I’ve always struggled with social media planning. If you’ve read any of my previous blogs you know I struggle with planning in general (Katie and planners do not get along!). That said, I think I’ve found a planning system, specifically for Instagram, that works for me!
Not going to make you hunt for it link like in recipe blogs: *Template Link Here*
(It should pull up a page that says “Use Template” in the top right corner. Click that and it should add a copy to your Sheets dashboard.)
Here’s a little breakdown of how I’m using it:
Plan the Entire Month out on Paper First
This might seem counter intuitive but using one of my monthly digital downloads to plan the entire month out on paper really helped. For this I added in all of my marketing efforts - Instagram posts, emails, announcements, sales, and other things like my workouts. I’m such a visual person, seeing everything laid out for the entire month helps me see the gaps and where the patterns don’t match up & where they should be. Doing this first lets me know where my Instagram posts should land and what topics they should relate to.
I used lots of different colors. Here’s what they mean:
Pink - Instagram posts
Purple - Wholesale email newsletter
Blue - Retail email newsletter
Green - Sales/Announcements
Black - Markets/Pop-Ups & holidays
Yellow Highlighter - Done
Blue Highlighter - Post created
Pink highlighter - Copy written
The physicall action of doing this, and the satisfaction of when I get to cross something off or highlight it, is so satisfying and frankly, motivating
Next, I plug in the Instagram Post Dates into the Google Sheets Template
Now that I know what days I’m posting I need to figure out what topics I want to talk about. I’ll plug in what I wrote on my print out (days, dates, etc.) and then slowly add in what product I’m talking about and what the Post Topic will be. As I do this I’m looking at my written version to make sure the topics line up with sales, announcements, holidays, events, etc. I want to make sure each post relates to what’s going on that week.
At the same time though, I want to make sure there’s enough variety to keep my audience interested. This week I’m planning the launch of a new notepad collection so I’m going to keep that type of content my focus this week. But I don’t want to get repetitive so I’m going to try to switch it up - a notepad launch announcement, a bts post of organizing the new notepad inventory, a packing order post. Does that make sense? Once the launch has past I’m going to go back to alternating content between all my product categories.
(I learned this tip ↑ from a wonderful human named Liz during my time in the Legacy West Small Business Cohort!)
Making sure I’m Alternating Between Post Types
Idk about you but posting reels allll the time is exhausting. I’m trying to find the fun in social media/Instagram again so that means also posting different types of content. While I’m doing the previous step, I’m also keeping in mind the post type - reels, carousel posts, single image posts, etc. Let’s switch it up and make it just as interesting for us to create as it is for our audience to consume.
Time to Write the Copy
If you don’t know what “Copy” means: copy is all the written content!
Right now I’m trying to have a month’s worth of copy written at a time. I haven’t finished it yet but the time investment upfront to get ahead will be worth it. Once I get through a week of content I want to implement a schedule where once a week I plan the next week’s content. Does that make sense?
Store your post content in once place
I keep all of my post files in a Google Drive folder. It’s broken down into folders so I know exactly where to look, then that link is added into the spreadsheet.
Reels
I haven’t mastered a system for this yet (so if you have tips please send them my way!) but for right now I’m making a few reels, saving them as drafts, then day-of finding a trending audio, adding it in, then posting. Putting the clips together takes forever sometimes so this has really helped.
And last but not least, post!
Download your images, add in audio for reels, copy the caption from the spreadsheet, and you’re good to go! Yay, done!
Is this a lot of work, yes, but will we thank ourselves later? Also yes.
