What Goes Into A Viral Instagram Post?

Have you ever wondered how celebrities like Kendall and Kylie Jenner get the most perfect Instagram photos? Well, Amy Odell recreated eight viral Instagrams and found out that's it's a lot harder than it actually looks. Odell, who is the editor of Cosmopolitan.com and the author of Tales From The Back Row: An Outsider's View From Inside The Fashion Industry, compiled a team of eight people to help her take on the challenge of attempted Insta-fame. "Many of them look like professional photo shoots and that's exactly what it took for me to recreate them — a professional, daylong photo shoot," Odell tells me over email.

What inspired her to go behind-the-scenes of these successful accounts? It turns out that Odell got the idea from a past experiment, which she details in her book. "I write a lot in my book [...] about the influence famous fashion bloggers have had on media and the fashion industry," she says. "I write in the book about an experiment I underwent to get photographed by street style photographers at fashion week — I put on a special outfit designed to get me photographed and it worked. Launching the book gave me the idea to try to recreate Instagrams taken by these stars."

She posted each of the images to her Instagram account over the course of a week, and although she didn't get enough double taps to compete with Kylie Jenner, she still looked fabulous along the way.

1. #EvaChenPose

After taking an hour to get the bow right, Odell landed the perfect recreation of the iconic #EvaChenPose. She tells me that was the easiest one to copy: "All I had to do was kick my feet up!"

2. Rumi Neely's Floral Embrace

Someone actually commented "whut" on the editor's version of this photo, but I'd say she did a pretty darn good job snagging Neely's look.

3. Leandra Medine's Bathroom Pic

Although a bathroom stall might not be a typically stylish place to pose, Odell nailed the look.

4. Chiara Ferragni Fringe

Odell had to go DIY for this one because the Cosmopolitan closet didn't have any fringed pants. All in all, a success!

5. Kendall Jenner's Heart Hair

What would a round up of viral photos be with Jenner's famous heart hair pic? This image garnered the most likes on Odell's Instagram, but left her a few million shy of Kendall-level.

6. Kylie Jenner's Mirror Selfie

Odell found this image to be much harder to create than it looked. "We had to add a lot of hair extensions and apply a lot of makeup which took a long time," she says. "Then I spent about 10 to 15 minutes trying to mimic her exact pose. I don't know what she's doing with her shoulder and the angle of body, but I could not do the same thing."

7. Julia Engle's Watermelon Lunch

Because don't we all eat watermelon with a spoon while surrounded by flowers? Another day, another lunch, I guess.

8. Aimee Song's City Stroll

Odell gets bonus points for not getting hit by a car here.

All in all, I'd say Odell did a pretty good job! Although tells me she only take about five minutes on her personal Instagram posts, she must be doing something right, because she has almost 5,500 followers.

For more on Odell's adventures in fashion, check out her recently released book, Tales From The Back Row .

Images: Cosmopolitan/YouTube, Amazon