Five Tips to Keep Your Personal Instagram Clean and Professional

By Christine Labby
News Services Marketing and Communications Assistant

Social media is something most people keep up with on a day-to-day basis. Personally, for me, Instagram is my favorite. With more than 800 million Instagram accounts out there, it’s safe to say I’m sure I’m not the only one that feels that way. Caught in the mix of our daily life, we post stories, pictures and captions to update our followers. Although, sometimes I think we forget that what we put on the internet is forever and we should be a little more conscious about our posts.

With this in mind, here are five tips to keep your Instagram looking good, clean and professional.

1. Clean it up.

First things first. Go through your homepage and minimize excessive posts from nights out partying or drinking. One thing my mom always told me was, “if you wouldn’t want your grandma to see it, don’t put it on the internet.” Now, I know there’s some super-cool grandmas out there these days, but I’m certain they wouldn’t want to see you beer-bonging or shotgunning drinks every night of the week. It’s OK to have fun but keep it classy on social media.

2. Aside from pictures, your captions matter, too.

Take a closer look at your captions and make sure they are clear, concise and professional. Try to minimize foul language, long captions and excessive/pointless hashtags. For example: “#letsgobulldogs goes a lot farther than #lets #go #bulldogs #hockey #firstgame #ilovehockey #letsf@#%!$ingwin.

3. Pick a filter or theme and stick to it.

To keep your Instagram looking uniform and professional, pick one filter and style and stick to it. For instance, if you put a white background behind your pictures, make sure to do it for all of your photos.

4. Keep it real.

There’s no need to do a ton of Photoshopping or editing to change how you look. Stay true to yourself – you’ll get the same amount of likes.

5. Remember: You are always building your personal brand.

In some cases, your Instagram or social media might be the first impression people have of you. Ask yourself what you would think of yourself if that was the first thing you saw. If you don’t think your Instagram would give off a good first impression maybe you need to go back through and delete some things.

Christine Labby is a student writer for News Services and Social Media in University Advancement and Marketing.