How to Automatically generate multiple Instagram formats at once using Abyssale

On average businesses usually posts once per day on Instagram, this means that you need to create a lot of images to stay relevant.

Here are some statistics that should definitely convince you to post more regularly on Instagram:

• 90% of users are following at least one business account.
• 130 millions users click on the shopping button every month

As a reminder the most common Instagram formats are:

• Square (1:1):  1080px x 1080px
• Landscape (1.91:1): 1080px x 608px
• Portrait (4:5): 1080px x 1350px
• Story (9:16): 1080px x 1920px

Let's imagine you'd like to post a story, a square and a landscape every day. This account to more than 20 images to create each week. But how can we create images without spending hours on it ?

With Abyssale these tedious and repetitive tasks become a piece of cake!  In this article I'm gonna cover all the necessary steps to automate this production 😎

Creating a dynamic brand template on Abyssale

Go to your Abyssale Dashboard and click on "Create New Template". Inside the template builder, you can also select a template from our public gallery on the left section.

In this guide we will use a template from our library: "Promo - Single product"

1. Select a template

Connect to your Abyssale account and navigate to the Templates library page (you can access the template library from the top navigation), then select the template "Promo -  Single product" from the library.

2. Customize the template

For the sake of this tutorial you could keep everything as it is, or you can update the default layouts and components such as the logo, the background image and the text with your company branding.

Don't worry these can still be changed when we'll generate banners. Making those changes now will avoid you to upload your logo multiple times for example.

3. Adding new formats to the base template

To add new formas to a template just click on the button Add new format in the banner formats section (left side panel).

You will be prompted with choosing between a predefined format or defining your own custom dimensions.

Once you hit the "Create format" button it will auto-magically design the same template layout but with the new dimensions.

If you're not satisfied with the results you can still move around the different components, resize the logo, adjust the texts, ... When you're satisfied with your new template, click on the save button located in the top right corner.

Generating banners

Now that you've finished creating your new digital brand template, you can generate banners out of it. To do so, click on the Generate banners button in the top right corner.

You will be redirected to what we call a "funnel". This page allows you to setup your parameters and datas used to render your banners.

1. Fill the the operation name.

It will be used to create a new folder. Each generated banners will be stored in it.

2. Select the formats you'd like to use.

In this guide we will select all the available formats in this template.

3. Select a creation method:

• Create from scratch: This action will create an empty table and you'll have to input your content manually.  
• CSV import: Directly import your content from a CSV file. You could use a Google sheet document that includes all the necessary datas to fill your template. (Text, image colors etc..) . More informations can be found HERE.
• Airtable: Connect your Airtable base and import data directly from it.

4. Prepare your data

In this guide we will select the "create from scratch" method and fill the column that we want to update.

All cells that aren't filled will use the default value from the template.

As an example I've added 7 rows for each day of the week, then updated the text, pictures and button color for the Call to Action (Button component).

5. When you are ready to generate banners, click on the button save & close.

6. Save & start generating: This funnel will consume 28 API calls (7 rows * 4 formats). Confirm before starting generating banners.

Your banners are ready!

Here are the results from the generated banners:

Congratulations! 🎉

You are now able to create hundreds of images in few minutes!

This example can be used for your Instagram posting strategy, but can also be replicated for Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter, ... and automated using our Zapier or Integromat integrations.