One of our most popular requests here at Inspired Stock Shop is giving tips and tutorials on how to best utilize our photos on Instagram! We love showing you the fun ways we use them and want to highlight five of our best tips on consistently showing up on Instagram and using our stock library to really help your brand stand out!
Before diving into the 5 ways to use stock photos to elevate your business on Instagram, we first want to recommend the online design platform, Canva, if you’re not yet familiar with it.
We use it to create all most of our graphic assets here at Inspired Stock Shop and highly recommend it for anyone looking for a quick and easy solution to your graphic design needs.
The platform comes with endless amounts of fonts, templates, and designs to choose from to use for all of your online needs when you subscribe to the monthly membership. The free version also offers most of the basic options, but we guarantee you will want to go pro after diving into all the platform offers.
Here is a link to help you begin your journey using Canva!
Create compelling quote and educational graphics
Many of our members use our photos to create beautiful quote and info graphics using our photos as accents and background images.
Before deciding on a photo you could use, ask yourself, “what imagery would my target audience connect to the most?” This question is one of the most important to consider before putting anything on your Instagram feed that will directly impact your audience.
If your post is inspirational, a beautiful scenic beach or forest image may be perfect as the background with the text on top – OR – a photo of a woman running along the beach looking happy and free.
If you’re teaching your audience and showing off your expertise, consider the subject matter and what images would resonate with each point. If you’re giving some online business tips in your post, images of women in work spaces or beautiful flat lays in an office space would work really well.
The main goal is to make sure your content connects to the imagery you choose that your target audience will LOVE.
Uplevel your story covers with stock photos or our custom graphics!
Did you know that we have a growing collection of custom graphics within our membership? They work really well as beautiful story covers whether used as the main picture or the background with a Canva graphic image on top!
You could also find images related to each saved story collection that show what each highlight is about. For example, if your highlight is titled “Client Wins” you could use a photo of women cheers-ing with champagne glasses as your highlight image. This creates a branded look and fun feel to your Instagram aesthetic.
Use stock photos as story backgrounds or as story stickers!
We have a lot of fun creating ideas on how to create fun and interactive stories on Instagram on the TikTok platform (check them out here & follow us!).
There are so many fun ways to customize your stories with all of the features that Instagram has to offer. Simply, find a photo relating to the subject matter and use GIF’s, Text, and Stickers to customize it. See a fun TikTok idea below.
Promote your program, course, or services!
We offer multiple workspace photo options with iMacs, iPads, & iPhones to give you creative ways to display your photos in an on-brand way. We also just recently added mock-up templates to our bonus library for our members to help you sell your services with ease.
Canva makes it easy to add photos or videos to screens on photos to display them seamlessly. We wanted to create a fun and beautiful way for soulful women entrepreneurs to share about their new offerings. Now you can!
Color block your feed with stock photos
You know those beautiful instagram feeds you see with gorgeous aesthetics and everything is posted to perfection? They are super intentional and on purpose because they plan ahead and color block. If you haven’t heard this term, all it means is to intentionally choose photos that match your brand and feed aesthetic and to plan it out before it goes live. You can now do this with Canva Pro or on platforms like Planoly, Later, and HubSpot.
We couldn’t recommend this practice more! We do this for our feed here at Inspired Stock Shop so that you are constantly inspired by our aesthetic and connect to our brand. This is also why we are so inspired to curate beautiful images for you to do the same with your audience.
Choose photos that are in your brand color scheme and plan them out cohesively before their live date.
A pro tip is to make sure at least ONE color in every photo next to each other has one similar color. For example, if you post a photo with green, blue, and white as the color scheme, make sure that the next photo you post has the same exact green, blue, OR white color within it.
We hope these tips were helpful and inspire you to use your inspired stock photos in a more intentional way! Follow us on Instagram for more inspo and ideas or join our Facebook community to connect with other members!
We are so grateful you are here.
Claire & the Inspired Stock Shop Team xx
