First, you need to take a picture. Pictures with your friends and adorable animals are standard crowd-pleasers. Anything you come across that is funny, peculiar, extraordinary or famous can make for a great post. But more important than finding what to post is knowing what not to post.

Something that is becoming prevalent is ‘gramming uninteresting texting conversations. The conversation usually involves an inside joke or a liberal use of emoticons — either way, we are not amused. So stop.

While your latte foam looks adorable in the shape of a swirly heart, we don’t care. A rule to follow: Never take a picture of anything you plan on digesting. That’s right, we’re talking about that dinner you made that didn’t come out of a bag for once, that burger that you just spent $10 on and that mediocre plate of food with the hashtag #sogoodtobehome. Have some compassion — you are making everyone else puke.

Let’s talk about when it is not okay to take selfies. Selfies are an accepted reality of Instagram — the iPhone even has an inward facing camera to facilitate this exact type of indulgence. But people will hate you very quickly if you ‘gram your outfit every day, or constantly post pictures of just your face with vague captions like “Just one of those days” or “Live, laugh, love <3.”

Also, try to focus your photos on your facial region, instead of, say, your legs while you’re lying on the beach or looking down at your shoes. But what’s the worst selfie of them all? The dreaded workout update selfie. The world can do without more mirror pictures with the caption, “Pushing my limits  #sweat #fitness #determination #nodaysoff #eatcleantraindirty.” Many gym-stagrammers also make the critical mistake of hashtagging way too much — even up to the point of tagging things that have vaguely anything to do with the picture, like #love.

Now, if you’ve followed all of these guidelines, it is time to actually upload your photo. Using programs to compile multiple pictures in one frame can be cool, but any layout with more than four pictures starts to become dizzying, so use discretion. When selecting a filter, there are additional factors to consider. For instance, there are certain filters that should never see the light of day. The harsh orange hue of Kelvin with the contrast of the distressed white edge literally only exists to be made fun of as the awkward ginger of the Insta-filter family. Walden and Toaster also have weird spotlight effects that should be avoided. If you are looking for the lamest filter, that would be Valencia — use it if you want your picture to look completely the same but with a distracting white border.

We hope you take these tips to heart so people don’t hate you. But then again, if you have an Instagram in the first place, odds are, people already do.