Planning your Instagram content in advance is so important. When someone lands on your page, the first thing they will do is scroll down and look at your first 9-12 photos. From there, they’ll decide whether or not to smash that FOLLOW button.
The grid
Your individual photos do not stand alone. You need to consider how each post will look together as a set. Posting three selfies in a row, no matter how cute they are, will look repetitive and redundant. Consider the overall aesthetic at a glance. If you have a selfie, place it next to a full-body shot. If you have two photos where you are wearing all black, try spreading those out and not placing them right next to or on top of each other.
Decide on a Theme
The first thing you’ll want to do is decide on a cohesive look or theme for your feed. The possibilities are endless when it comes to this. Are you going for a clean white look? Dark and Moody, or the ever-popular orange hue? Whichever one you decide on, make sure you love it, and you’re willing to stick with it for a while. Now, don’t panic. You can change it later, but you don’t want to change it every other week, so decide on something you really like.
Here are some of my favorite cool themes examples
Organize Your Pics
Hopefully, you’ve done a photoshoot or two, and you have some photos picked out that you’d like to post. Since you now know what theme you’ll be going with, it’s time to edit them. Do your photo edits ahead of time. Lighten, crop, smooth blemishes and add your filters if you’ll be using them. My favorite App to use for lightening photos and smoothing out blemishes and wrinkles from clothes is FaceTune. VSCO is great for filters.
Record Your Captions
Now that you have your photos all planned out, what are you going to write? I can’t tell you how much time you will save by having your captions written out ahead of time. Do this for at least 5 posts at a time if you can. I’m sure you know how hard it can be to think of an engaging caption on the fly. I use a Google Docs document to record my Instagram post captions. You can use the notes on your phone, or anything you want. I like using Google docs because I can access it from any device and it autosaves. I also keep frequently used hashtags in my document too. When you have your captions and hashtags already saved, all you have to do now is copy and paste them on Instagram.
Use Filler Photos
Filler photos are photos that you can pull from the internet, to fill in space between your normal content. I don’t recommend using any filler photos with someone else’s face in the photos. A pair of shoes, flowers, or a hand holding a cup of coffee is perfect. Quotes and stock photos are great as well. You can also make your own filler photos. Always keep a few filler photos on hand, edited and ready to post. You can keep these in a dedicated album on your phone.
Filler Photos Are Great To Stretch Out your Regular Images
Stick To Your Niche
Select 3-5 topics related to your niche that you will post about. Having your topics selected will make it much easier to come up with captions for your post. It also helps you stay on-brand with your content. My selected topics are:
Visual branding tips
Products I have for sale
Graphics Design Tutorials
Me, Family Friends
Whenever I post, I’m speaking on one of these topics.