How to Create an Instagram Content Calendar

Ask anyone who has found success on Instagram what their secret is, and they will tell you that it’s “consistency.” Brand awareness and an increase in following rely on consistent, valuable content with a compelling CTA. But unfortunately, writer’s block affects social media content creators as much as novel writers. How do you continue to connect with your followers if you run out of ideas on what to say?

It is at this point that an Instagram content calendar becomes invaluable. Drawing up a calendar for each month’s content will help you feel more in control of your marketing strategy and allows you plenty of time to prepare posts in advance.

One of the best benefits of a content calendar is that you can schedule your posts and swap them out as trends arise and fade. This way, you will always have something new to say.

Planning Your Instagram Content Calendar

Before you set up a content calendar, you should decide on the period your calendar will cover. Do you want to schedule posts month by month or quarterly? Do you want to have a year’s worth of content at your fingertips before you even start posting?

When you’ve decided how many posts you want to schedule ahead of time, you can create your content marketing strategy. The following factors will influence your planning:

• The overarching purpose of your Instagram account

• The content theme

• The time of day or night you plan on posting content

• The type of content you want to produce

If you are a longtime Instagram user, it may be helpful to audit your existing content to determine which posts performed the best and emulate them.

Observe Your Target Audience’s Preferences

When promoting your business to a target audience, you should cater to their preferences. Do your followers prefer reels over photographs? Do they interact more with humorous posts than inspirational ones? Are they more active on your profile during specific times of the day? Does your existing Instagram audience match your idea of a target audience?

These are crucial questions to answer before you settle on the type of content you want to include in your calendar.

Match Your Content Style to Your Target Audience

Once you decide on the kind of content you want to post, you should plan the tone and style of your content. Ensure you match your brand’s voice on other social media platforms by creating brand guidelines for Instagram and including them on your calendar. These guidelines include the following:

• Recognizable colors

• Logo

• Tone

• Visuals

• Hashtags

Your brand’s guidelines should include risk warnings in posts where applicable, social media platform rules and the process followed when someone complains about your content.

Outlining the Content Calendar

Now that you’ve decided on your strategy, observed your audience’s preferences, and planned your content style, it is time to outline your Instagram social media calendar. The purpose of a content calendar is to achieve success with your Instagram content strategy, and its outline should contain the following:

• Day and time details for each post

• Images, reels, videos, text, and links for each post

• The demographics you want to target

• Information on upcoming product launches, giveaways, and competitions.

The content should be varied to keep things interesting. Try to mix relevant news snippets with company announcements. Stay on top of holidays, including observed days, especially if you notice a lot of user-generated content on your profile. Share good reviews to help elevate brand trust.

Assign Roles and Tasks

If you don’t have the time to create an Instagram content calendar, you should appoint a dedicated employee to take on the responsibility. Decide who creates the content and who adds it to the calendar.

Should you want to sign off on the content before scheduling, note it on the calendar. You may want to consider making the content a two-person job if you’re away most of the time. Doing this will ensure there is someone to check that the calendar content gets posted regularly.

When implementing a newly planned content calendar, stay at least two weeks ahead of schedule to avoid rushing the content creation process. As you get the hang of things, you want to ideally have at least a couple of months to make provision for trends as they arise.

Don’t Lose Steam

The worst thing you can do is to lose steam in the middle of a long-term content strategy. Putting in the effort to get your content ideas on the calendar, only to stop posting halfway throughout, means all that effort goes to waste.

Instagram marketing is a time-consuming commitment, but the rewards are priceless. If you do it right, an Instagram calendar will allow you to create batches of content, avoid a last-minute scramble, and post content when your target audience is most active on the platform.

You can use a scheduling tool to help you post as many times a week as you wish. Remember that posting too much may cause a spam alert on your profile.

If you’re unsure how to get started on your content calendar, you can browse online templates. Templates usually include space for dates, times, social media platform names, media, notes, and approval. You can even use Google Calendar to make content notes. If you can’t get used to a digital calendar, nothing stops you from writing it all down on a paper calendar.

Measure Content Performance

To keep populating your content calendar with content that converts on Instagram, you need to monitor and measure the performance of your posts. Use Instagram’s analytic tools to track your content’s reach and the engagement rate around your posts. Analytics will help you refine and optimize your content strategy as you continue to add to your calendar.

Conclusion

An Instagram content calendar is a life-saver when you’re trying to juggle content and grow your brand. It helps save time by organizing content per month or quarter and allows you to test different marketing strategies before settling on the calendar process that works for you.