If your Instagram engagement is low, there is one major reason your Instagram followers might be ignoring your posts and it has nothing to do with the algorithm. I’ll tell you that reason, but to understand it we first need to talk about your brain.
How Your Instagram Followers Process Information
Your brain’s main job is to keep you alive. To do that it has to burn a whole lot of calories. In fact, your brain burns more calories than any other organ in your body, demanding 20 percent of your resting metabolic rate (or 11 calories per minute). Processing new information takes up a lot of that energy, so to conserve it your brain constantly scans your environment for the most efficient ways to help you solve problems and get through your day.
When you’re bombarded with a mass of information that isn’t relevant to your survival, your brain tunes it out. It doesn’t want to waste calories on something that isn’t relevant to your basic needs.
For example, if you’re hungry and you’re looking for a good burger place, an ad that highlights a singular tasty burger wins over an ad that shows a table full of food. Why? Because it solves your burger craving the fastest, meaning your brain has to burn fewer calories to get what it needs.
So, what does this have to do with Instagram?
Confusing Design Sabotages Your Instagram Posts
If your business’s Instagram posts are busy, cluttered, or confusing, your followers will tune them out, because your posts fail to answer their basic question, “How does this information help me?”
The key to scroll-stopping Instagram posts is understanding how to arrange visual information in a way that helps your brain burn the fewest number of calories.
After watching accounts in my Instagram feed, I’ve noticed 3 common design mistakes that burn unnecessary calories and are actually incredibly easy to fix. Master them and you’ll instantly start attracting more attention to your Instagram posts.
Mistake #1: Text Over Busy Backgrounds
Text over busy backgrounds immediately sends warning signals to the brain to move on, because it has to work too hard to understand the message. Look at the image below and pay attention to how your brain feels as you try to process it.
This image includes multiple elements and multiple colors, making it difficult to read the quote “Sprinkles make everything better.” If you can’t read text overr busy backgrounds, neither can your Instagram followers.
Fix It By Adding Contrast
There are two simple ways to fix this image, and both include one of the key principles of design: add contrast. Contrast highlights the most important information so the viewer doesn’t have to expend a lot of thinking energy to understand the purpose of the image. Below are two options to add more contrast.
Option 1: Lighten the background image by decreasing its transparency until it contrasts with the text. Now the text jumps off the image at a mere glance. You can use this same principle in reverse by darkening the image with a tint and using a light colored text. Check out the image below and pay attention to how your brain processes the information this time around.
Option 2: Choose a plain background and pair it with an easy-to-read font and a contrasting color. If the image seems too plain, add a decorative frame to further highlight your message. Check out the image below. How hard does your brain have to work to understand this message?
Mistake #2: Not Enough White Space
White space is blank space around text or a graphic, which allows the most important information to become the focal point. Think of it as white matting on a picture frame. The matting creates space and further isolates and draws your attention to the photo, which is exactly where you’re supposed to look.
If your posts have text that spans from edge to edge, you’ll lose your audience. They have no idea what you want them to focus on and won’t bother to stop and figure it out.
Fix It By Omitting Needless Information
We get into the trap of cluttered Instagram posts when we try to cram in as much info as possible, thinking more is better. But as French novelist Antoine de Saint-Exupéry so wisely put it, “[You] have achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.”
Follow this principle by only including the most relevant information in your design. You can do that by asking these questions:
- Why am I creating this post?
- Who is the audience?
- What do I want them to do as a result of this post?
Once you’ve answered these questions, omit anything from your design that does not support the answers. And remember, in design it is not just words that convey information, but imagery. Both work together to answer these questions. Notice how these principles are applied in the images below:
Only include the most relevant points in your post and add the rest of the info in your caption, on a carousel, in your stories, or break it up to make a couple of separate posts.
Tip: if you’re not sure how to create more white space, at a minimum, start with at least 1/2 inch of space around all sides of your design.
Mistake #3: Using Too Many Colors or Fonts
Using too many colors and fonts can violate the rules of contrast and white space and can quickly overwhelm your brain. Pay attention to how your brain feels when you look at the image below. Are you compelled to look away? If not, then perhaps you’re trying to find a pattern. Maybe you notice the contrast of colors, the splatters of red and splotches of yellow. Or maybe you pick up on a certain line in the image, such as the piece of paper on the top right and the diagonal red bottle near it, which draws an invisible diagonal line down the center of the image. This is your brain trying to create order out of chaos.
In the digital, DIY-age, where everyone can promote themselves or their work through social media, most of your audience won’t stick around long enough to make these connections. You have to create order for them.
Fix It Using the 2×3 Rule
If you’re unsure how to mix colors and pair fonts, stick with what I like to call the 2×3 rule: Choose no more than 2 contrasting fonts and 3 complementary colors.
Fonts: The most basic font families includes serif fonts, sans serif fonts, and script fonts. If you’re not sure what whose terms mean, check out Google Fonts to browse all the different font styles and try them out for free. As a rule of thumb, each of these font families contrast each other, therefore, you could easily pair any of them together (i.e. a more decorative serif font with a less decorative sans serif font, etc.) The image below shows an example of a sans serif font (left) and a serif font (right).
Colors: Classic color combinations are those that are paired from opposite sides of the color wheel. For example, green/pink, purple/yellow, blue/orange. While they don’t need to be exact opposites, the key is to make sure there is enough contrast between hues that they are distinct from one another. The image below shows the variations of shades and hues on the color wheel.
The designs below show you how the 2×3 rule works together. The image on the left uses five different colors and three different fonts. It is not immediately apparent to your brain how the information in this design will make your life better.
The image on the right uses three complementary colors (a shade of blue, a shade of orange, and cream) and two contrasting fonts (a more decorative serif font on top and a less decorative sans serif font on the bottom.) Notice how you don’t have to search for the meaning or guess what this image is about.
Start by making these 3, brain-friendly adjustments to your Instagram posts and I guarantee your followers will take notice.
Post adapted from my original Medium.com article “Suck at Design? 3 Tips to Design Like a Pro”
