When was the last time you critically analyzed your brand’s visual identity?

Maybe you’ve had the same logo since you launched your business. Perhaps you haven’t changed your fonts and colors since the beginning of your Instagram account. Or maybe you’re feeling uninspired by your current look and feel on Instagram?

If your Instagram account isn’t feeling aligned with your brand or the vision for your business, it’s time to make a change! To keep your brand current with your ideal customers and ensure you’re standing out in your niche, it’s important to keep your visual identity fresh and engaging.

Not sure where to start? We’ve pulled together a step-by-step guide to how to successfully rebrand your Instagram account and everything you need to consider along the way.

Create and design social graphics and stories in Canva, without leaving Plann!

Step 1: Identify your rebranding goals

Before you even consider your fonts, colors and new logo you need to answer this question: what do you want to achieve by rebranding your business?

Aside from simply changing your visual identity, you need to clarify exactly what objectives you’re working towards before starting your rebranding journey.

In practical terms, some of the goals you might have for your rebrand include:

• You want to attract a new audience segment or a different kind of buyer

• You want to modernise your business and boost your professionalism

• You want to carve out a new niche in your industry

• You want to create clear guidelines to ensure your social content is cohesive

By starting with your goals, you’ll be able to make strategic decisions about what new visual identity is right for your business. It’s all about putting your business hat on before you dive into the creative side of rebranding your Instagram account.

Step 2: Create a mood board

With goal-setting out of the way, it’s time to start gathering inspiration. Coming up with an entirely new brand identity is a big task and can feel overwhelming if you don’t have the right framework in place.

However, by starting with a mood board you can start to narrow down your new look and feel to make the next steps a whole lot easier.

We suggest creating a Pinterest board where you can save images, fonts, photography and graphic elements that catch your eye. Make sure to look beyond your own industry and save inspiration from a wide range of businesses and niches.

With this mood board on hand, you’ll be able to pull out common themes, graphic elements and even colors and fonts that might work well for your new branding.

Step 3: Select your brand fonts and colors

Now, it’s time to get specific about how you want your brand to look on Instagram (and across all of your marketing materials).

The best branding uses a specific set of brand colors and fonts that capture the vibe and personality of your business. Rather than using every color in the rainbow, narrowing down your color palette to four to eight shades will help followers to remember your brand on social media.

The same goes for fonts: make sure to pick an eye-catching heading font along with one or two supporting fonts that can be used for smaller headings and body copy.

Our tip: consider how these colors and fonts will work together when making your selections. Too many bright, bold colors may clash and too many crazy, creative fonts can be tricky to read. Instead, use a stylish mix of neutral shades with pops of colors to give your brand an elevated yet professional look.

Step 4: Craft new templates

We’re huge fans of streamlining your content creation process! One of the best ways to take the guesswork out of designing content for Instagram is using graphic templates.

By using a tool like Canva, you can easily set up templates that can be customized and edited time and time again. Think about the kind of posts you’ll be sharing on a regular basis (such as quotes, memes, testimonials, tips and Reels).

Then, design a couple of templates to fit each content pillar. These can be saved in Canva and edited quickly to speed up your content creation workflow.

Psst… did you know you can whip up all your amazing Canva designs without leaving your Plann workspace? Our Canva integration gives you access to thousands of customizable templates and the ability to design your own branded content right within your workspace.

Step 5: Update your Instagram account

With your new colors, fonts and templates ready to go, it’s time to refresh your Instagram account.

While rebranding your Instagram account might sound like a daunting task, it’s actually easier than you might think! Here’s a quick checklist of steps to help you update your profile:

• Upload your new logo as your profile image

• Refresh your bio and account name to ensure these reflect your new brand identity

• Update your Instagram Story highlights covers to reflect your new branding

• Share 3x new posts to announce your new rebrand

Hot tip: take advantage of Instagram’s new pinning tool and pin these 3x rebrand announcement posts to the top of your feed! This will ensure your followers get acquainted with your new look and feel.

Step 6: Create and schedule your rebranded content

The best part of teasing your rebranding on social media? It gives you plenty of time to Plann out your new Instagram content.

Here are a few things you’ll need to decide:

• When you want to roll out rebranding your business.

• What content pieces do you need to create for the launch (Reels, Stories, Feed Posts etc.)

• How much new content do you need to create?

• What are your new content pillars?

Once you have a rough plan, schedule post dates into your Plan calendar and work backwards.

What does that mean?

• Set the end goal (the due date for the content piece).

• Set a date for editing, writing the caption, and scheduling it into Plann.

• Set a date for when you need to film/shoot the visuals.

By working backwards, you’re breaking up the tasks into smaller chunks and batching the entire process instead of winging it.

Need some extra help Plann’ing your content strategy? Use the content prompts feature and select “Launch a Sale”.

You’ll need to tweak it slightly to fit your Instagram rebrand strategy, but it’s a good starting place to figure out how to roll out your messaging over time and educate your audience.

Step 7: Review, test and iterate

Remember: your branding isn’t set in stone! Once you’ve launched your rebrand, make sure to track your Instagram analytics to see how your new content is performing.

Why not run a poll on Instagram Stories to see what your followers think of your rebrand? This can give you instant feedback about how to adjust and improve your rebrand.

Plus, you can use Plann’s detailed Instagram analytics to discover which color palette is your best performing and which shades to ditch too!