How to Create a Content Plan for Instagram:10 Tips for Beginners

Are you wondering how do you create contents on Instagram? And how can you make your Instagram marketing successful? You’re not the only person here! For many busy brands and businesses, the idea of an Instagram content plan seems a hard-hitting task that they have no idea how to tackle. As finding time to make, organize, strategize, and optimize your Instagram content can be a very tricky task.

Luckily, there are numerous methods to organize your Instagram content process and spare time to plan your Instagram posts and stories! Ready to win your game on Instagram? Check out these top 10 tips to prepare your Instagram content strategy ahead of time.

Instagram Content Plan: 10 Tips on how to plan Instagram content for your feed!

1) Optimize Your Brand’s Instagram Account Bio

Wondering why am I talking about this as my first tip? Okay now hear me out, why? There is no value in getting to a good position with your Instagram content plan if your Instagram Bio isn’t augmented well for your successful branding on Instagram. Because once you started sharing high-quality, relevant content in your Instagram feed, lots and lots of people will make an effort to get to know about your business and brand. As the first thing, they check out your Instagram Bio before they will begin to “follow” your brand.

If there isn’t a clear description about brand, pertinent profile image, and engaging call-to-action (CTA), there are high chances of missing out on your new followers because they won’t understand who you are or what your brand is about. I would say Instagram bio is the one and only opportunity to grab your audience’s attention, so don’t do the mistake of neglecting your Instagram bio.

Tips to optimize your Instagram Bio:

• Keep your Bio description 20 words or less
• Include identifiable keywords in your bio that people will use to search you on Instagram
• Lastly, don’t forget to add a strong call to action that encourages people to join your business.

Instagram bio is the very first thing people notice when they click into your Instagram profile, so make sure to nail that bio perfectly before investing your time into  Instagram content strategy.

2) Pick Up Your Instagram Content Themes

Picking up the right Instagram themes or “content buckets” is one of the best methods to get rid of the tension of Instagram content planning for your feed. In my opinion, it’s a good choice to select 3 to 4 themes and rotating them throughout the month.

For example, you can choose the content bucket like:

• People (Your team, clients, or customers)
• Location (Your workplace, travel shots)
• Quotes (Motivating quotes or Inspiring testimonials)
• Your Products shots

Or else, you can choose Instagram themes like:

• Work-life of your staffs
• Office Interiors
• Family

Whatever the themes you choose it should go well with your business & brand, and most importantly it should resonate best with your target audience.

“Your brand is what your audience says it is”

The above saying applies to your Instagram as well. When you create your Instagram content plan, it should reflect your ideal followers and their values. Once you have chosen your content themes or buckets, trial them for a month or two then based on that results, swap and change your themes or buckets to what your audience best resonates with. An Instagram content plan is all about testing, learning, and optimizing. And that’s what this post going to tell you (so stay tuned with me!).

3) Don’t Miss Out the Significant National Days

Not each and every national day or holiday is relevant for your business or your audience, but it’s necessary to be aware of what’s coming up next in case it is. You may ask why it is important to know about national days. Let me tell you why? Because if a national day is important to your target audience, then it’s a great opportunity for you to create content that your audience will relate to themselves on that particular national day.

Having an Instagram content calendar will help you to stay up to date of these national holidays and traditional holidays like Independence Day and Tamil & Sinhala New Year. Make use of the Social Media Calendar to keep yourself informed about any important national days and social events that are coming up next, then you can put your creativity to make that day special for your audience. Now this question will raise in your mind how could this help to improve your Instagram content strategy?

Here is how it will help to improve your Instagram content strategy:

• If protecting the environment from pollution is your brand’s mission, International Environment Day (June 5) could be a great opportunity for you to elevate your brand and make your audience engage with your brand.
• By planning ahead you can conduct a cleanup program at your local and post those images on the feed.
• Also, you can encourage your audience to do the same and post them via stories

These kinds of activities on a specific national day help you to grab more attention towards your brand. Therefore make use of these national days and holidays to get the spotlight for your brand!

4) Create a Strong Voice for Your Brand

You have to be more certain about your brand voice then only you can able to create an effective content plan for your Instagram. Because you are going to create lots of images and captions. So it’s important to be sure about your brand tone then only you can make an efficient process of your Instagram posts. Decide, whether your brand voice going, to be frank, and funny or warm and reassuring.

If you don’t know how to find out your brand voice, begin with your brand values, then think about other brands that have brand voices you love. Jot down the descriptive specific keywords for each voice.

They can be adjective voices like:

• Professional
• Inspiring
• Witty

Or, they can be non-descriptive voices like:

• Momentum
• Mentor
• Love

With those examples, voice keywords figure out your own brand voice. It’s okay if your brand voice changes over time, as you get to know your brand and audience better. But this keyword tactic is a great idea, to begin with.

5) Evaluate Your Capabilities for Your Success

Don’t let your lack of understanding, energy, and time come in between you and your success of the Instagram campaign. I mean lots of entrepreneurs and business brands get stuck on Instagram posts because they feel creating an Instagram content plan is an overwhelming task. You shouldn’t overspend your precious time and energy on your Instagram feed content which is why it’s important to evaluate your capabilities.

Try to answer these questions to find out your capabilities:

• Do you have time and resources to make a batch of images at the beginning of every month?
• Would it easier for you to outsource images and leave the ideas up to you?
• Are you able to create designs on Canva to make quotes graphics?
• Could you outsource this design?

Hope these questions help you to find your capabilities. For financial reasons, most of us shy away from outsourcing, but also with the guilt that we should do everything ourselves. But you should understand that “Your time is extremely valuable.” If you could able to work with somebody that can give you more time to focus on the things that are more important (creating high-quality stories +interacting with your audience), you are making yourself committed to success on Instagram.

6) Set Time for Content Creation in Your Work Schedule

Now you are clear about your content themes and you have decided whether designed graphics/take photos by yourself or outsource someone. So right now you can focus on allocating time to create content. You need to create and schedule your content up to one month in advance. If you need to create and schedule your May month content, you would be doing that during the first week of April.

If you do that so, then all you have to do during the next few weeks of the month is to hit “post” button on your Instagram account or you can set your content to go live automatically via third-party automation tools like Iconosquare. In the beginning, it might seem impossible to plan your Instagram content in advance, therefore at the starting take it to step by step process, for instance, first plan your Instagram content for one week then two, then three… and before know, it will get in place and naturally you begin to plan content far in advance for your Instagram.

7) Get to Know the Best Timing for Your Post

If you want to use Instagram really serious for your business, you need to figure out the best timing for your posts on Instagram, but if you have just started using Instagram for your business, you may not have enough data to understand the best timing for your post on Instagram. If that’s your case, then start with sticking to a regular posting schedule (3x posts a week is preferable).

You don’t need to post on exactly the same days for each week, but just make sure to stick with the equal frequency of posting for every week. With time you will collect adequate insights to recognize your best time schedule to post on Instagram.

Eventually, you will find out your optimal times for post, whether

• Is it morning or evening?
• Do weekend posts perform better than weekdays?

When you figure out the best timing for your Instagram posts, you can easily understand what best resonates with your target audience, and based on that you can tweak your Instagram post schedule.

8) Make Use of a Scheduling Tool for Your Instagram Posts

The good thing about social media automation tool like Iconosquare is that it’s not just an official Instagram partner, but also an inclusive podium that allows you to create your Instagram content plan for your feed, schedule your Instagram posts and stories, monitor your Instagram analytics in-depth, and manage all your Instagram comments and conversations in one platform. It takes out the pressure of posting on your Instagram week by week and offering you the necessary space and time to focus on engaging with your brand followers.

If you are not ready to invest in paid automation tools then you can use Excel sheets to schedule your Instagram content plan. Of course, it doesn’t automatically post on Instagram on your behalf, but it does allow you to keep and manage all your content and captions in one place. And it could be a good idea to get into a habit to streamline your Instagram content plan before you invest in an automation tool. Financially it would be a wise idea!

9) Weekly Schedule Your Instagram Stories

Instagram stories turn out to be more crucial than ever before. If you have any doubt about it, just have a look at the facts: After seeing it on Instagram stories, 50% of folks search for a product or service online and 62% of folks become interested in a specific product or brand. Not only that 1/3 of most-viewed Instagram stories are created by business brands.

Would you miss out this golden chance to reach your audience through your Instagram stories? Definitely No, right? You can create super-engaging and high-quality Instagram Stories week-by-week. That means on weekend (Sunday) you can create and plan 3 to 4 Instagram stories to share over the next week.

Here are some ideas on Instagram Stories:

• Introduce your team member
• Demo your product or service
• Share a sneak peek of your new product or service
• Conduct a Q&A session on your story
• Show a behind-the-scenes of your workday
• Repurpose a blog post through a short video

Don’t hold yourself back, just go for it! In the beginning, it might feel uncomfortable, but trust me with time and practice you become familiar with your Instastories and it will also help you to overcome your shyness.

10) Analyze, Modify and Optimize Your Instagram Content Plan

The important part of creating the powerful Instagram content plan comes after the implementation content plan and that is the analysis. Choosing suitable content themes and writing attractive captions mean nothing if you are not analyzing what works best with your target audience and then tweaking your content strategy accordingly. If something worked well as you expected, it doesn’t mean you are getting wrong on Instagram. As you know social media changes every now and then. So as a business brand and Instagram marketer you need to constantly evaluate what you are doing on Instagram and find out whether it’s still working.

That’s the joy of content planning: trying out new things, making mistakes, changing content tactics, optimizing content, and through them continuously improving your Instagram content strategy. Thus at least once in a month make sure to review your Instagram content. For your Instagram stories focus on retention rate (e.g: The % of people that watched your Instastory from start to end). If you want to Improve your Instagram campaign, focus on your Instagram post engagement rate, conversions rate, and number of DMs rather than followers’ numbers and post likes. Because If your content actually engaging your audience, it will automatically increase the amount of DMs, comments, and conversions.

There are lots of Instagram metrics but you don’t need to monitor them all. Metrics depend on your business goals and your overall Instagram marketing strategy. So choose your metrics measurements according to your Instagram content strategy and goals and track your Instagram success according to them.

Conclusion

Here you go! 10 effective tips on how to plan Instagram content for your feed. When it comes to content planning for your Instagram feed, it can make you feel a little intimidated or overwhelmed. But with effective planning and the right time-saving hacks in your hand, you will soon make yourself get ahead of the game on Instagram!

It’s time to hear from you! Do you have an Instagram content strategy plan created ahead?

AboutAbirika Soolabanee

Abirika Soolabanee working as a Senior Manager - Inbound Marketing & Branding at Prime One Global. She is a certified content and Inbound marketer with five years of experience. Bringing expertise in content marketing, inbound marketing, branding, blogging, copywriting, SEO, keyword research, and research & analytics. She is passionate about Inbound Marketing, Branding and Blogging. She writes in-depth articles and guides about digital marketing trends, technologies, and other lifestyle topics since 2018. Through her writings, she loves to help people in all aspects of their life.