Tips for Instagram: How to plan your posts.
Have you ever wondered how to plan your content for Instagram, but have no idea how to start? Would you like to be more organized with your publications? Well, you have come to the right place. Today I am going to talk to you about how to plan your content on Instagram in an easy and creative way.
We are going to go by steps and believe me that having your content organized in advance, will take a lot of weight off your shoulders. With this, you will save time and energy while posting engaging content to get more engagement and attract new followers.
Contents
Define your brand
Successful brands understand that people don’t buy products. They buy into the promise of what their life could be like with that product or service. That is, they buy lifestyles and shared values.
It is very important that your brand is clear and above all that in all your content you communicate what your “promise” is as a brand.
If you are still not clear about what your brand is about or what you want to achieve with it, it is better that you take some time to write it down and create a brainstorm to start landing what you would like your brand to identify. Mark. Let’s remember that “brand” does not need to be a product or service brand, this also applies to all those who are content creators, artists or illustrators, since your brand would be your name.
If it is not yet defined what you are looking for as a brand, ask yourself the following questions:
- What are my values?
- What message do I want to give?
- What is special and unique about me and my brand?
- What can I offer?
- What value or meaning will my publications have? Are they to educate, to inspire, to entertain?
- Who is my audience?
- What differentiates you from the competition?
Values: What do you stand for?
Brand values are a set of basic principles true to your person or your business. They affect your behaviors from your actions and decisions you make. Ask yourself what your brand reflects or what you want it to reflect, remember that values are something very important that gives the face to your brand.
What differentiates you from the competition?
Brand positioning represents the proper place that a brand occupies in the minds of consumers, thus differentiating it from its competitors. It must define what the client can expect from it and what it represents.
The more concrete and understandable this brand promise is to the consumer, the more likely they are to remember it. The brand positioning must credibly build on the brand and be attractive to the target group.
With the help of brand positioning, customers can internalize a certain image of the company. If customers perceive a product or service in a positive light, they are more likely to be attracted to buy your brand and recommend it to others.
Creating content in advance
The ideal would be to plan and create the content for the entire month, but if that seems like a lot to you or you are creating original content little by little (in this case art), you can also choose to do it week by week. For example: every Saturday you plan the content for the following week.
Once you have chosen which day you are going to create your weekly/monthly content, you have to define these topics:
- How many posts will you share per week?
- What category are you going to assign to each day.
- Define the photos you are going to use for each post.
- Write the caption for each post.
- See if there are any special occasions to consider.
If you are a content creator or artist, I recommend that you plan your dates carefully, for example: Upload previews of your work to keep the attention of your audience and keep them waiting for your finished work, take into account when you plan to finish it and set publication date.
Social media content calendar
This is one of the most important tools to include in your social media toolbox.
A social media content calendar lets you plan and schedule all your social content in advance to maximize its impact.
It will also help you:
- Identify gaps in your posting schedule.
- Remember important events and dates.
- Finding your ideal mix of content.
- Make sure your content is fresh and performs well.
- Collaborate with your colleagues and distribute resources appropriately.
Assign days for the generation of content, so you can create content safely and calmly, since you will be organizing your days and you will not run out of content to upload.
A good hashtag, or a good combination of these, will expose your brand to reach larger and more targeted audiences. That is, audiences that become potential customers.
Spend time testing different hashtags in your content and studying which one generated the most engagement as well as which one generated the most real followers. The time spent on this simple technique will potentially increase the reach of your posts. If you still don’t know how hashtags work, I invite you to take a look at our article on the functionality of hashtags.
Create original hashtags that define your brand and check which hashtags are linked to your content.
Use a brainstorming notebook
The brainstorming technique is commonly applied in the business and university environment to generate ideas, through the exchange of information on a topic. In this case, having a notebook where you can write down all your ideas will help you get ideas for your future publications.
How does this help? Having a notebook where you can be free to write or keep all your ideas will help you in those moments where you don’t know what to publish, not just ideas, you can save drawings or ideas for later, the joke is that it helps you to have themes when there are creative blocks, which usually happens, so you can go into your notebook of ideas and look for something that takes you out of that moment of 0 creativity.
Use apps to get organized
There are different applications where you can write down your ideas and create your publication calendar, currently Instagram’s terms of use do not allow the use of third-party applications for the publication and planning of content, this has generated problems with company accounts, especially small and has caused their closure. However, we can find other applications to record our planning. I will present some that can help you organize yourself.
evernote
Evernote is an app that lets you work from anywhere, syncing your notes so they’re available across all the devices you’re using. It also gives you the option to add images, audios, scanned files and other documents.
Trello
Trello is an application that was created for team project management. To be able to use this tool you will have to create cards, personalize them and manage them as the team’s work progresses. Through Trello you can organize your tasks, manage your projects in development and encourage teamwork and collaboration from the same place.
pose
With this tool you can manage all your projects in one place, avoiding using spreadsheets, emails and others. With this platform you can carry out actions from 4 different types of pillars: Engineering, marketing, sales and human resources. Asana will help you more easily plan, organize, and manage your team’s work, and it’s also a platform for collaboration.
Templates
If you are looking for something easier to plan, you can look for templates to organize yourself, here are 9 social media templates that will help you with your publications.
If you are starting out with planning on your social networks, I hope these tips will help you improve your content and how to organize yourself. You will see that by defining, finding what your values are and what you want your brand to reflect, everything will be easier. Be consistent and plan ahead, this will make your posts a success.
