Are your Instagram posts struggling to realize traction?
With over 2 billion month-to-month lively customers, standing out on the platform requires technique and content material planning.
A content material plan is a vital blueprint that can assist you maintain your posts aligned together with your technique and your general advertising and marketing objectives.
Posting with no plan can simply be a wasted effort with out clear route.
To help your model’s conversion and success, this information has a free Instagram content material plan template and useful suggestions that you could customise in your model.
So, let’s attempt to seize a few of these customers.
1. Create Your Content material Calendar
A well-structured plan is your roadmap to information your path, show you how to meet your objectives, and schedule campaigns successfully.
For this objective, our template comes with an Overview tab and month-to-month planning tabs with versatile weekly layouts to provide you a fowl’s-eye view of your content material.
It’ll assist you understand whenever you’ve met your objective and might readjust and analyze methods to enhance your content material technique in your subsequent one.
Plus, an Instagram content material plan can maintain concepts, budgets, themes, and advertising and marketing initiatives categorized. It additionally helps you determine any content material gaps and construct consistency – a key to Instagram success.
Begin by downloading your Instagram content material plan and make a duplicate for your self.
Screenshot by writer, July 2025Start with the Overview tab by outlining marketing campaign cycles, together with key conversion objectives, strategic themes, and content material pillars with related budgets.
Transfer to the principle weekly sheet to refine execution. Resolve subjects and publish sort, craft applicable captions, align with marketing campaign sorts, and outline CTAs that help your advertising and marketing funnel targets.
Lastly, after you have got the above laid out and preliminary captions, you possibly can transfer to the subsequent step: Create or assign the required key visuals or property.
Breaking content material planning into smaller, actionable steps makes it simpler to create a content material calendar.
Bonus Tip: Sync With Present Advertising Initiatives
With a useful overview or dashboard (included in our Instagram Content material Plan), you possibly can map out your seasonal themes, align your subjects with days you’re posting, and have your captions and hashtags prepared to simply copy and paste whenever you’re able to schedule your content material.
Screenshot by writer, July 2025If you have already got some advertising and marketing initiatives, it’s the right time to include them into your advertising and marketing marketing campaign. For instance, perhaps you have got a brand new product launch.
You may then construct a content material collection round it. Tease the product launch with a couple of posts, run a giveaway, characteristic an influencer utilizing the product in a video, and spotlight key advantages all through.
Occasions and holidays provide alternatives to spice up engagement and appeal to new clients. They’re one other enjoyable and constructive approach to get clients speaking about your model. Vacation giveaways or offers are one other approach to develop model consciousness and achieve followers.
When you have an occasion developing, you possibly can create a marketing campaign hyping the occasion and discussing the audio system concerned, merchandise that will likely be there, or superior seize baggage you’re freely giving on the occasion.
We advocate pairing our Advertising Calendar for 2025 when creating your Instagram content material plan to tie in your artistic campaigns with holidays and seasonal themes for the week, month, and even quarter.
2. Outline Your Objectives
After getting your content material template and earlier than you propose your posts, what you need to do is create your Instagram objectives.
What do you need to accomplish? Is it to develop your viewers, drive extra engagement, or enhance product sign-ups?
As soon as you understand this, you possibly can set the key efficiency indicators (KPIs) to mark completely different factors of research you need to observe alongside together with your Instagram marketing campaign.
For instance, you need to develop your viewers by 20% by the tip of the marketing campaign cycle, otherwise you want to enhance your engagement fee to no less than 0.43%.
After you choose your conversion objectives, it’s useful to interrupt down your objective into milestones you want to attain.
This manner, you possibly can map out the kind of content material wanted for every and monitor your progress utilizing the KPIs you’ve set above.
Screenshot from writer, July 2025Ask your self: What milestones are you able to mark to realize that objective alongside the way in which? What kinds of content material, subjects, or content material collection are you able to create to extend engagement?
Write down all of the objectives you suppose your model can moderately obtain (Professional tip: the trick is to make it SMART).
3. Maintain Your Theme And Tone Constant
If you wish to maintain your posts participating, guarantee visible and tonal consistency by creating a model information. You’ll additionally need to keep a cohesive theme throughout all posts, together with fashion, typography, and shade palette.
For inspiration, you possibly can have a look at your web site, content material, and logos to assist create the correct tone and theme in your posts.
Take into consideration the look of your content material for each photos and movies, and think about a constant angle or filter to set the proper tone and search for your content material.
It’s additionally very important to create normal working procedures (SOPs) about your messaging, whether or not for captions, feedback, or responses to direct messages, as a result of likelihood is, a number of individuals are managing the account.
The way you reply to customers on Instagram issues, particularly you probably have a number of folks responding to feedback and messages, to make sure it’s inside the model’s tone.
4. Showcase Your Creativity: Instagram Put up Sorts (With Examples)
Instagram is extra than simply an aesthetic photo-sharing app. It’s a major platform that may showcase your product in numerous codecs to entertain, interact, and educate audiences.
There are numerous methods to create content material for Instagram that may spotlight your model and enhance engagement.
Let’s speak by them for finest practices for every use case:
Photographs
Footage are a good way to showcase merchandise’ USPs, share thought management quotes, relatable memes, or announce new characteristic updates.
It’s additionally nice for posing questions that you could reply in your picture caption, or selling offers or giveaways by the usage of compelling captions.
- Instance: HubSpot’s AI-generated meme of its customer support rep as a toy determine catches consideration and serves as a dialog starter.
Carousels
What can your organization do when you have got a number of images out of your high-end photoshoot however don’t need to publish them right into a grid or oversaturate your feed? Attempt superbly crafted carousels to make sure return on funding (ROI).
Carousels have been a mainstay on Instagram since 2015. It’s a assortment of 10 images you possibly can publish , now expandable as much as 20.
To entice your viewers, make it fascinating to swipe proper with chronological storytelling, collage/journal cutout parts, textual content overlays, or a story.
- Instance: Clickup’s picture of its new AI calendar options textual content overlay, seamlessly transitioning between each static and dynamic images and tutorial brief movies.
Reels
Subsequent, movies are a wonderful approach to present sneak peeks of one thing developing or create product teasers. You may also use movies for behind-the-scenes content material to construct product hype.
Take into account utilizing Instagram Reels, or brief movies, to showcase merchandise, share tales, and develop your viewers.
By the way in which, Instagram discontinued IGTV, or Instagram TV, again in 2021, however you possibly can publish longer movies in-feed. Manufacturers use these to go extra in-depth into describing a specific subject.
Tales
In the meantime, Tales are images or movies that final 24 hours (except you add them to your highlights in your profile), the place you possibly can share posts out of your profile or publish new content material.
It’s a preferred approach to achieve extra followers and interact with customers.
- Instance: Even when Tales expire after 24 hours, they nonetheless stay invaluable. Sprout Social curated its Tales into its “Trending” highlights, showcasing key occasions and social media insights, such because the Oscars, Coachella, and Artwork Basel.
Person Generated Content material (UGC)
Person-generated content material, or content material created by influencers, clients, or different customers, is a good way to increase your attain to completely different audiences and additional promote your merchandise.
Persons are extra intrigued to study a brand new product if it’s promoted by somebody they already observe. Likewise, it will probably assist construct belief with customers new to your model in the event that they see a publish by a buyer who already loves it.
- Instance: Slack featured its No. 1 “Slacker,” Rox (a senior social media supervisor at Gozney), as a enjoyable UGC publish, the place she apparently despatched essentially the most Slack messages in a 12 months.
However what content material goes viral? It may be useful to have a look at what your rivals are posting on Instagram and put your model’s distinctive twist on it.
5. Craft Compelling Captions And CTAs
Whereas it’s nice to have high-quality photos and interesting movies, the captions and name to motion nonetheless matter.
For those who hooked the buyer together with your image or video, you continue to need to reel them in together with your caption and CTA.
Screenshot by writer, July 2025It’s important to craft the proper CTA to make sure customers observe your web page, interact together with your publish, or buy your product.
Take into account A/B testing to determine the proper strategy in your campaigns. A compelling call-to-action is obvious, concise, and written in an lively voice.
6. Select The Right Hashtags
Researching and selecting the best hashtags is essential to make sure your posts attain the meant viewers and a few new ones that is likely to be taken with your area of interest and model.
Hashtags enable your content material to achieve customers past your profile’s following as you create content material for particular hashtags. Be aware which posts carry out significantly nicely.
That manner, you possibly can create future posts for particular hashtags that can enhance your content material’s visibility to a broader viewers, serving to you obtain extra model consciousness.
7. Know The Finest Time To Put up
Planning posts forward of time will help alleviate some stress from social media technique.
You should utilize Meta Enterprise Suites to schedule posts for Fb and Instagram and set posts for every week or a few weeks.
For those who’re not sure when to publish, listed here are instructed days and instances the place evaluation factors to the place you’ll get essentially the most engagement and views.
It might be useful to perform a little research particular to your business to see the perfect time and day so that you can make your posts.
One necessary factor to remember whenever you’re planning your content material is the upcoming holidays.
Are you going to publish celebrating the vacation, use the vacation to do a promotion or give away, or select to not publish on that day altogether?
It doesn’t matter what you choose, retaining holidays in thoughts is essential.
8. Measure Outcomes And Modify
Instagram Insights, each on the app and thru Meta Enterprise Suites, can present what number of views a publish will get and statistics on the engagement with the posts that can assist you see which kinds of content material are working finest. You may see your content material’s likes, shares, feedback, and saves.
Manufacturers may also use Insights to get metrics on the paid exercise. Insights are a good way to see tendencies in an effort to alter your content material technique.
You’ll additionally be capable of see metrics about your followers to see what number of you’re receiving, the age of your followers, and data on when they’re most lively on-line. This manner, you possibly can alter your publish instances to make sure you are higher at reaching your viewers.
Apart from Instagram Insights, discover strategies for measuring social media influence past vainness metrics to realize deeper perception into buyer sentiment and general model efficiency.
Wrapping Up
In case your Instagram isn’t getting outcomes, it could be resulting from an absence of planning.
Don’t miss the chance to tie your conversion objectives, advertising and marketing campaigns, tendencies, holidays, and artistic campaigns collectively and provides it the well-planned, in-advance price range it deserves.
It could actually solely assist, not damage, to create a proactive content material plan in your social media workforce to remain aligned, keep consistency, and ship measurable outcomes.
Reaching your objectives by creating an Instagram-specific content material calendar guided by present advertising and marketing targets and data-driven themes will assist your model interact on the platform.
Obtain our Instagram content material plan and begin being more practical together with your Instagram technique.
Extra Assets:
Featured Picture: Paulo Bobita/Search Engine Journal
