How to Plan and Schedule your Content in Advance
Planning content in advance is one of the best things you can do to consistently post in order to grow on social media. In this blog, I’ll discuss how to plan, create, and schedule your Instagram content in advance. Before planning your content, you’ll need to identify your business goals, strategy, and content pillars.
Blog: How to Create an Instagram Strategy
Blog: Choosing Content Pillars for your Instagram Strategy
Step 1: Choose a Posting Schedule
The first thing you’ll want to do is create a posting schedule. Decide how many times a week you want to post on your feed. This number should be based on how much content you have the capacity to create instead of how much you think you should be posting. Personally, I have the capacity to post three times a week on Instagram, so I create enough content to sustain that schedule. Quality over quantity. For this example, we’ll choose four in-feed posts a week. ( All photos show an example of planning content inside of Airtable.)
Step 2: Assign a Content Pillar to Each Day
Next, assign a content pillar to each day. Which content pillars you choose, and how often you will use them will be based on the Instagram strategy that you’ve already created. For this example, we’ll focus mainly on promotion and engagement pillars. The content pillars you use and how often you use them will change based on goals or seasonal changes within your business such as sales or a launch.
Step 3: Choose the Types of Content You’ll Post and Create the Content
Choose what specific type of content ( photo, video, reel, graphic, etc) you’ll post each day. Need content ideas? Here are content ideas for each content pillar. In this step, you will also create your content if you haven’t already. This includes photos, videos, and graphics. Try creating your content in batches to save time.
Step 4: Create your Captions and Add Relevant Hashtags
Next, draft your captions. Be sure to include a hook, value, and a call to action that coincides with your content pillar. For example, if the content pillar for this post is promotion, the call to action should tell your followers to book a service. Then choose relevant hashtags for each post. Click here for my hashtag formula
Step 5: Schedule Content in an Instagram Scheduler
Lastly, schedule your content, captions, and hashtags in an Instagram scheduler. My favorites are Later and Planoly. Using a scheduler allows you to auto-post some of your content or receive a notification when it’s time to post. These schedulers also provide insights and analytics for your posts.
Follow these five steps to plan, create, and schedule your content in advance. Planning in advance will free up your time and make content creation easier.
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