far. However, if during one of those times, an audience is online that resonates with that post, engages with that post, and shares that post – your social platform will recognize this behavior and is then more likely to share that one post.

So here’s the exceptions to this, and why if you are going to reshare the same content you want to do so carefully. First, sharing that same exact post over and over and over again may eventually get flagged as spam. If you are sharing the same content, slight variations are advised so the content isn’t identical. This may mean a graphic that’s been given a different color or a different template, an image that’s cropped in to a different position, or content that’s been adjusted to add a new point or a new question. Second, space the content out if you are resharing it, meaning don’t reshare it back to back. This way you’re even more likely to hit a different audience, AND the audience that has already seen it will most likely forget they ever saw it.

Feed Aesthetics Best Practices

Now that we got the above knocked out, let’s talk about what you can do to maintain an attractive feed with minimal effort. So if we’re not spending as much time on our feed, what are a few things we can do to cultivate an attractive feed WITHOUT obsessing over it?

1. Create a personal brand that includes no more than 4-5 complimentary colors. If you’re using Canva for your graphic creations, add these colors to your Brand Kit so you always have them handy.
2. Apply that personal branding to all graphics you create and rotate through them. Using the same colors consistently on your graphics, and having a set number of templates ready to go, makes it easy to stay on brand and not have to spend too much energy thinking about what you’ll create next.
3. Look for photos (or take photos) that tap into the colors from your brand. Save these to a folder or upload them into your social media scheduler this way you have them ready to go and don’t have to spend time trying to find the perfect one.
4. Maintain consistent typography in all your graphics, and limit this to no more than 3-4. Too many font choices (and color choices really) leads to decision fatigue while distracting from your message. Upload your font choices into your Brand Kit on Canva so they’re easy to find.
5. Stop focusing on vanity metrics and focus on creating an experience and sharing value. Likes, followers, etc. are just vanity and are playing into the popularity game. Stop getting hung up on these and instead look for what works and what’s pulling in the conversions, then do more of that.

In Closing

When we spend more time cultivating relationships and providing value to our community, and less time worrying about vanity metrics or getting the like, content begins to flow more easily and naturally. Once you stop stressing and obsessing over your feed aesthetics you’ll find your creativity begins to perk right back up! It’s amazing to think of just how much of our energy is drained when we worry about our feed aesthetics.