Picture this: you’ve spent days brainstorming a fun new product launch campaign. You invest in a team of photographers and graphic designers and spend your perfecting your captions to produce the best content possible.
But when it’s finally posted to your Instagram account, the quality is off. In fact, the whole video looks blurry and pixelated. Suddenly, everything you worked so hard on has come undone.
If the above scenario sounds familiar, you’re not alone. In the world of social media marketing, high-quality posts are essential. Not only is it more visually appealing to users, but it’s key to ensuring your content is prioritized by the Instagram algorithm.
Thankfully, there are a number of tips and tools to ensure you avoid the nightmare of seeing your hard work turn into pixelated, blurry posts. Read on to find out how to upload high-quality content to Instagram!
Why high-quality posts on Instagram matter
With more than two billion monthly active users on Instagram, the social platform is visual-first. Unlike LinkedIn and Facebook, which are suited to posts of long-form written content, the focus on Instagram is imagery. Whether in photo or video form, this imagery is what connects users, drives engagement, and strengthens brand recognition across audiences.
Whether you’re looking to educate, inspire, connect, engage, or drive sales, all of this can be achieved with high-quality posts. Still need convincing as to why high-quality posts are so important on Instagram? Consider these reasons, too.
- Boost credibility and professionalism as a brand: High-quality posts are essential when it comes to gaining audience trust on Instagram, with reports revealing that 70% of shoppers turn to Instagram for their next purchase. High-quality posts boost your credibility and professionalism as a brand as they not only highlight your product or service but make audiences feel more confident in their purchase which can drive sales.
- Communicate a brand message: Research shows that people remember 10% of what they hear after 72 hours, but when imagery is used, this number skyrockets to 65%. Ensure that your content utilizes high-quality, relevant images so you can communicate key messages that your audience will effectively remember and retain.
- Capture audience attention at scale with engaging content: With so much content available online, standing out from the crowd is imperative to gaining audience attention. With high-quality content that is tailored and relevant to the needs of your customers, you can capture and convert relevant users at scale.
- Ensure your content is save-worthy and share-worthy: When it comes to driving sales and increasing audience engagement, you need to create content that is shareable and widely saved. The likelihood of this happening decreases significantly if the quality of images and videos is low. Blurry photos, pixelated videos, and content that lacks closed captions are less likely to be shareable as the experience of viewing is low.
Your format-specific guide to uploading high-quality posts on Instagram
Here, we’ll take you through a format-specific guide for each kind of post on Instagram to ensure you only upload the best quality content.
How to post high-quality Instagram Reels
According to a study by Social Insider, Reels see an average reach of 30.81% on the platform, which is double the reach rate of other content formats available on the platform.
But while reach may be significantly higher, so too is the time involved in creating a Reel. To ensure your Instagram Reels are high-quality and high-impact, follow these best practice tips:
- Turn on high-quality uploads in your Instagram settings: It might sound odd that Instagram has a setting for uploading high-quality videos that can be turned off (shouldn’t high-quality be the norm?), but it’s actually not uncommon when you consider that low-quality makes for more efficient uploads. To turn it on, tap on your profile, select settings, account, and then data usage. You can then toggle on the high-quality upload button.
- Ensure you’re filming in high quality (4k): No matter your export settings, if you’re not filming your content in high quality, no setting will be able to raise its level of quality. If you’re filming with an iPhone, be sure to film in 4k. Typically, a good iPhone setting is 4k at 30 frames per second, as this is the native frame rate for Instagram.
- Check your export settings in your editing software: If using Adobe Premier Pro or CapCut, be sure to export in high quality. Typically, you’ll want to export in 4k resolution, mp4 format, and at 30 frames per second.
- Avoid editing natively in the Instagram App: Editing on Instagram can compress the quality of the videos significantly. As well as this, you want to avoid adding stickers to your reels as this can affect the quality.
Take this example from Tina Zhang, a creative who has grown her audience following to over 7,000 with posts on style and fashion that serve as an extension of her Substack. Recorded in high-quality, this Reel effortlessly showcases tips to style a particular outfit with sharp imagery, voice-over, and readable text overlays.
View this post on Instagram
How to post high-quality Instagram Stories
Data obtained by Tech Report suggests that over 500 million Instagram users access Instagram Stories daily. When it comes to posting high-quality Stories, be sure to apply the following tips.
- Use hi-res imagery as the background of your stories: Stories all start with imagery, whether that’s a video or still image. Be sure to use Instagram’s preferred Stories format, which has a resolution of 1080 x 1920 pixels and an aspect ratio of 9:16.
- Edit your stories slides in Canva: By utilizing templates on Canva, you can harness specific fonts that are readable and captivating for audiences. This also applies to logos and colors, which should be consistent across your branding to ensure audiences are able to better identify your brand.
- Ensure you’re exporting your Stories slides as PNG files: PNG images are higher quality and larger than JPEG images, so be sure to export your Stories slides in this format to avoid compression that can then distort the quality.
- Avoid adding too many stickers: As mentioned above with Instagram Reels, adding too many GIFs, stickers, and various emojis to your Stories doesn’t just compromise the quality and lead to blurry imagery, but it can also reduce the professionalism of your content.
Consider the example from the athleticwear brand, Gymshark. Across their Stories, they use high-quality imagery and ensure they keep any additional GIFs and stickers to a minimum. Here, they’ve overlaid text and a poll, being sure to use language that appeals to their audience and is consistent with the tone of the brand.
How to post high-quality Instagram Grid posts
Think of the Instagram grid as the main advertisement for your business. It’s from your grid that audiences will come to gain an understanding of your brand’s values, aesthetic, tone of voice, and services offered.
But while it’s one thing to carefully curate a visually aesthetic grid that flows seamlessly from one image to the next, if the content isn’t high-quality, all this work will be for little. Use these tips to post high-quality content to your grid.
- Turn on high-quality uploads in your Instagram settings: There are a number of reasons why Instagram might compress your images, but this can be avoided by ensuring the app’s settings are set to high-quality mode. Be sure to go into settings and turn on “upload at highest quality”.
- Design your content for the grid view (square dimensions): When it comes to posting to the grid, it’s important to understand Instagram’s requirements for images. This takes into consideration the aspect ratio, size of the file, and resolution, all of which should be in square dimensions at 1080px x 1080 pixels. But if you are designing vertical content (1080 x 1920 pixels), make sure you centre your content, such as text overlays, so it displays correctly in the grid view.
- Use a visual planner: By using Plann’s visual planner, you can keep all your images in one place and seamlessly schedule content. By doing so, you can create a strong social media strategy and ensure your grid has a cohesive feel, with consistent imagery that extends to colors, fonts, and the inclusion of text across the grid.
The Instagram grid of organic juice company Sol Cleanse is a great example. The earthy tones of green, navy, and sage are consistent across the page and reflect the brand’s core values of organic produce and natural ingredients. This consistency is mirrored in the fonts chosen, sizing, and tone of voice, all of which draw customers in and serve as the company’s strongest advertisement.
Upload and schedule high-quality posts on Instagram with Plann
High-quality posts on Instagram have a far bigger purpose than simply an aesthetic viewpoint. As we’ve seen, they can help boost your credibility and professionalism, engage audiences, drive sales, and communicate key brand messages.
Still, there’s a lot to consider beyond the content itself, which is why Plann’s all-in-one social media suite is an invaluable tool. Allowing you to organize, curate, and ensure your grid has a cohesive feel, this online tool will ensure your posts are of the highest quality.
Go on, and redeem your 7-day free trial of Plann Plus. If you don’t like it, keep using Plann for free!
