This post is for you if you want to learn Instagram content planning.
The tips I’m sharing below will help you plan and create Instagram content fast and easily.
Want to become a successful Instagram marketer?
- Join my course: https://alle.thinkific.com
Instagram Content Planning in 3 Steps
STEP 1: GET IDEAS & INSPIRATION
Finding inspiration for your feed is the first thing you should think of.
Even before you ask yourself: “What should I post this month?”, you need to have an idea of how your feed will look.
Can you make it look neat, colourful, branded, and visually appealing?
You may think that’s difficult. But in fact, it’s not.
I always start with a color theme (2-3 colors), a pair of fonts, and then I search for inspiration.
For me, there are two main places I like to look for feed inspiration:
- Pinterest – this is where I create branded boards
- Other Instagram pages – aka. your competitors or influencers
Spend some time planning your grid visually.
Getting an idea of how your feed will look like is going to give you confidence and keep you motivated to come up with new posts.
So now that you have an idea of how you want your content to look visually, the next step is to look for content topics and ideas.
Tools for coming up with content ideas
These are the tools I use for post ideas and inspiration.
👉 a Notebook: This is where I write any ideas
👉 Twitter & Reddit – great for finding trending topics and problems that people need help with
👉 Pallyy – I use this to analyze my top posts and optimize my content
‼️ TRY PALLYY FOR FREE: ‼️ https://pallyy.com/?via=alle
Group Post Ideas into “Buckets”
Post ideas need to be targeted at a specific group of people – otherwise, your content will be all over the place.
Let’s think of an audience:
- 20-25 years old
- tech savvy
- college grads
- looking to start an online business
- based in Sydney, Australia
Develop 3-4 Content Buckets
With a clear audience in mind, you can now define 3-4 content buckets or “pillars”.
These are the main keywords or topics that will make it easier to plan posts.
For example, I have a marketing page on Instagram and these are my current content pillars:
- Marketing tips [Educate]
- Daily vlogs [Inspire/Relate]
- Quotes [Motivate]
- Promotional posts [Grow Sales]
Each of my posts also needs to be well planned and linked with my goals (shown in brackets).
For instance, let’s say my goal is to “educate” people who want to start a career in Marketing.
Then I will include posts like “3 Tips for (Writing Engaging Captions)” in my content plan.
A good content mix is having enough variety so your audience doesn’t feel bored.
Tip: When planning Instagram content, I try to keep promotions at 10-20% of total content.
Tweet
That’s because I don’t want to come off as too “sales-y”.
Also, my audience is smart – and they won’t engage with promotional posts as much as with quotes or educational content.
STEP 2: PLANNING THE CONTENT CALENDAR
The next step is to visually plan the Instagram content using a digital content calendar.
I like using Trello.com for saving post ideas, creating tasks, assigning dates, and tracking my daily to-do’s.
It’s a free tool and you can add your team members or clients and share your calendar with them.
⬇️ DOWNLOAD MY TRELLO CALENDAR: https://trello.com/invite/b/6HlLHp1W/0c813c7e658d8921f99bcd6f9282d608/instagram-sample-board
You can do the same with a diary/monthly planner.
STEP 3: CREATING THE CONTENT
My content creation process includes a variety of post formats:
- Reels
- Carousel posts
- Stories
- Quotes
- Image posts
- Videos
For each type of content, my process is different.
Creating Instagram Reels
Reels are 15 sec videos that are highly entertaining.
They’re also the most time-consuming to create.
When I edit Reels using the available features on Instagram, I usually follow this process:
- Choose song
- Choose a fiter
- Record video
- Add text and GIFs
- Write a short caption
- Add 3-5 hashtags
- Post it!
Other times, I download a video from my TikTok page and share it on Instagram as a Reel. This is much faster, but I need to use a separate tool to remove the TikTok watermark:
👉 TIKTOK video downloader: https://snaptik.app/en
👉 InShot video editor: https://inshot.com/
Instagram Planning: Creating Branded Graphics and Carousel Posts
Another type of content I share on my Instagram are Carousels.
These are a group of 2-10 images that people have to swipe right to find the information.
I like carousels for sharing educational posts such as “How to …”, “3 Tips for …”, “My step-by-step process…”
Creating carousels is very easy in Canva.
I create the first slide with a headline, followed by inner slides (copy+paste) and the last slide is always a call-to-action.
Tip: You can create templates for carousel posts and reuse them in the future!
👉 CANVA Pro: https://www.canva.com/join/state-repairer-runner
Creating Branded Quotes
Quotes have always been popular on Instagram.
And if you have already use Twitter, you can save time and post unique quote graphics on Instagram with a simple tool.
It’s called: Remix app!
The app transforms any Twitter post link into an Instagram quote graphic.
You have to try it! It doesn’t get easier than this.
👉 Remix app (converts any Tweet into an Instagram quote) https://buffer.com/remix
See my content creation process in this YouTube video:
If you liked “How to plan Instagram content”, check out my favourite social media scheduling tools!
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