How to create an eye-catching Instagram feed to boost your landscaping business

Professionals in the landscaping trades are already aware of the importance of aesthetics in landscape design, and a beautiful garden posted on Instagram is a fantastic business card. But to achieve that, you need to know how to create an Instagram feed that’s going to make people stop and look. Publishing (nice) photos isn’t enough: from your account description to your Instagram posting strategy, discover our tips and examples for optimizing your professional Instagram presence.

© Picture from Jeremy Levin, Pexels

Write up a concise, accurate description of your services

The description attached to an Instagram account is often neglected by professionals. However it’s an essential feature when it comes to attracting new customers because it’s your first line of attack. You can highlight your skills, your approach to landscaping, your added value, and, of course, your location.

Instagram allows only a single link in your description. You can use it to link to your website or go for a solution like Linktree, which bundles several links into one. Don’t forget to include a liberal sprinkling of hashtags that reflect your activity and ensure you can be directly referenced through them.

Give your Instagram photos a unified look 

Make sure to publish only high-quality photos; with good, clear lighting to draw the eye to them, and to assert your brand image of quality. Seek perspectives that bring out the important details of your landscaping layouts.

6 peo-tips for taking better photographs of a garden

But it doesn’t stop there! Your audience will spend only a few seconds judging your work, and that time will be directly proportional to the overall aspect of your Instagram feed. By understanding how to harmonize your Instagram feed, you will create a visual cohesion that gives your account a unique identity. To facilitate this process, we advise you to choose and stick to one photographic filter (among those available on Instagram or those found in smartphone applications like SnapSeed or VSCO). Vivid colors for a modern look, pastels and soft lighting to imbue elegance: it’s up to you to decide!

Vary the type of content you publish

Publishing the best possible photos of your creations is certainly important, but offering a variety of pleasing features is also important, so don’t be reluctant to use video. 

On Instagram, you can publish videos as “Reels” and choose whether these are included in your main feed. It's a great and original way to show your company’s work and to connect more with your audience. Here are some ideas: 

• A time-lapse of a terrace being installed
• An instructional video showing pro-tips for rose pruning 
• A brief interview with one of your customers about how their project went down
• etc.

Another interesting move is to add text between photos. It gives your feed room to breathe while providing important information— a testimony from a happy customer, a quotation illustrating your firm’s core values, a check list for protecting plants in winter, the announcement of your summer closure, etc. To simplify the production of attractive visuals, you can use the free Canva service, which offers ready-to-use Instagram models.

Take care with the look and feel of your Instagram feed 

When someone lands on your Instagram profile, they flick through your description and in the blink of an eye, grasp the look and feel of your feed. The greater the harmony of your Instagram feed, the better it will perform! Not just harmony at the micro level, as we discussed for improving your photos, but also at the macro level. Your posts themselves must be as pleasing as possible to the eye, which means you must anticipate an Instagram posting strategy.

You can organize your next few posts in advance, playing with geometry, dominant colors, alternating a close-up of a flower with a wide-angle of a garden, posting a quotation at the start of each row to create a vertical line, etc. To assist you in this, take advantage of third-party Instagram feed preview tools like Preview.

Interact with your audience

You now have a custom description, great visuals, a first-rate posting strategy: so far so good. Now we come to the most important thing: interaction. Your Instagram account is a shop window for your landscaping talent, no argument about that, but you need to be active in order to knit a close relation with your audience.

To do so, first make sure of your visibility by choosing the right hashtags for your Instagram posts (between 2 and 8 per post, and keep varying them). Write your captions carefully and let your personality shine through. Share project anecdotes, explain your approach, and ask your audience questions to get them engaged. Always reply to comments unless, of course, they are spam.

We still haven’t spoken about stories. They are indeed an excellent way to publish spur-of-the-moment content and create a more personal relation with your audience. Don’t overlook them, and remember to relay your new posts to an Instagram story to maximize their chance of being seen.

Did you know? Landscapers are also on TikTok too!

A few examples of inspiring feeds from our exhibitors

Jivana, artificial plant wall producer

We like: the alternation of photos and texts, the harmonious graphic style, the use of sober backgrounds to make the message and other features stand out.

Italprofili, construction and renovation materials

We like: the ingenious use of white backgrounds that play on shapes, photos in portrait mode just as much as in square or landscape formats, and the color coordination.

Azurio Gazon, synthetic grass manufacturer

We like: the inclusion of customer feedback, the grass in real situation, the photos taken from similar angles.

Brucjardi, gardening products for professionals

We like: the use of green bands and white outlines that create a cohesive visual identity, even across quite disparate photos.

Communicating about one’s landscaping activity is an art in itself. Paysalia, as the benchmark trade show for landscape, garden, and sports ground professionals, engage with you alongside our partners to address the digitalization issues facing the sector’s companies. Make a date with the next edition of the show to discover new ways of developing your landscaping business!

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