Stop making this mistake on Instagram!
Stop making this horrible mistake on Instagram...
Otherwise, it will affect the Instagram user experience for your tribe!
Every now and then, when I sit down to create a piece of content, I second guess the value it would provide my followers, so, I end up scraping the idea…
...only to see, moments later, a real-life example of why I felt the need to write it in the first place!
Ohhhh, universe - how you toy with me and my emotions, :)
I was on Instagram recently and noticed in my feed a post from a colleague that had text included directly onto the image.
Great.
Unfortunately, the text on the left side of the image was completely cut off so the majority of the words were chopped off the screen.
That blows.
So, therein lies my motivation for sharing with you a very simple fix that’s natively built into the app in order to avoid this problem.
By making a quick adjustment to the crop, you can change the default square orientation into a full-sized portrait (vertical image) or landscape (horizontal image) photo.
Let me show you what I mean with one of my recent image posts.
When I post to Instagram, my photos appear like this:
On the initial image upload page, Instagram defaults to their traditional square format, thus, centering whatever photo you have, regardless of the content included in the image.
As you can see here, this is exactly how the post I mentioned earlier looked on my feed.
Now, yes, you technically can figure out the rest of the words that were chopped off, but, honestly, this looks like shit and is not a great way to present your thought leadership, or your brand, in general.
There’s two ways to resolve this issue.
Option 1 - you see that greater than, less than symbol thingie in the lower left corner of the image preview box? That is a crop resizer. If you tap that, the image will automatically resize to show the whole image, whether it’s a portrait or landscape-oriented photo.
Option 2 - you can adjust the crop of the image by double tapping the photo, and it will automatically resize to fit the entire frame. If you’re a fan of “pinching” to zoom in or out, you can do that, as well.
Before every post, I make sure to employ either option to make sure that the image is correctly presented.
Ahhh, much better, :)
Now, you don’t just need to resize to full landscape or portrait orientation simply to reveal all the text on the image - sometimes it’s based solely on a creative decision.
Take this recent image I posted.
Again, Instagram defaults the images to centering the image in a square orientation. From here, I could tap and hold on the screen and slide this image to the right in order to not crop the subject’s face.
But, the laptop now looks ill-placed in the shot and it just looks clunky and is distracting to me.
As a result, the photo also feels tight and constricted and this certainly wasn’t my intention when I photographed this scene.
But, once I adjust it to be a full-framed, landscape post:
There we go, much better, :)
The entire vista is included in the post and it feels more natural.
Although you can show full portrait or landscape orientation, this does not mean that every photo you take needs to be displayed in this manner - sometimes, the square option is the better option.
For example, when you create profile pictures for your social pages, a pre-cropped square of the photo you want to use is the way to go because each social platform bases their profile avatar on a square orientation.
Also of note - even when you opt for the full-sized landscape or portrait orientation, your photos will still appear as a center-cropped square on your Instagram feeds.
Yes, there is a way around that, but, I’ll save that for another post, :)
Too impatient to wait - contact me directly for the lowdown!
PS - For those of you who aren’t in the know, I mail out these blogs 3x a week, and lemme tell you, they’re a real party, so, if you’d like to get in on this, sign up for it here and I’ll throw in a free gift for you...because I care, :)