The Feed

The Feed

The Feed is what you see when you open the Instagram folder and scroll down. Your posts here end up in the grid on your profile and remain there if you yourself don’t choose to delete or archive them.

The Instagram Feed differs from Stories and Story highlights, which you can read about in the sections devoted to them above.

POSTS IN YOUR FEED

Try to think through how your Instagram audience think and feel when you formulate your posts.

Make your texts straightforward and use a narrative style. You can also ask questions or otherwise encourage the audience to interact with you. It’s a good idea to read the text aloud to yourself before posting it to check that it is coherent and engaging. Unlike photos/videos, your captions can be edited after posting.
Use geotags, hashtags and @tags. These will make your post more searchable and increase the chances that more people will find your post.
The Instagram Feed is based on an algorithm, which means that you cannot count on it turning up immediately in others’ feeds. For this reason, Instagram is not ideal for posts such as “Guest XX will soon be appearing on the programme”. Design your post so that it is interesting and relevant regardless of when it will become visible in the feeds of your audience.

THE BIG PICTURE

Posts to the Feed should be seen on their own but also in their context. Unlike Stories, which disappear after 24 hours, posts to the Feed end up in the grid on your profile. And this is where they remain unless you choose to delete or archive them.

From time to time, zoom out and take a look at what your grid looks like as a whole. Does it reflect the content, newsroom/department and persona of the account? What does it say about you? Are there any colours that pop out? Is there a lot of text? Which posts stick out, and which do you want to emphasise for further reading?

Focus on quality and think future: posts create a kind of archive of your work.

CONTENT FROM SMARTPHONE/DESKTOp

You can take photos directly in a smartphone, but you can also take photos with a camera and then transfer them to your smartphone for uploading. Some cameras have Wi-Fi functionality which allows you to send the photo wirelessly to your smartphone. Other ways to transfer are Dropbox, WeTransfer, AirDrop, among others.

Decide on what feeling you want to communicate with the photo.
Be aware of the lighting. Avoid yellowish light from light bulbs and use white daylight from a window for example. Outdoors? Position yourself in the shade.
Be aware of the background. It should not take the focus away from the story you want to tell with the photo.
Get closer for portraits. Your photo needs to work well on a smartphone screen.
Look into the camera if taking a picture of yourself (not of yourself on the screen).

Actively direct the person/s you are going to photograph. If your story is about someone who is upset for example, the person should not smile in the picture.

MAKE THE MOST OF YOUR PHOTOS

Images that work well on Instagram:

Images that TOUCH people. Touching news, current affairs, stories we feel a lot for.
Images that ENTERTAIN. These make us like the image and alert friends.
Images that CREATE AN IDENTITY/PERSONA. Such as subjects that are engaging. Think in terms of: “I am the kind of person who cares about XX”

SLIDESHOWS

You can upload multiple photos in a post. Followers are made aware that the post contains multiple photos by an icon in the upper right corner of the first photo in a slideshow. Things to think about:

Which photo should come first. It will appear as a single photo in the grid on your profile.
The order in which the photos will be shown (think narrative).
How you caption your slideshow.

CAPTIONS

Photos are the focus on Instagram – but the caption you write also matters.

The first sentence is the most important.
You can caption a photo in the feed with a text of up to 140 characters. If the caption is longer than this, a Read more option will come up. All in all, your caption can be up to 2200 characters including hashtags (a maximum of 30 are permitted).
Longer captions are not a problem on Instagram. On the contrary, a good photo with a caption that encourages further reading can do very well.
Avoid using the feed to remind people to listen to FM radio or to link to other media. It might take a long time before the post actually appears in your followers’ feeds and so a caption such as “don’t forget to listen at 4 PM today” quickly becomes old news.
See your profile as an archive of photos that you curate. Give your followers native content.

LINE BREAKS ON INSTAGRAM

Do NOT insert manual line breaks between paragraphs.
Blank lines do not show up.
Instead, create space between paragraphs by using a full stop or an emoji for example.
Writing the text first in the Notes app is a good idea!

In Stories, your post will disappear after 24 hours. There, you can post items that are more current, and are more or less expected to be. This also means that you don’t always have to be as careful about the image quality. Read more about Instagram Stories here.

This is what you can do in posts to the Feed:

Replace or edit a photo/video already published (however you cannot edit a caption).
Get a clickable link (so don’t worry about putting links in the caption). On the other hand, you can tell followers that there is link in your bio.

MAKE THE MOST OF YOUR VIDEOS

Before you make a video, decide on the feeling you want to communicate to the viewer.
You need to captivate the viewer within the first three seconds.
Video in daylight, but not in direct sunlight. Switch off indoor lighting and video by a window or use a full-spectrum daylight bulb.
Video in an environment that says something about what you want to say, but that does not interfere with your message or steal the focus.
Remember to look into the camera, not the screen, if you video yourself with a smartphone.
The microphone on the smartphone or camera has a range of one metre. Otherwise use an external microphone.
You should preferably caption your videos as few people view videos with the sound on. Have a good contrasting colour or shaded box behind the text and make sure that the text is easy to read.
You can edit the video and choose a cover photo before upload it. Slide your finger along the video clip under "Cover" and pause when you get to the photo you want to use. Choose a photo that will invite curiosity – a good photo in itself and one which represents the content.
Think dramaturgy when you make your video.

PLANNING AND SCHEDULING

It’s a good idea to plan the Feed in advance as far as possible rather than just uploading on the go (in that case Stories is a better option if you are reporting live, for example).

You cannot schedule your posts in advance on the Instagram app, but on the other hand there are various external tools for doing precisely this, among them Hootsuite, Buffer and Falcon. They often have a subscription cost but allow you to set up the Feed you want in advance.

It’s easy to become blind to your own content. Take a critical look at your profile. What do the photos look like as a group? Which colours pop out, what feeling is being conveyed, what does this particular photo say about the account? What would a person first encountering your account think about it? Does it invite clicking on and following?

AUDIENCE DIALOGUE

The audience’s impression of you and your credibility is influenced by how comments fields are managed, so remember to moderate all comments and be a presence in comments threads on Instagram.

On Instagram, you can:

Delete comments that are in breach of Swedish Radio's Comments Rules.
Use a filter to search for words that are not permitted in comments.
Turn off comments on individual posts (use this function with caution).

Make it a habit to check your DMs and respond to the people who write to you.
You can also send DMs to the people who have contributed to comments threads.
Remember that posts from both Feeds and Stories are shared frequently via DM.

DM groups allow you to send posts to more than one person at a time.