How to use Preview App to Edit Photos and Plan Your Instagram Feed

I always speak about the importance of focusing on platforms that you own and have greater control over such as your website and email list.  This means don’t let the main focus of your business be on social media.  Social media platforms hold all of your followers and content that you have posted, and if they shut down all of your followers and content shuts down right along with it.  This is the main reason you should be putting more of your effort into your email list and website contents.  With an email list, you can save all direct contact details with a simple export, that way, if your email marketing platform shuts down you still have all of your email contacts.  You can also back up contents of your website so if your website provider shuts down, you will still have your content.

BUT...and there’s a big but here...let's be real...social media, specifically Instagram, is still SO important to incorporate into your marketing strategy!  It’s a free marketing tool where your target audience likely resides meaning you can actually be social and show your human side, it’s easier to keep up to date than a website, it can reach so many more eyes, and the different types of video content that you can post makes it a great all-in-one app.  With all the benefits of Instagram, a great way to approach it is by following a streamlined workflow for it as well.  You can easily do this by using feed planning apps.  Today I will be talking about the benefits of planning your feed with my favorite app, Preview.

Feed planning apps are used to plan your Instagram feed in advance so you can get an idea of how the aesthetic will be and you can also tailor the message and content that you want to share and promote (i.e. have a method behind the madness!).  Here are some benefits of planning your feed in advance:

• You can knock out a chunk of content planning in one sitting.

• You won’t have to stress over what to post in real time.

• You can view how your feed will look if you are trying to stick to a specific aesthetic.

There are various feed planning apps out there such as Planoly and UNUM, however, I have found that the Preview app works seamlessly with my Instagram feed planning process.  The main reason is because you can edit your photos directly in the app, so there is no need to edit in a separate app then import it to the feed planner.  You know I love a good, simplified process so an all in one app is ideal!  The preview editor includes options for cropping, red eye removal, whitening, removing blemishes, and of course editing photos (brightness, contrast, saturation, etc.).  There are also filters in the app for use, both free and paid.  Currently I am on the free plan, but the free plan includes a large amount of features.

Now that you know why Preview is my preferred Instagram feed planning app of choice, lets get into how this awesome app works!

How to use the Preview App

Importing to the Grid

The first thing is that you will import your photos to the grid by clicking the + sign in the top right corner.  Once your photos are in the grid, you can click and drag them to the preferred location.  This is the main function of the app.  You can import multiple photos and videos at a time.

Editing Photos

To edit a photo, double click it from the grid.  You will then see various editing features.  You can click either the Adjust icon or the Filters icon.

Adjust

This is where you will manually adjust the photo with options such as Exposure, Contrast, Warmth, etc.

Filters

This is where you can select a preexisting filter.  These are great for when you want to have a specific look for all of your photos.

Adding a Photo Description

You can add the description for your photo directly in the app by clicking the quote bubble at the bottom of the app from the main grid screen.  This is great because you can really think about what you want to say and plan it out, so you will not have to think of it on the fly while trying to post to Instagram spontaneously. This helps you to have a more clear, and well thought out message.

Hashtags

You can also create hashtag groups in the app and add them to the description.  This is a good feature, however, I prefer to use the text replacement native iPhone feature to make my own hashtag groups that don’t have to be married to an app.  I created a Reel on how to set up this time-saving feature- check it out here.

Scheduling Your Posts

A few days ago, Preview announced that you can auto post to Instagram now. This is a paid feature, however. If you use a free account, you can still schedule a push reminder for when it’s time for you to post to Instagram.  This is done in the description page by toggling the “Schedule Post” button on, then you will select the day and time to receive the post reminder.

If you really want to schedule your post to automatically post to Instagram but don’t have a paid account, you can export the completed photo to another app such as Buffer, add it to your Buffer queue, add the description and schedule it as normal.  As a reminder, you must have a Business Instagram account to post automatically to Instagram from third-party apps.

Posting to Instagram

When you are ready to manually post your photo to Instagram, click the image then the Share icon.  You will be asked how you want to share the image, then select whether you want to share it to your Stories or your Feed. Your caption is also copied at that point, so when Instagram opens, you can paste it right into the description!

Extra Features

Planning Reels

You can now plan your Reels in Preview, so this further helps to streamline your content creation process.  You can plan the photos/videos out, then export to Instagram the same as you would with a feed post.

Another note about Reels that are posted to your Instagram feed- since Reels aren’t considered actual posts on your feed, they do not automatically appear in your Preview grid for previously posted content.  There is a way to pull these into Preview though!  You would do this through the Placeholder feature.  When you click the + icon to add a photo to your grid, there is a “Placeholder” option which you will select. Preview will then direct you through what to do, but you essentially open the Reel then copy the link to that Reel, and it will magically be added to your Preview feed!

Planning Stories

You can also plan your Instagram Stories in Preview.  This is incredibly helpful for when you have a lot of content to post and don’t want to do it directly in Instagram with the risk of losing your content before it has posted (no option for Story drafts in Instagram!).

Note: The Reels and Stories planning icons are at the top of the main app grid, so it makes it easy to know what section you are currently planning.

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This is only touching the surface of what can be done in the Preview app, but these are my go-to features.  As I mentioned before, there is a free version and two paid versions (Pro and Premium).  Of course the paid versions grants access to things like:

• All filter packs

• IGTV planning

• Removing Preview tags from caption

• Post Analytics

• Hashtag Finder

• Hashtag Analytics

• ...much more

Do you use Instagram feed planning apps? I’d love to hear about them- leave a comment below!

The 6 Step Process for Organizing Too Many Ideas

As I sit here and type this post, we are three months into a (hopefully temporary) new way of life due to Covid-19.  Most of the country was under shelter in place orders, but now things are starting to open back up.  Three months of being home was sure to cause many days and nights in deep thought on a variety of topics.  You may have thought about so many things and came up with some awesome ideas and now you don’t know what to do with them.  I experienced the same.  I had a long period of time where I didn’t think about business or blogging because I was mentally exhausted.  I then had a period of time where many ideas came to mind (I believe this is because I took that needed break and made room for new ideas to come in).  I had so many ideas, I needed to figure out what to do with them.  If you find yourself in that situation now and want guidance on how to move forward, I will be discussing the 6 step process of how to organize your many great ideas and what to do with them.

1 / Data Gather

The only places you likely have been while shelter in place orders were in effect were the grocery store, a drive-thru, a gas station and work if you held an essential position at your job, so this step shouldn’t be cumbersome (maybe just the part of searching through the house for all of the papers your ideas are on, ha!). Gather all of your notepads, sticky notes, napkins, etc. that you wrote your ideas on because you need to get an idea of what your thoughts were and put them together.

2 / Group

Read through all of your ideas and group them together based on the topic.  If you had ideas for new courses, put them in a pile together.  If you had ideas for new blog posts, group them together.  This will help you see if there are more ideas on a specific topic than others and guide you on what to work on now and what to save for later.

3 / Filter

The important thing about content creation is that it all needs to align with your goals. This means to focus on topics that will continue to show your expertise.  This doesn’t mean that an idea you had that may not fit in with your current goals isn’t good to keep.  On the contrary!  From these piles, pull out the ideas that are not aligned to the topics you already post about, or that do not fit into the puzzle when thinking about what you need to do to accomplish your ultimate business goals.  You need to filter the ideas down so you don’t waste time working on something that is not directly related to your goals and so you don’t overwhelm yourself with what you want to do.

4 / Digitize

Once grouped and filtered down, it’s time to put these into a digital system so you won’t risk losing them.  Add the ideas to something like Trello, Evernote, etc. Utilize a tagging function for your notes so you can easily find them in the future.  The notes that you removed from your pile should still be added to your digital note tool because you don’t want to get rid of the ideas.  They may fit into your strategy in the future, so add a Future tag (or something similar) to them for later.

5 / Apply a Realistic Timeline

You will also need to create a realistic timeline for executing these ideas.  A realistic timeline means don’t try to launch a brand new course in two weeks.  You want to allocate a realistic timeline to these tasks because although you still may be in self-quarantine or just not going too many places away from home, you still have regular, daily activities to do such as work, cook, clean, decide which pair of slippers and pajamas to wear for the day, etc. (ha!), so you don’t want to overload yourself.  Though I’ve been home for the majority of this time, I still find myself exhausted at the end of the evening.  I still need to use Trello to organize my blog tasks and schedule things out, otherwise things just won’t get done.  I also feel like we have a false sense of time right now.  If you tell yourself, “Eh, I’m home all day, I have all the time in the world to work on this”, you will likely push it off and find yourself at 11pm with nothing on your list complete for the day.  So just be mindful of having a realistic timeline to complete your tasks.

6 / Create Content

Now comes the fun part- working on the tasks you’ve deemed important to reach your goals…content creation! There are so many mediums you can create content for.  You can also re-purpose content for different platforms!  Here are a few things you can create from the ideas you had:

a. Blog posts

b. Instagram content (feed, stories, IG TV, Live)

c. Email marketing content

d. Products/Services

e. Podcast topics

f. YouTube content

g. Online or email courses 

h. Free and paid downloads

i. Email marketing content

There are so many ways to put your ideas into fruition!  Sometimes half the battle is knowing what topics you will create content around.  When I hear someone say I have too many ideas as if it’s a burden, I have to disagree and spin it so they will see it as a good thing!

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As we slowly try to get back to some sort of normalcy (let’s be real, some things in our reality are not things that we want to get back to), just remember that being restricted to your home and essential places is not a terrible thing.  Ideas will continue to come to you, but now you have the steps to help you organize and execute them!

So tell me…how have you been handling this time at home? Have you had plenty of ideas that you are acting on, are you slowly getting back into the swing of things or are you taking a mental break from everything? Leave a comment below.