Plan Your IG Content material with a Free Instagram Feed Planner

Planning your Instagram feed needs to be a vital step of your social media technique. No matter your subject of exercise, Instagram could be a gold mine when it comes to reaching the proper viewers and changing guests to customers. That’s, if used accurately. 

This text goes over the whys (first half) and hows (second half) of planning the feed of your Instagram account. We’ll additionally present you the proper Instagram feed planner for this precise goal. Let’s get to it.

Why ought to I care about planning my Instagram feed?

Three primary causes to make use of an Instagram feed planner:

• Consistency. Whether or not from a visible or editorial perspective, you need your Instagram content material to pop and depart an impression on guests.
• Effectivity. It goes with out saying, however following a tight-knit plan as an alternative of doing the ol’ create-and-dump will do wonders to your Instagram feed.
• Experimentation. Contemplating your feed as a complete as an alternative of particular person posts provides you with the worldwide view essential to experiment with out deviating too far off the course.

In different phrases, an Instagram feed planner lets you produce high-quality content material persistently (extra on that later).

Plus, it can save you time by batching your content material creation and posting as an alternative of doing the whole lot on the fly.

With that out of the way in which, let’s discuss a bit about how Instagram feeds work.

How Instagram feeds work

An Instagram feed is an outline of your newest IG posts, and it’s typically the very first thing your customer will see. 

With regards to how they work, we now have to delve a bit into algorithms. Now, lots of ink has been spilled over the intricacies of Instagram’s algorithm, so we gained’t bore you with the main points on this article.

Since Meta retains issues underneath wraps on goal to stop dangerous actors from gaming the system, no one truly is aware of with 100% certainty how the algorithm works. Some pages hit the algorithmic jackpot — others have such a novel theme that they get featured in The New York Occasions.

Nonetheless, there are two key components that each social media supervisor ought to account for, no matter algorithm modifications:

• Neighborhood constructing. Constructing connections with followers trumps extremely optimized, trend-chasing content material any day of the week. 
• Content material relevancy. Not this relevancy. Somewhat, the precise worth your content material gives. 

Discover how one can’t connect a numerical worth to those 2 key components. If solely it have been as straightforward as arising with a formulation: 2 neighborhood buildings x 5 posts – Meta = 23 Instagram algorithms. all of it comes right down to offering worth, which suggests creating content material with a “community-first” form of mindset. 

Now, to efficientize (that phrase ought to exist and I’m going to die on that hill) all these issues, you will want an additional hand within the type of a nifty little device. An Instagram feed planner.

Intermission — Instagram feed planner

Right here’s how Planable may also help you intend your feed:

And right here’s how one can simply crop and add filters to your in-feed posts in Planable:

Instagram Feed Planner — the steps

1. Design, design, design

Clearly, your feed must look good. Aesthetic. Pleasing to the attention. It’s the very first thing folks see once they stumble throughout your profile.

Now, as a result of I’m the farthest one might be from a design knowledgeable, I reached out to our personal Artistic Result in chip in. Right here’s what she needed to say about designing your Instagram feed:

I consider consistency is essential in terms of branding. It’s nearly equal to belief as a result of it creates predictability and your customers know what to anticipate. No confusion. That applies to your feed as effectively.

It’s that first millisecond when the viewer decides whether or not to belief you or not. It could actually make the distinction between “It’s appealing, and I would like to know more,” vs. “You’re messy, let’s skip.”

Having a constant feed offers you extra construction and ease with organizing your content material, so the way in which I see it, it’s a win-win.

Alexandra designed this instance for instance her level:

Principally, planning your Instagram feed is not only a matter of arranging posts in a particular sequence. The colour palette, theme, and creating the phantasm of “space” and “uniformity” by means of aesthetical decisions additionally play a job.

2. Select the Instagram feed planner that most closely fits your wants

Each plan wants a planner. That’s an undeniable fact of life.

The identical precept applies to your Instagram feed planning efforts. Fortunately, we received the proper device to assist take your Instagram feed planning to the following stage — Planable, essentially the most visible platform on the market.

Planable has a bunch of nifty options that may assist you plan the proper Instagram feed. Let’s say you wish to plan your Instagram Grid. Planable’s Grid view permits you to do this with just some swipes:

Or let’s zoom out to a extra world view and speak about planning Instagram feeds basically.

You bought a Calendar View that gives an outline of your Instagram content material and scheduled posts:

A feed view that mimics the texture and stream of Instagram (primarily a pre-publishing preview of how your content material will seem like):

AND, for these of us who like to remain organized, labels to maintain Instagram content material neatly categorized by subject, theme, or no matter strikes your fancy:

There’s additionally a sync on/off characteristic simply in case you handle a number of Instagram accounts and wish to publish constant content material:

And that is simply the tip of the iceberg. Enroll and check out our free plan to learn how Planable may also help you with scheduling, collaboration, and approval.

3. Decide the frequency of posts you wish to make

Posting consistency is one thing all of us (ought to) attempt for. 

Nonetheless — there is no such thing as a tried and examined formulation. Sticking to a schedule is solely as much as you and can rely upon a number of components, comparable to your time, what sort of content material you’re posting, and who your audience is.

For those who’re simply beginning out, it’s a good suggestion to begin with one or two posts per week after which improve the frequency as you get extra snug with it. Alternatively, in line with Databox, “one post per day seems to be working just fine for most businesses”, because it’s simply sufficient to remind your viewers that you’re there.

Then, in line with a research by RivalHQ, the median throughout all industries is 4 posts per week:

There are various methods to go about it, so the wisest method is to seek out the candy spot between these numbers and what works for you.

Further tip: repurposed and user-generated content material

For those who’re searching for a straightforward technique to improve your posting frequency, repurposing content material is the way in which to go. For one, it’s comparatively low effort, particularly if the content material is created with repurposing in thoughts from the start. After which there’s the advantage of constructing a “recurring posts schedule” — assume bite-sized chunks extracted from a weblog publish reposted over the 12 months. Appears like lots of wiggle room for workshopping new content material concepts, doesn’t it? 

You must also not omit the utility of user-generated content material. There are many folks on the market creating superior authentic content material, so why not take the chance to showcase it, particularly if it issues you?

4. Fill in your deliberate content material for every day or week

Determining the content material is one factor — filling out a calendar with a month’s value of high-quality, evenly-spaced out content material is one other monster. Any social media supervisor value their salt can attest to that.

It doesn’t should be that tough, although — you should utilize Planable’s calendar view for these precise functions:

Planable’s calendar addresses the #1 problem impeding environment friendly planning — lack of visibility — head-on by providing an outline of your content material initiatives. One fast scan is all that’s wanted to identify gaps in your posting schedule and fill them with content material.

Wish to modify your posting schedule? All it takes is dragging and dropping posts from at some point to a different. Really feel like a publish wants a couple of extra tweaks earlier than publishing? Click on-and-tweak on the spot. You may then schedule posts simply as simply:

5. Be certain that all pictures and movies are high-quality and correctly edited

Clearly, proper? Social media is an inherently visible medium. Nonetheless, there are these occasions while you actually, actually don’t really feel like booting up 5 completely different instruments simply to vary the photograph’s filter. So enable us to recommend another — Planable’s in-app enhancing instruments:

There are a bunch of cool issues you are able to do with it:

• Crop photographs
• Alter settings — the whole lot from brightness, distinction, saturation, publicity to temperature, gamma, readability, and vignette.
• Use filters — 13 of them dangerous boys, to be exact.
• Go away annotations.
• Add textual content and shapes to pictures.
• Resize — fairly self-explanatory.
• Add stickers.

And since Planable is all about not utilizing 100 completely different instruments, you are able to do all these issues in-app.

Another factor — social media asset administration is simply as vital as making certain your photographs are correctly edited. I’m not speaking about storing photographs in a Google Drive and hoping they’re straightforward to seek out, no. I’m speaking about an precise characteristic from an precise device explicitly designed for this goal. That is the place Planable’s media library involves the rescue:

Planable’s media library shows numerous useful data that makes managing property for a number of accounts simpler. Issues like:

• Storage left.
• File title.
• The variety of posts an asset is utilized in.

To maintain issues neatly organized, you may decide to view information saved within the media library by 4 standards:

• All media.
• Used media.
• Deleted media.
• Unused media.

So, for those who want that further little bit of readability and management over your content material, you should utilize Planable’s media library to visually plan all of the posts throughout a number of platforms. Instagram included, in fact.

Instagram Feed Planning Concepts

With that out of the way in which, let’s have a little bit of enjoyable and discover some superior Instagram feed planning concepts. 

Puzzle grid

One of many extra artistic ideas on the market, the puzzle feed is a good way to mix visuals with textual content into an overarching theme. Possibly use Planable’s Grid View to make issues simpler on your self? No strain, only a suggestion.

Diagonal, vertical, horizontal, dots, zigzag…

… is one more technique to go about issues if you wish to take your Instagram feed planning to the following stage. It’s particularly efficient if you wish to promote a product launch in a visible method.  

Tile or checkers, row by row, row by row vertical

There’s undoubtedly one thing to admire about Instagram accounts that go for ever-so-subtly color-coded footage, identical to the examples above. What’s cool is that it’s the form of factor one notices solely when it’s identified to them — so there’s one thing there each for informal scrollers and people who pay shut consideration.

4 repeat, blocks of six, alternate darkish mild

Who would’ve thought that these hard-earned Tetris expertise can be transferable to planning Instagram feeds? 

Instagram Feed Planner FAQ

How do I categorize my Instagram posts?

Whereas Instagram has a built-in characteristic to save lots of posts in collections, social media managers may discover nice worth in Planable’s labels characteristic. With it, you may categorize and kind posts by any standards you would like — subject, marketing campaign, staff platform, or recurrence. You can too colour code labels so as to add visible aptitude and ease of use to your categorizing efforts.

How do I set up my Instagram feed?

Planable’s grid view may also help you set up your Instagram feed visually. Managing your feed with Planable is so simple as dragging and dropping Instagram publish drafts.

Grid view isn’t the one technique to set up your Instagram feed. Planable presents 3 further viewing modes:

• Calendar 
• Feed view
• Record view

Planable is constructed to imitate the texture and stream of social media, with the Feed view being the centerpiece of this design philosophy.

Feed view presents a pixel-perfect preview of how your Instagram content material will look as soon as dwell. You should use this view to identify any potential errors. As an illustration, a picture wanting off — say it’s cropped badly, the ratio is mistaken, or the filter simply doesn’t mesh with the visible you’ve chosen.

Now, listing view is the way in which to go if you wish to get an outline of your content material throughout all of your Instagram pages and plan actions in bulk — say, you or a consumer or a supervisor needs to approve content material en masse:

Talking of which — do you know Planable makes it tremendous straightforward to approve content material and share suggestions? A decent approval workflow will do wonders to your Instagram feed planning:

How regularly ought to I plan my Instagram feed?

Ideally, you wish to plan your Instagram feed quarterly on a macro stage. Create a tough define of the subjects and concepts you’ll commit in that particular time-frame. Then, take stock of your sources and modify accordingly. Planning quarterly will will let you set clear objectives to your Instagram feed, and it’ll offer you the information and historic context you’ll want for future planning classes. 

Able to harness the facility of an Instagram feed planner?

Making a content material technique to your Instagram feed is not any imply feat. Nonetheless, by following the steps we outlined on this article, you must be capable of develop a course of that works greatest for you and your staff. And once more, you may at all times use Planable to plan the perfect Instagram feed.

Marco Giuliani

Content material marketer and aspiring YouTuber, in no explicit order. Experience in content material writing, social media copywriting, and neo-noir graphic novels. Used to run a music webzine within the 2 seconds within the early 2010s when blogs have been sizzling. I tweet very badly on Twitter.