Rule Number 1: Take A Good Shot

The one thing that is important about pictures is just making sure that the environment, the lighting, and the background is up to par before taking a shot. Solid backgrounds like a white background or a colored background accentuates the skin tone and adds a nice contrast.  If you can’t find a white backdrop outside and you want to shoot inside then white backdrops can be easily purchased from Amazon.

Rule Number 2: Make Sure You Have Good Lighting

The best times to shoot for natural lighting is at the first hour of light after sunrise and the last hour of light before sunset. It is during this time frame that the sun is low in the sky and it produces a soft diffused light. If you can’t wait for the golden hour then other great photography accessories include purchasing soft box lights and overhead lights that can give you a nice glow when set to light your environment appropriately.

Rule Number 3: Make Sure You Have A Clear Lens

A clear lens and camera is also essential to a good shot. The cameras that I use are my iPhone for selfies and my Nikon D5500 for full body shots. As long as the environment, the lighting, and the shot is focused then the combination of these elements can lead to a good shot.

Rule Number 4: Sharpen and enhance with the iPhone’s edit tool or Facetune

Once you have taken a good shot then there are further tools you can use to sharpen and enhance the image. The main tool that I use to sharpen and enhance my images is simply utilizing the edit tool on my iPhone and adjusting the levels of exposure, brilliance, highlight, shadow, contrast, saturation, etc. till I achieve a desirable level of sharpness and vibrance. I also sometimes utilize the app Facetune 2 and I specifically use the detail feature and the vibrance feature to highlight certain aspects of my outfits. A great tip to also whiten a background is to utilize the whiten feature usually used for teeth on the background to create a very crisp and white seamless background.

Comment down below if you have tried any of these techniques or have another way of taking your photos!

• Post When Your Audience Is Most Active – Each social media network has a better time for posting. Finding the best time to post is all about testing to figure out which time and day is best for your audience. Details on how you can test your audience can be found in my blog post “The Ultimate Guide On The Best Time To Post On Social Media”
• Discover The Best Posting frequency – The amount of times that you post on social media is important because if you post too much then you may see a decline in followers versus a an increase. It can also be detrimental if you do not post enough content. Balance is a key factor in building engagement and followers by discovering what frequency works best for your audience. Setting up a social media schedule at different time will help you to test out the right frequency for your audience and Coschedule has a an excellent social media posting schedule to get started on timing your social media content (https://coschedule.com/blog/social-media-posting-schedule/)
• Quality over quantity is essential – Quality is essential in building brand credibility. It is also important to get content up but also ensure that the quality of your content isn’t going down because you want to fill the quota. Keep a journal to write with or a notepad on your phone to write down your ideas and try to find things that inspire you to create better content. Mix up your content and find different ways to attract your readers to click on your content. Mix up your wording or add an image or video to spice up your content. Always stay true to your authentic voice and have fun.
• Consistency is key to success – Consistency is important to anyone starting out from nothing of whom is trying to build his or her audience. A consistent posting schedule will also let your audience know when you have posted new content.
• Automate your social media posting – There are several sites and apps available to automate and schedule out your posting in order to release the pressure of scheduling out a large amount of content manually. Sites like Twittimer for Twitter, Hootsuite, and Coschedule provide services for scheduling content effectively.

Facebook Audience- Facebook’s audience consists of mobile and desktop users as it is used at work and at home. The way that Facebook is used depends on the individual using it as the demographic spans a crowd as young as 14 to 65+.

Twitter Audience – Twitter is hard to pin down and highly audience dependent. It is used as a stream of consciousness or an RSS feed as people utilize Twitter the most during down times and commutes.

Pinterest Audience – Pinterest users are highly active in the evening as it is used in the same way that an individual sets out time for their evening television.

Instagram Audience – Instagram is a platform that was created for mobile and therefore it is utilized at all times of the day. It is also a highly visual platform so the image quality and layout of your feed is important to capturing new followers.

Social media is all about testing to figure out what is best for your audience. Co schedule has conducted a study and has presented the best times to post based on collected date. It is a great start to test these times and then to keep track of your likes, comments, shares, and engagement at each time to determine what day and time is best for your brand.

Facebook

Best Days – Saturday and Sunday are the best days to get the most engagement and close seconds are Thursday and Friday

Best Times – 9AM, 1PM and 3PM are the best times to post on Facebook but 3pm will get you the most clicks while 1PM will provide the most shares.

Twitter

Best Days – Wednesday

Best Times – 12PM, 3PM, and 5PM-6PM

Pinterest

Best Days – Saturday and Sunday

Best Times – 2PM, 9PM, and 2AM

*Best Time + Day – 8:11pm on Saturday

Top subjects of the day – Monday (Food), Tuesday (Fitness), Wednesday (Quotes), Thursday (Outfits), Friday (Gifs), Saturday (Travel)

Instagram

Best Days – Monday and Thursday

Best Times – 2AM, 8AM-9AM, and 5PM