Hi there, it’s me again, your friendly neighborhood Social Media Manager and Online Business Manager. I’m back again with more tips, and I think you’re going to love them! My main Instagram account that I am growing and consistent on is a Bookstagram that I started a few years ago. The truth is, you can grow/scale your Instagram however fast or slow and steady as you wish. I like to take things slow and organically, and I’m not a wizard with Canva and other tools, which is why mine has taken longer to grow. As of writing this I’m at a little over 5k followers, and anything more feels crazy to me. Yet I keep growing! The same is possible for you, regardless of what type or theme your account is. I digress, let’s get into the nitty gritty.
So you want to plan your Instagram content in advance? Anywhere from 1 month to 1 year? Perfect, you’re in the right spot.
Here are my biggest pointers, in the order in which my brain lays out all of my content.
- Come up with 5 main “pillars” or themes for your content. If you’re a business owner, these may look like this for example: 1 – Business tips, 2 – Dog mom life, 3 – Self care, 4 – staying social, 5 – Travel. You can honestly do anywhere from 3-5 main topics that contain sub-topics but I wouldn’t recommend more than 5 or else you lose sight of what you should actually be posting about.
- Brain dump: This means sitting down either in silence or with lo-fi music and writing down literally anything and everything that comes to mind when you think of each of your topics. These may be sub-topics or they may just be new post ideas!
- Decide what you want your feed to look like: For example, if you’re like me, maybe you want every-other post to have a white background and every odd post to have a dark background to create a cool look. Maybe you want all your posts to have exactly the same color scheme. Or maybe you want to include a frame on each post so the colors all match. The possibilities are endless. If you get stuck on this part, go scroll through Instagram for 15-20 minutes to get ideas of aspects you enjoy seeing on other peoples’ feeds.
- Next up, designing: Regardless of what you choose for your feed to look like, you’ll want to create some sort of template or even just a note in your phone’s notepad of what the plan is. Maybe this is doing a post with words on it for every-other post. Or maybe if you are a bookstagrammer, it’s doing a photo of a book stack for every-other post. No matter what you decide, I recommend having an idea like this in mind to help you with planning out your feed.
- Decide on post frequency: Instagram doesn’t punish you for not posting, so you could post whenever. Whether you like posting 2-3 times a day, once a day, or once a week, choose a frequency that works best for you and jot it down in your phone’s notepad.
- Create an outline: You’ll want to create an outline either in a planner such as Notion or Asana, in your phone’s notepad, or in a physical notebook. Personally, I use my phone’s notepad so I have it with me anywhere I go. Start with making bullet points or checkboxes with the dates you plan to post, starting with the soonest date (maybe that’s today or next week) and ending with however long feels comfortable. I post 1x per day, and have a list that starts from tomorrow and ends 3 months from now. Yes, it’s a lot of dates. But this method to the madness works wonders for me.
- Filling in the dates: Start filling in the dates with what your design plan was. For you this could mean every-other day is a photo of a book stack. So on every other day, type “book stack – “. These are placeholders to remember what type of post you plan to do. After the dash, you’ll go back and decide what type of bookstack to do. But wait to do that because you may need to brainstorm.
- Putting things together: Let’s keep using the bookstagrammer as an example. She wants to do every other post as a stack of books. “But what about the other posts?” you may ask. Well then she fills in those from her pillars. With the above example maybe it looks something like: Day 1 – business tip, Day 2 – book stack (all pink), Day 3 – dog mom pic, Day 4 – book stack (newest book haul), Day 4 – travel pic. Do you see what I’m doing? I’m filling in all the blank spots with ideas based off the pillars. So all those ideas you brainstormed above will fill in spots on your calendar.
- Running out of ideas: If you reach a point of being “stuck” go back to your pillars and brainstorm more ideas that could potentially relate to any of your main topics. Or, maybe you need to revamp your outline/design to make more sense for your business/goals. You might even realize that you can come up with ZERO ideas for one of the pillars. If that’s the case, it’s not the right fit for you! And that is totally okay.
- More ideas: Some other pointers for ideas are going back through your camera roll on your phone and seeing what you take pictures of the most. Can these be used for Instagram/used to make cute posts? Do they fit in with any pillars or sub-pillars? You can always do some scrolling on Instagram too but give yourself a 30 minute time limit so you don’t spend all day on there. NO copying people. BUT, sometimes there are trends or ideas people come up with, and 90% of the time if you ask to borrow the idea, the person will say yes. The other 10% of the time, they’ll likely still say yes, but with giving them credit on your post. Which is still a great way to support others while helping drive your own growth.
- Sessions: Everything we just went through is what I like to call my Instagram Strategy session. Whenever you’re running low on posts or need to plan more in advance, have another strategy session. I recommend not planning a whole year in 1 sitting, but instead splitting it up into 3-4 sessions throughout the month so you come up with fresh ideas and perspectives.
- Scheduling posts: Did you know Instagram has a feature to pre-schedule posts? Once I’ve come up with my ideas, I type out and pre-schedule them for a month in advance. This helps me stay on track and stay ahead without getting overwhelmed.
Want more tips? Comment below or send me a message and I can create a more in-depth course on this!
By Blake Austin 