How to plan Instagram for the month in less than a day

The easy way to plan Instagram for the month

 

 

Social media. Everyone tells us it’s meant to be social and a wonderful way to engage with your audience. But how do you do that? You have no time. You’re already running around trying to grab images and think up captions that will connect you with your audience on the fly. There is no time left to engage with anyone.

 

50% of Instagram users follow a business, and 60% use Instagram to learn about a product or service. These figures show you how important social media, and especially Instagram is to your business.

 

Despite this lack of doubt about its valued it’s ability to help you create an amazing business, you shouldn’t be spending all of your time there.

 

Keeping an audience engaged is a continuous process and it needs planning. A variety of content and ideas will keep things fresh, but this is pretty stressful to do on a daily basis when you’re already struggling with the juggle.

 

Here’s where planning your Instagram comes in. Hold up, before ANYONE says, but it’s ‘insta’gram, it’s meant to be instant. No. Just, NO! You’re running a business (or at least trying to turn your blog into a business) NOTHING has to be instant. In order to give the best value to your audience you need to plan. You need to write your captions when you have the headspace to know how you can best help your audience.

 

Also you want to be present in the moment with your family. Snap a picture and carry on enjoying the moment. Later on, think about the message you want to send and post with reflection and space. Your content WILL be better, it will provide more value, gain more engagement and it will benefit your business more.

 

Let’s dive in! How to plan Instagram

 

Give yourself time to plan Instagram (great things don’t just happen!)

 

Planning always takes time, but the more you repeat your system, the quicker it will become every time you sit down to plan. If you add up all the minutes you are snapping, writing, editing and posting under pressure on the daily, batching WILL save you time. It’s definitely worth taking the time to knock it out in one session a month.

 

Grab your pen and paper, your Google calendar or whatever app or programme floats your organisational boat.

Look for inspiration

 

Take a spin around Instagram and see what your competitors are posting, brands you admire, browse the explore feed and search a few relevant hashtags. You can save anything you like right there in the app and create your own inspiration swipe file.

 

Look at the overview of the month

 

Decide how often you wish to post on Instagram. If you’re looking to grow the best advice is to post daily, in order to get traction. You immediately have daily slots to fill.

 

I rarely promote my blog posts on Instagram, but many people do. You could promote your posts, YouTube videos, even podcasts. Slot all of these topics into the appropriate days, to start filling up your grid.

 

Now you need to fill the gaps, making sure you are giving value and trying to connect with your audience through every post.

 

You might have products or service launches, events, collaborations and maybe personal content you can include in your feed.

 

Establish your themes

 

One of the best ways to create an aesthetically pleasing grid, with a variety of content, is to decide on your content themes and then rotate them.

 

Think of what you want to share on your feed and the things which sum up your and your brand. An example of some possible themes for a family lifestyle blogger could be;

 

1. You (yes, in almost all cases you need to be on your feed. Ideally once every 9 squares)
2. Your kids
3. Your home
4. Countryside/Travels
5. Family food

 

 

A fashion blogger with a dog side-kick might share:

 

1. Outfit of the day
2. Accessories
3. Friends and fun
4. Dog
5. City shots

 

You would then rotate round 1-5 and repeat. This prevents the same type of image appearing side by side on your grid, which tends to look weird.

 

Other types of content

 

• Tips and tricks

You could use one of your ‘themes’ to share your knowledge with your audience. This will position yourself as an expert. You will be helping your audience and helping them to become loyal followers.

 

• Share you

You need to lead your brand and to do this the need to show up with authenticity. Share your story, personal stories pertinent to the content you are sharing will really help people to begin to trust you and feel as if they know you.

 

• Inspirational quotes

Quotes are a popular type of content to include in your theming. They offer an easy way for your audience to interact with you too.

 

Make a list of influencers to mention

 

Reaching out to other influencers by mentioning them in your feed is a great way to expand your reach. Hopefully it will help you make new connections too. These people may be influencers that your audience might want to follow too, so by sharing you will be helping your audience too. Don’t go overboard, but if you’ve learned something from someone or you admire them for a specific reason, then mention them in your feed.

 

Find relevant hashtags

 

Hashtags are important on Instagram, as they are a way for people to find you and your content. Don’t use the same hashtags on each photo but instead create groups of hashtags based on the types of images you share. Using hashtags with a huge number of images in the feed will probably be pointless, as you image will be lost in the masses. Instead research hashtags under 500k (your ideal size maybe way lower than this depending on the size of your account) and use relevant ones, which give you the best chance of standing out.

 

Create your graphics/take your pictures

 

If you know what you are posting for the month, you will know exactly which images you will need and so you can batch them.

 

If you are posting quotes then create a template to help you keep a consistent style. It will also make the process much quicker in the future.

 

As you know on which days you’re going to be posting which ‘themes’ you will know exactly how many shots you need e.g. 5 outfit shots, 6 shots of your kids, 5 snaps of your dog, 5 flat lays etc. However, it works out for you.

 

As you get into the habit of this system you will be able to take photos and save them for the next time you batch schedule. This means you are not always starting from scratch. You might just be collecting the pictures from your phone or memory cards.

 

Create your captions

 

Captions are so important, they are what connects you with your audience and this is why in most cases they are best written when you have headspace not when you are right in the moment. When you get into this process you can keep a list of some captions and so you might not be starting from scratch each month. Create your captions paying attention to adding value, creating a connection and including a call to action. Even if they CTA is just to answer a question you have asked. We want to engage our audience. If you want to track your traffic from a particular post, then create a bit.ly link, a pretty link (WP plugin) or a UTM link. This way you will know exactly how much traffic came from that specific post.

 

Now edit your images

 

Editing gives you the opportunity to bring your feed together, even a simple filter using an app such as ColourStory or VSCO will give your feed a consistent look.

 

If I’ve taken pictures with my my DSLR I edit them in Lightroom. This Adobe programme is amazing for helping you organise your images, but also editing them super quickly. Think of your Instagram matching the aesthetic of your blog/website. There should be a consistency in the design.

 

 If I edit pictures on my phone (iPhone X affiliate link). I will use ColorStory most often, or airdrop them to the Mac and edit them in Lightroom.

 

Everything in one place

 

You need to find a system which works for you. It could be that you store all your edited images directly into drop box so you know where they are.

 

Keep all your captions in one place, perhaps a Google Doc

 

In your notes app store your hashtag groups – (although if you use Planoly (affiliate link) this allows you to store hashtag groups right in the app/programme).

 

Getting the look right

 

Instagram is a social network, but it is also a gallery. A portfolio of your brand and so, while we want it to be real and authentic, we also want it to be visually appealing. This is achieved through planning.

 

I use Planoly to help me do this. After years of using another scheduler/planner I recently switched as I wanted more flexibility to be able to move things on my grid and see how they will look before I publish them. Planoly is awesome. I use it for both of my accounts and feel it has really made a difference.

 

If you promote blog content or YouTube, you might know you have a YouTube promotional square every Monday or a blog post promotion on a Wednesday. So you can use the placeholder squares in the app (see picture below). As long as you know what you blog posts/videos are going to be about you can write a caption before you even write the post or shoot the video.

 

 

Any special days can be added – think National ice cream day!

 

Then simply work round your content themes filling in the gaps in your feed.

 

Find the best time to post

 

Check your Instagram analytics to see when the best time to post is. The algorithm favours posts which get early interaction from followers and so posting when your audience is online and on Instagram makes sense.

 

Schedule baby!

 

Instagram has recently changed their rules to allow partner programmes to post directly to Instagram, rather than purely prompting you to post. Planoly is one such partner and so you can use this to mean once scheduled, you don’t have to do anything else with the post. When I have filled all the squares in my feed I’m done for the month.

 

 

Planoly send me a little notification when it has posted for me, so if I wanted to change the link in my bio to something relevant to that day’s picture then I would go and do that.

 

What about spontaneity?

 

If something comes up that you didn’t know was going to happen or you take a picture and you want to share it straight away. Do it, it’s absolutely fine. In this case I would edit and post it. Moving the image scheduled for that day to the end of those I’ve scheduled (as long as it is not time specific). Or simply post twice on that day. Scheduling doesn’t restrict you, in fact it just gives you more freedom. Freedom to post in the moment or not, it’s up to you, you’re covered either way.

 

That’s it all done for the month. This preparation allows me to post my Instagram pictures consistently taking off the daily pressure to ‘get something posted’. Do you plan Instagram like this? What are your favourite apps to help you plan Instagram? Are you going to try anything new that you’ve learned here?