Create a content strategy for Instagram
I know Instagram can be a ‘pain in the *** platform’, right?! Luckily I’m here to make things easier for you. From now on you can stop wondering what to post next… Because in this blog post we will create your awesome content strategy for Instagram together! So you can finally start creating content your audience will absolutely LOVE.
Grab a notebook, pen and a coffee (or something stronger, if you feel like you need it ;-)), because you’ll be glued to your screen for quite some time. This is a long blog, but a very valuable one.
Let’s create a content strategy for Instagram –the easy way.
How to create a content strategy for Instagram?
Now, I’m sure you know some Instagram accounts who get a lot of engagement and maybe your account seems to go nowhere. The reality is, if you want to grow on Instagram it’s not enough to post only pretty pictures or funny gifs. You really need to be strategic with your content. And thats why you need a content strategy.
You can create a content strategy for Instagram in 4 steps. I’ll walk you through each and all of them in this blog:
Step 01. A strong business foundation
Step 02. The actual content strategy
Step 03. Growth strategies
Step 04: Evaluate and improve
Let’s dive into it!
Step 01: A strong business foundation
Having a strong Instagram content strategy begins with the basics; your business foundation. You need to get clear on your:
→ goals
→ target audience
→ perfect offer
Let’s walk through these elements together.
→ Define your Instagram goals
Why are you on Instagram in the first place? (Or why do you want to be, if you’re just starting out?) And how does your Instagram goal support your overall business goal? Knowing your goals will shape your content strategy.
Maybe you want to use Instagram to increase your website traffic. Or maybe you want to use Instagram to build a close relationship with your community. Or maybe you want to use Instagram to build a huge email list.
Just getting more Instagram followers is not a goal on its own. You need more followers because you want to sell more services or products. Or you need more followers because you want more people to visit your website.
Common goals for Instagram are:
Increasing brand awareness
Increasing product sales
Driving traffic to your website
Increasing customer satisfaction
Increase community engagement
→ Define your target audience
Second you need to get really clear on your target audience. A target audience is a group of people characterized by behavior and specific demographics, such as newborn mom entrepreneurs between the ages of 25 and 30. It’s your ideal customer, based on demographics and behavior.
Such as their:
Location
Age
Gender
Employment/profession
Income
Personal situation (married, stay at home mom, single, divorced etc.)
Also get very clear on their interests, pain points and behaviors. What’s something they’re craving for? Or something they REALLY need or want? This information is crucial for creating content that resonates with your audience. It’s the key factor people will start to follow you on Instagram.
For example: my audience really wants to save time on content creation. They’re busy moms who also run a business (or want to start one). They feel frustrated about content creation.They don’t know what to post, spend hours on content creation and feel overwhelmed. They do feel the urge to take action, because they need to show up in order to build and grow their businesses.
→ Create the perfect offer
At this point you’re clear on your Instagram goal and your target audience. It’s time to connect the perfect offer to your audience. Because this needs to be a perfect match in order to succeed on Instagram.
Make sure your offer is something your audience really needs or wants. If you’re new to this, you can start helping people for free. Just to check if your solution is resonating with your audience. Always validate your solution before you start selling it.
(By the way: this is also awesome to collect great reviews you can use in your content to attract even more buyers!)
Step 02. Create a content strategy for Instagram
Now that you have a clear picture of what you offer, your target audience and your Instagram goal, it’s time to start planning your Instagram content strategy. For this, you will need:
→ A content theme
→ Content pillars
→ A posting plan
→ A batching process
→ Create a content theme
People who tell you aesthetics don’t matter on Instagram are lying to you. Instagram is a super visual platform, so your feed needs to follow a theme that reflects your brand style. You can go as crazy as following a pattern, but you can keep things also low key by just having a consistent brand style and sticking to your brand colors and style.
When choosing the content style for your business, you’ll need to decide on a branded theme for your feed. Think of colors, fonts and the type and style of images and videos you want to use. This will help you make your content always look on brand.
Here are some examples of different content themes (scroll down for some images):
#1: @femaleentrepreneurassociation uses a combination of images, quotes, and inspirational Reels. They are very consistent with their brand colors, which helps to boost their brand awareness.
#2: @chanelofficial shares a lot of looks and new products. Since their brand is well known, they don’t need to have a color theme. They do show their usual black vibes and they use their logo a lot.
#3: @leclairdecor only shares carousel posts and Reels video with mainly images and videos, very rare videos with text on it. Mostly for giveaways or discounts.
#4: @wombnwellness shares a combination of images, videos and graphics in her brand style. It’s similar to my feed right now.
#5: @womenceogossip mostly shares quotes and memes in their brand colors.
These Instagram accounts are just a couple of examples, it’s totally up to you what vibe you want to create on your own account.
Try to decide on your theme before you dive into the next step: getting clear on your content pillars.
→ Get clear on your content pillars
YAY! It’s time to start creating the actual content. You might be wondering “How do I decide what to post?”. Well, this is the moment you’ll get clarity! First come up with your content pillars.
What are content pillars?
Content pillars are 3 to 5 topics you will consistently discuss and create content for on Instagram. They’re also called content categories or content buckets and they will form the foundation of what you'll post. You can see them as the key themes your audience can consistently expect to see from you.
Instead of posting anything and everything, you can create more relevant content for your target audience — establishing you as a go-to expert (or a source of inspiration or entertainment). It’s the biggest reason I’ve built an online audience of up to 120k followers on Instagram!
Why are content pillars important?
They make planning your content so much easier! Rather than scrambling to create last-minute posts, you can use your content pillars to strategically build your content calendar for the week (or month) ahead.
Some content pillar examples:
→ Behind the scenes
→ Case studies
→ Quick hacks
→ Client results
→ Educational information
And here are some content pillar examples you can use for inspiration:
A health coach could focus on motivational quotes, simple recipes, and journaling tips.
A fashion stylist’s pillars could be minimalist style, body positivity, self-love tips, and budgeting hacks.
A marketing expert could focus on entrepreneurship, social media news, and work-life balance tips.
A meal prep coach content pillars could include weekly plans, recipes, cooking tips, and breaking down nutrition myths.
A fitness instructor could share morning routine tips, simple at-home workouts, and motivational quotes.
And so on! Write down your content pillars and move on to the next step: creating a posting plan.
→ Create a posting plan
Part 3 of this step is where we will create a posting plan. Let’s go through some important elements:
Posting frequency - how often are you gonna be posting? It’s better to post 3 times per week consistently than post every day and then burn out.
Format - look at the formats you want to focus on. Maybe you want to create 2 Reels, 2 carousel posts and 1 single post.
Goal - Define the goal of every post. Some examples:
→ Sell products / services
→ Grow your audience / get new followers
→ Build a strong community
→ Get more engagement
→ Let your audience save the post for later
Content idea - Get content ideas based on the format, purpose, pillar. The best content ideas are inspired by market research and content research. For example, get inspired by questions you receive or check what posts work well at your competitors. Never just copy and paste, but use it as inspiration.
This is what your content plan can look like:
Create your posting plan for next week or next month before you dive into the next step: the batching process.
Want to access a pre-made content calendar with 365+ content ideas and captions, customizable into any niche? Join The Templates Vault and grab the content calendar!
→ Batching process
Now that you have a content plan and you know what to post about, it’s time to create the actual content! I always recommend using a batching process for content creation. Content batching is a productivity technique where you create all of your captions or visual content during a set period of time.
For example, instead of spending an hour planning, creating, and publishing one Instagram post, you’ll spend that hour writing or “batching” an entire week of captions. While this may sound like more work, it’s actually the opposite.
With content batching, you’re able to focus your creative energy without jumping from task to task, and can plan content weeks in advance — creating a more cohesive (and stress-free) approach to your social media strategy.
Content batching process steps:
01. Create a content plan
02. Write your captions
03. Film video content
04. Design your graphics
05. Schedule your content
Let’s break it down:
01. Create a content plan
You’ve already done this in the previous step, so you can move on to the next step.
02. Write your captions
Block a part of your day to write all your captions for next week or next month. Use this formula to help write engaging social media posts:
Hook: This is the first line in your caption that will draw your audience in and stop their scroll. Check this post for some inspiration.
Line breaks: Avoid cluttered captions by using line breaks. It will also help make long captions easy to read and skim.
Emojis: Depending on your brand voice, emojis can add personality, color, and emotion to your caption — making it more fun and interesting to users.
Call to action (CTA): Boost your post engagement by inviting your audience to take action. You could ask them to comment their thoughts, save the post for later, click on the link in your bio, or shop through your profile.
→ Inside The Templates Vault you’ll find 365+ caption ideas and caption starters.
03. Film video content
If you want to create Reels videos, this is the moment to film all videos for next week or next month. If you’re filming videos for your brand, set aside a portion of your day to batch record your footage. This allows you to get camera-ready, set up any props or sets, and capture B-roll.
And most importantly: remember to outline or script your videos. This will help when editing and writing video descriptions and titles. You can create folders on your phone, desktop or even in your Google Drive to stay organized.
Check this Instagram post for some faceless Reels videos (B-roll) ideas.
04. Design your graphics
Graphics can include video cover photos for Reels, carousel infographics, quotes, charts, text only graphics etc. When it comes to content batching, use pre-made Canva templates for your most commonly used graphics to make the process quicker.
A few resources to help you get started:
Use my special link for a free 45-day Canva Pro trial.
Follow me on Instagram for daily Canva tips and tutorial videos.
Browse the shop for completely customizable Canva templates.
Join the membership for monthly pre-made Canva template bundles.
05. Schedule your content
Canva offers a Content Planner tool for Canva Pro users. (Click here for a free 45-day Canva Pro trial). Schedule posts easily across your social platforms. Plan your content for those optimal times days, weeks, or months ahead. Need to pause a post? You have the control to pause and edit a post without having to re-upload the file.
You can also try tools such as Later or Planoly to schedule your content. Or you can post manually. It’s totally up to you!
Step 3. Reach more people with growth strategies
Now that you have created and scheduled your content, let’s go to the next step. This is where we need to talk about growth strategies. Because, why waste your time posting great content that nobody will get to see? That would be such a bummer, right?!
You need to understand how the Instagram algorithm works. When you post, Instagram shows your content organically to about 1-2% of your audience. And how they interact with your content (leaving likes, comments, sharing, etc.) determines whether your post gets featured on the explore page where it is able to reach a much broader audience. You’ll soon realize that it’s pretty difficult to get your posts visible on Instagram. But it’s not impossible!
Here are some ideas to reach an even bigger audience:
Share your Instagram content to other social platforms to reach more people in your target market, for example on TikTok.
Collaborate with influencers or other business owners or content creators to reach a broader audience.
Create branded hashtags and get people to use them in their posts for a chance to get featured on your page.
Run contests and giveaways to encourage more people to follow your account.
Step 4. Evaluate and improve
This is the most interesting step, if you’d ask me! Monitoring your performance is critical to any successful social media strategy. Your insights will tell you which posts your audience finds most engaging and allows you to optimize your strategy as you move forward.
Whenever I need to make a new batch of posts, this is what I do first. I take a look into my Instagram insights. I used to care a lot about likes on a post. But likes don’t mean anything if you’re serious about reaching more people and making sales on Instagram.
Here are 3 metrics that will help you much more:
→ SAVES show you how good your content actually is. Because people want to revisit your content. (my saves are often 2-3x higher than my likes!)
→ REACH of non-followers will push your content to even more people. If people spend time on your content, Instagram will show it to more NEW people, which is needed for growth. This shows how much the algorithm and people actually like your posts, without them pressing ‘like’.
→ SALES, link taps, follows and profile visits are the best indicator to see if you’re actually starting to attract new leads. And of course check your payment processor to see if it converted (for passive income or an online shop) or how many sign ups or applications you’re getting.
So, this is basically how you create a content strategy for Instagram! If you have questions about content creation, Canva, or anything mentioned in this blog, shoot me an email (mail to: info@shetalksbusiness.co).
