How To Create Reusable Brand Assets to Use on Instagram
It’s not always possible to whip out your computer every single time you need to create something for Instagram.
Sometimes - it is just WAY easier, and more convenient, to create content while you are on the go. And my number one tip to make content creation easier on your mobile phone…
… An assets folder in your camera roll!!
But before you can create an entire folder dedicated to mobile content creation on the go, you have to have assets to put in that folder. Assets that match your brand, that make it easy to rinse and repeat visuals, and assets that play nice with Instagram’s features.
Types of Assets to Save on Your Phone
First and foremost, we need to determine what assets are necessary for your Instagram content creation game. Some of my favorite things to save on my iPhone are:
Logos, icons, and mood boards
Re-usable Instagram Stories
Transparent frames and foregrounds for Instagram Stories
B-Roll for Reels vlogs
Asset #1: Logos, Icons, and Moodboards
By saving your most valuable visual brand elements, you are prepared to customize your Instagram posts, Reels, and Stories on the go! You can easily copy and paste your mood board into your Instagram Reels to customize the font color to fit your brand colors exactly. You can quickly add logos and icons to your Instagram Stories to make sure they fit your brand to a tee. By having these elements on hand you can easily maintain your visual identity without a ton of extra work!
Asset #2: Reusable Instagram Stories
If you are familiar with my Instagram strategy for Your Template Club, you know that I like to host weekly Q+A sessions. This is a great way to connect with my audience, answer their questions, and even get new content and product ideas. These are some of my TOP performing stories to date!! I quickly create a variety of stories that I can add a question sticker, and I keep a stockpile saved on my phone to make it easy to upload the design to Instagram each and every week.
Asset #3: Transparent Frames and Foreground for Instagram Stories
These are a bit different and unique and you can really customize these to your brand and make your stories stand out! You can add these assets as a sticker to your Instagram Stories so you can have a background for Story captions, display product mockups, weekly Q+A stories, and more!! Check out the video below to see how to customize the Let’s Be Transparent Canva template in the shop so you can have these branded assets ready to go on your phone!
Asset #4: B-Roll for Reels Vlogs
You always want to have a great base of video content that you can use to quickly jump on Reels trends or create more in-the-moment Reels content for Instagram. B-roll videos are essentially “filler” videos that you can set to music, add text on top of, or stitch together for a vlog. It is best to create B-roll content that features you, your brand, or your products, but you can also save stock video content to use for Reels as well.
How to Create an Asset Folder on Your Phone
Now that you have created all of your assets to store on your phone, it’s now time to create your folder.
First - you have to get all of these assets you have created onto your phone. If you have an iPhone, you can Airdrop the assets to yourself, or add them to your iCloud account. If you have an android or other device it would be best to add the assets to Google Drive or Dropbox, download the mobile app on your device, then download the assets.
Second - create a new folder in your gallery or camera roll and title it “YOUR BIZ NAME - Instagram Assets”
Third - select all of the assets in your gallery and simply add them to that folder
Now when you go to create content for Instagram, or on Instagram directly, you can pull all of these visual elements and assets to have a curated piece of content that fits your brand aesthetic.
AND THAT IS IT… you can now create content for Instagram on the go!!
Don’t want to DESIGN ALL OF THESE BRANDED ASSETS ON YOUR OWN?
You can grab Canva templates inside of the shop that I mentioned above!
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Manu Muraro is the founder of Your Social Team, an Instagram training membership and template shop that help social media managers and Instagram-savvy small business owners to grow engagement and sales using Instagram and content marketing, without the overwhelm. Born and raised in Brazil, Manu moved to the U.S. in 2000 right out of college to work for Cartoon Network, where she made an award winning career in creative and strategy. In 2021, Manu started Your Template Club, a Canva template subscription service to help social media professionals and Canva-savvy business owners to create content that performs on Instagram, add more Instagram features into their strategy, such as Instagram Lives and Reels, and save time.