Are you a slave to your Instagram Grid?
Instagram is visually attractive: but it's not blessed with great functionality, at least not for my needs, which is why I haven't posted there "properly" since August 2016.
I do still check the feed occasionally and respond to messages, but in August 2018 I made it clear that I wasn't posting any more.
My leaving message: "I do not post here any more" was ironic in that it used a flawed Instagram profile tactic which has since, for many, become an obsession: the grid.
It's not surprising that "the grid" has become a focus for many Instagram users. There are numerous articles on how to master your Instagram grid and comparing grids is common among Instagram fans. "Let me see your grid."
It's pretty and it looks clever.
The practice is also something that Instagram on Twitter (and Facebook on Twitter) have highlighted.
Is focusing on your Instagram grid actually a good idea?
While some attention to how your profile looks is a good idea, obsessing about it isn't. Here's why.
People (mostly) do not see your content on your profile.
They'll see a post from you in their single column home stream: along with posts from others.
In other places, like "explore" and search you post may be displayed as a grid, but not with your content, rather with images from other accounts.
Unless each post of yours works firstly as a stand alone piece of content you are delivering a sub-par experience into the home stream of your followers.
"Am I clever ... Am I grid obsessed, or over Instagram's shallow narcissistic looks?"
It's contrived, somewhat like my Instagram leaving message, but hopefully underlines how each post has to work alone, as that is mostly how your content is seen.
Focusing on the grid is a trap!
Other people don't care as much about your Instagram profile as you do, that's clear. But have you thought about how caring overly about how one separate image is displayed next to another separate image restricts how you post? When you can post .... what you can post!
Instagram's grid is three columns wide. To maintain your grids precious beauty (which your followers don't care about), you have to post three images that work together at once. So completing one fresh row on your profile.
Forget that, or maybe have an image that you'd really like to post NOW and you'll mess up that painfully curated profile grid.
The above image isn't a complete disaster I guess, but the more perfectly curated your instagram profile grid is the more garish the clash will be when one or two images push the whole thing out of sync.
It's a trap, extra work and considerations which you are probably better off not signing up for in the first place.
Don't be grid shallow.
Concentrate on good content for each post.
Be clever.
Don't obsess about how the grid on your profile works together, other people don't care as much as you do.
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