There is no greater social-media sorrow than posting a picture to Instagram that doesn’t get liked. So a visual-analytics firm scoured more than 8 million Instagrams to ensure that millennials (or, you know, brands trolling for user engagement) never have to undergo this trauma again.
“Likes on Instagram, while incredibly valuable, are hard to come by, with 65 percent of Instagram images garnering between 0 and 10 likes,” Curalate CEO Apu Gupta said in a press release.
Here are the secrets of getting more Instagram validation:
- Take pictures of things that are blue. They generate 24% more likes than images that are mostly red and orange. (This is going to be really hard with Thanksgiving coming up.)
- Pictures with one hue get 40% more likes than ones that don’t have a dominant color.
- Images with 0–15 saturation (less color) get 18% more likes than vibrant colors. This bodes really well for underwhelmed hipsters.
- But don’t get too dark. Photos with 65% to 80% light get 24% more likes than photos with less than 45% lightness.