How To Make An Instagram Puzzle Feed

The trend nowadays in social networks is to share beautiful content. As network users, we have a complex set of photographers, designers, and journalists. Therefore, we always try to create the best content and share it with our followers (family, friends, and clients).

Through this article, I want to show you how you can easily create a puzzle feed on Instagram. This technique that’s being used by a lot of people will allow you to seduce your audience and therefore generate more connection and conversions.

It is imperative that today our last 6 posts on Instagram are of quality (both the content and the design). It is the first impression that users will have when they visit your profile with your optimized biography.

What Is An Instagram Puzzle Feed?

An Instagram puzzle feed is nothing more than a visual composition created with several posts that are 100% connected. The puzzle feed is an evolution of dividing an image or banner into 3, 6 or 9 images that you used to use at the beginning of your Instagram feed.

Now, with this type of feed, we can create artistic compositions that our audience will fall in love with and which will distinguish us from other profiles.

If you want a very creative puzzle feed, you can go to @KarinaLarrauri’s account.

Who Is The Puzzle Feed For?

This type of feed is NOT just for any type of person or brand since it requires creativity, design and prior planning. This allows this type of feed to be suitable for:

• Bloggers that upload creative content and plan their content in advance.
• Brands that have an editorial calendar of at least 1-2 weeks so that they can design and program these contents.
• Professionals with design experience, especially in Photoshop because the most basic template is made with this platform. The ideal form that we use in the agency Convert + is with several Illustrator canvases (because this way the vectors work better).

After going through the following steps and creating your own puzzle feed, you can now fully inform your current followers and possibly your new 2, 000 to 3, 000 organic followers provided by SimplyGram, one of the best Instagram growth service app in 2019.

What Do You Need To Create The Puzzle Feed?

If you want to create a unique puzzle feed 100% adapted to the style and branding of your brand, I recommend preparing the following before beginning to design:

• The official fonts of your brand.
• Creative typographies for phrases and words | Google Fonts for free fonts.
• The official colors of your brand (3 recommended).
• Illustrations and icons that fit with the branding of your brand | In FlatIcon, Freepik, and Shutterstock you can find the best visual resources. 
• Own photographs (personal brand) and/or corporate (for companies).
• Famous quotes.
• Calendar with the contents that you will share (tips, promotions, videos, etc.).
• Canvas to create the composition (Feed puzzle) | You can do this with Photoshop or Illustrator.

Tutorial To Make Your Instagram Puzzle Feed

If I had to divide the process of creating your feed in steps, it would be the following:

• Plan your feed
• How many posts?
• What style? Watercol, tropical, flat, etc.
• What content? Phrases, photos, tips, tutorial videos, etc.
• What colors would be included?
• What typefaces?
• Create your work canvas
• Download and collect all the resources you will need
• Start working on the background of your canvas
• Locate the spaces to upload your own images and other attractive visual resources
• Design the first 9 posts of your feed with texts, images, icons, decorative elements, video covers, etc.
• Export those nine posts and upload them to a test account

FIRST STEP | The first thing is to create your work canvas or download other free Photoshop templates online to save you time. Then you’ll have to collect all the design materials you’re going to use. In this part, it may take a long time because you have to define the style and download backgrounds, illustrations, icons, etc.

With the template and resources, we can now begin the sketch of our puzzle feed. Remember that elements such as rectangles, squares, and circles are useful to decorate the background of your feed. First, in your newly-made background, you have to put blank spaces reserved for the images and elements created for the puzzle feed. Then you have to add two-color backgrounds. You can do all of this by downloading resources from Freepik and from Photoshop.

After preparing the visual material, you’ll have to complement it with your own contents (photos, videos, phrases, etc.) and decorative elements.

Finally, you only have to export each post. Remember that you have two options:

• Export each post from Photoshop.
• Export your entire canvas once it’s finished and divide each image with Grids through a mobile app.

Creative Alternatives To The Puzzle Feed

If you want other easy alternatives to have an attractive profile then I recommend the following:

• Feed by colors. You can choose a color every month and upload creative images with that color. Go to the account of  @juanluisminaya so you can see what I mean. 
• 3X feed. This feed consists of always uploading 3 images at once, which can be a composition or images of the same day or theme.
• Feed with logic. With this type of feed, we have to upload it in a logical order and every time with the same type of content. Example: every 2 images of tips finished with a phrase. After each sentence, a video can go after, etc.

Tips to improve your puzzle feed

• Upload videos in your puzzle feed by adding the image of your design as a cover. This way you will not break the design.
• You can export each image as an individual from Photoshop, but also remember that with the GRIDS application you can break any image into several images for Instagram. It’s a free and easy way to upload your feed.
• To avoid mistakes, I recommend you to program your publications with tools such as Preview.
• If you are going to launch your puzzle feed, design at least 27 posts. Then you can continue with your usual style.
• Change the highlights of your stories and upload new chords to your new puzzle feed.
• Do not upload only images, you should also upload alternate formats with carousel and videos.
• Animate your photos with some video effects.
• Edit your photos with the same filter. Example: I use a pink filter in my photos that I take from the PhotoFOX app. I recommend you edit all the photos that you put in your feed so that the quality is better.
• DO NOT upload your puzzle feed suddenly, be patient and go uploading one image at a time (or as MAXIMUM 3 images all in one blow). The reason why you should NOT upload the whole feed at once is to NOT alter the algorithm and lose scope of your interactions in future posts.
• Have a test account to visualize the final result.

I hope this post helps you create a creative puzzle feed, but above all that it helps you connect and sell more on Instagram. And with SimplyGram, you’re guaranteed to sell more since you can now access your new organic followers and seduce them with your new creative puzzle feed.