Most people ask me “How do you plan your Instagram content in advance?” Do you spend hours trying to come up with your content? You are not alone friend!

Everyone is busy with life, work, kids, and all the things! We all want to leave an impression with our posts. So how do you find the time to prepare your posts, and create content to keep your followers coming back?

Don’t stress, there is good news, you can totally rock this! You can find ways to be more efficient when planning your content.

Sharing some tips with you so you can have more time to enjoy your life, and spend less time on your Instagram feed.

Curate Your Content in Advance

Planning your content in advance is the biggest tip I can give you. Having your posts planned out in advance can take the pressure off what you post each day.

It also allows you to create a cohesive and aesthetically pleasing feed. This helps you take your content to the next level. Planning your content, hashtags, and photos will level up your strategy, and boost your engagement.

We all want more followers, and by delivering consistent content, you will wow your followers and keep them coming back to your profile. First you need to focus on your feed, as a grid. Planning your content at least 2-4 weeks in advance.

This allows you to move your photos around, and see what looks best in your grid. You don’t want your feed to look to crowded or too busy. So by shifting your photos you can easily plan out your grid in advance.

There are plenty of apps out there that allow you to upload photos and move them to imitate your instagram feed. Tools like Preview ColorStory and Content Office. These apps allow you to drag and drop photos so you can choose what looks the best on your feed. Once you like how your photos are placed, you can plan out your content and captions. ColorStory also has filters you can purchase in the app to adjust the look of your photos.

When planning in advance remember, life happens, you can plan, but sometimes things can arise that throw you off your schedule, and that is ok. You will learn to roll with it.

So why plan in advance you ask? First you allow yourself more time to edit photos, research hashtags about your topic, and be selective more about your content.

Your feed will look curated, professional, and in the end aesthetically pleasing. This will not only bring in more followers, it will get them engaging with you.

Curate Your Captions

Ok let’s be honest, how many of you roll out of bed and say “Oh no what do I post today?” Take a quick photo of whatever doesn’t look like a full blown disaster in your home? To be successful on Instagram, you need to plan ahead. You cant just post any image, with any caption and expect high engagement. Well some people are that lucky, for the most part we aren’t.

Your followers want more, more details, more love, more you. They want behind the scenes, to know as much about you as you can give them, and about your brand. So by planning ahead ,you can take control of what you want to share and when. Also by allowing yourself more time, you can avoid any typos, spelling issues.

So you may be asking, “If I plan my content so far in advance, what if I want to share what’s going on this week in my life.” That is totally fine, by curating your photos and your captions you allow room for change. You can always edit your captions, and add in what you need. At the end of the day you will have the photos curated, and you will have captions created if you need them.

Keep Track of Your Collaborations

If you have a lot of collaborations, paid or unpaid, you need to get organized. I met this amazing company back in the Summer at The Blissdom Conference and they changed everything for me and my approach to working with brands.

It can be so hard just curate content, then you add in obligations, and life can get hard to balance and manage. If you’re juggling Instagram, a blog, Pinterest, or other social media channels, you can be easily overwhelmed. How do you keep track of it all? Are you juggling planners, notepads, and calendars? How cool would it be to manage all of that in one place?

When you are juggling too much you may be scrambling to provide your sponsors the content, and deliverables they are asking for, in a timely manner. You might be sending everything last minute or after they send you multiple emails. What would you say if I told you that can all be avoided?

That you can streamline your process of uploading your links and stories into one online tool. That you can manage each collaboration, and simply send the sponsor a link to a live, a constantly updated link. Your sponsors can keep checking this link, for updated stats on all your content you have published for them.

Influencekit is not only a big timesaver for me, my sponsors love it. They don’t have to add up all my stats. I can send them a link, and their job just got so much simpler. So not only have you streamlined your work, you made their job easier. I can tell you when they are thinking of future collaborations you will be remembered.

Influencekit also allows you to have multiple calendars going at one time. So I have one for my blog content, one for sponsor content, and one for Instagram content. I can plan out my topics for my blog, like an editorial calendar would. I can add every deliverable to my sponsor section, any hashtags brand wants me to use, links, etc. This is also useful when wanting to work with other brands. You can send them a link to a similar collaboration and show them what they can expect from you in advance.

Your goal is to leave an impression on those who land on your feed. So by finding the time to schedule and curate your content, you can optimize your time. I hope these tips help you see the bigger picture and the importance of planning your feed ahead.

Looking for Instagram coaching, marketing, or content creation. We also offer social media mentor services. If your looking to figure out the algorithm, get some one-on-one coaching, or content creation for your brand or business, or want to book us to speak/train at your next event, you are in the right place. Schedule your free 15 minute call today to see how we can help you reach your goals and chase your dreams!