I frequently tell people that Instagram is my favorite social media platform. As a photographer, I find it is an easy way to increase exposure and allow people to see a nice representation of my work.

I have had an Instagram account since 2013, and since then, I have carefully curated my content and tried to create a consistent look.

I pride myself on the organization of my Instagram posts. While I may not have many Instagram followers, I do enjoy posting on the platform and sharing photos with my friends, family, and clients.

Friends of mine have trusted me with their account passwords and allowed me to archive posts in order to format their accounts in a more aesthetically-pleasing way. Unfortunately, I am unable to sign in to everybody’s Instagram accounts and format them.

I thought I would share with you one of my biggest tips on how to make your Instagram more consistent, clean, and organized. Hopefully these tips will help you stand out from the sea of influencers and really have a clean-cut look to your account.

Establishing an Organizational Pattern

One way to make your account look more organized is by creating a more organized look for your profile. On both my personal and business accounts, I have decided to post in rows. I personally like the way that this looks, and I think it divides up each row well.

While I like the look of rows, some people, like my friend and fellow photographer Mariah Johnson, @mj_media on Instagram, prefers to use columns.

Other organizational patterns include cubes, boxes, diagonal lines, or a checkerboard pattern. Since I have the most experience with posting in rows of three, I am going to focus on how you can accomplish that look on your Instagram account.

While rows are so satisfying to look at, they may be hard to accomplish if you aren’t willing to archive former posts or delete and start over with a blank account, but there are a few ways to get around it.

Before you do this, you would have to do is make sure your posts are divisible by three. Essentially, if you scroll all the way to the bottom of your account, you should not have one or two posts at the bottom, but you should have a full row of three. If you have one or two posts, you either have to remove one or two posts, (simply archive, don’t delete), or you can post either one or two photos to complete that row.

Once you have accomplished this, you can do one of two things. The first thing you could do is post a divider row. This can be very irritating to your followers, so be warned, just in case you lose a few.

A divider row will consist of three photos. Most people either do blank posts of just one color, or some posts with words on them. To make them more interesting to your followers, I would post three photos that relate to each other and aren’t too far out of what you would usually post. For example, three photos of beaches you have visited, three similar landscapes, or something of that nature. On my personal instagram account, I have a row that could serve as a divider row of three different telescope type things on top of major land marks.

After your divider row, you can post your first row. I recommend not posting all three photos from that row on the same day. Not only it irritating to your followers, but it also decreases the amount of likes you may receive on one photo. Of course, if you have thousands of followers, people probably won’t mind you posting several times a day, but for smaller accounts like my own, I advise spreading your three photos over the course of a few days.

The other way to go about this is to simply start posting in rows, and skip the divider row. After two or three complete rows, it will become clear on your profile that you are using a new organizational pattern, so the divider row is more of a clear division that some people prefer, but isn’t a necessity.

In a later post, I will share some more tips for posting on Instagram, including apps I use for editing and organization, post planning, and other tips.

Do you use Instagram? Feel free to follow me, @kirstenimages, and check out the content I post.