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 an important blueprint that can assist you preserve your posts aligned together with your technique and your general advertising and marketing targets.
Posting with no plan can simply be a wasted effort with out clear course.
To assist your model’s conversion and success, this information has a free Instagram content material plan template and useful ideas which you could customise to 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 targets, and schedule campaigns successfully.
For this goal, our template comes with an Overview tab and month-to-month planning tabs with versatile weekly layouts to provide you a chicken’s-eye view of your content material.
It should assist you recognize once you’ve met your objective and may readjust and analyze methods to enhance your content material technique to your subsequent one.
Plus, an Instagram content material plan can preserve 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 creator, July 2025Start with the Overview tab by outlining marketing campaign cycles, together with key conversion targets, strategic themes, and content material pillars with related budgets.
Transfer to the principle weekly sheet to refine execution. Resolve subjects and put up sort, craft applicable captions, align with marketing campaign sorts, and outline CTAs that assist your advertising and marketing funnel goals.
Lastly, after you’ve the above laid out and preliminary captions, you’ll be able to transfer to the subsequent step: Create or assign the mandatory 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 and marketing Initiatives
With a useful overview or dashboard (included in our Instagram Content material Plan), you’ll be able to 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 once you’re able to schedule your content material.
Screenshot by creator, July 2025If you have already got some advertising and marketing initiatives, it’s the proper time to include them into your advertising and marketing marketing campaign. For instance, possibly you’ve a brand new product launch.
You’ll be able to then construct a content material collection round it. Tease the product launch with just a few posts, run a giveaway, function an influencer utilizing the product in a video, and spotlight key advantages all through.
Occasions and holidays supply alternatives to spice up engagement and appeal to new clients. They’re one other enjoyable and constructive technique to get clients speaking about your model. Vacation giveaways or offers are one other technique to develop model consciousness and acquire followers.
When you have an occasion developing, you’ll be able to create a marketing campaign hyping the occasion and discussing the audio system concerned, merchandise that shall be there, or superior seize luggage you’re making a gift of on the occasion.
We advocate pairing our Advertising and marketing 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 Targets
After getting your content material template and earlier than you propose your posts, what you wish to do is create your Instagram targets.
What do you wish to accomplish? Is it to develop your viewers, drive extra engagement, or enhance product sign-ups?
As soon as you recognize this, you’ll be able to set the key efficiency indicators (KPIs) to mark totally different factors of study you wish to observe alongside together with your Instagram marketing campaign.
For instance, you wish to develop your viewers by 20% by the tip of the marketing campaign cycle, otherwise you want to enhance your engagement price to a minimum of 0.43%.
After you choose your conversion targets, it’s useful to interrupt down your objective into milestones you wish to attain.
This manner, you’ll be able to map out the kind of content material wanted for every and observe your progress utilizing the KPIs you’ve set above.
Screenshot from creator, July 2025Ask your self: What milestones are you able to mark to attain that objective alongside the best way? What forms of content material, subjects, or content material collection are you able to create to extend engagement?
Write down all of the targets 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 preserve your posts partaking, guarantee visible and tonal consistency by growing a model information. You’ll additionally wish to keep a cohesive theme throughout all posts, together with model, typography, and coloration palette.
For inspiration, you’ll be able to have a look at your web site, content material, and logos to assist create the right tone and theme to your posts.
Take into consideration the look of your content material for each footage and movies, and contemplate a constant angle or filter to set the best 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 Submit 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 via them for finest practices for every use case:
Pictures
Footage are an effective way to showcase merchandise’ USPs, share thought management quotes, relatable memes, or announce new function updates.
It’s additionally nice for posing questions which you could reply in your picture caption, or selling offers or giveaways via 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’ve a number of images out of your high-end photoshoot however don’t wish to put up them right into a grid or oversaturate your feed? Strive fantastically 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’ll be able to put up abruptly, now expandable as much as 20.
To entice your viewers, make it fascinating to swipe proper with chronological storytelling, collage/journal cutout components, 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 technique 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.
Think about utilizing Instagram Reels, or brief movies, to showcase merchandise, share tales, and develop your viewers.
By the best way, Instagram discontinued IGTV, or Instagram TV, again in 2021, however you’ll be able to put up longer movies in-feed. Manufacturers use these to go extra in-depth into describing a selected subject.
Tales
In the meantime, Tales are images or movies that final 24 hours (until you add them to your highlights in your profile), the place you’ll be able to share posts out of your profile or put up new content material.
It’s a preferred technique to acquire extra followers and interact with customers.
- Instance: Even when Tales expire after 24 hours, they nonetheless stay beneficial. 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 an effective way to increase your attain to totally different audiences and additional promote your merchandise.
Individuals are extra intrigued to study a brand new product if it’s promoted by somebody they already comply with. Likewise, it will possibly assist construct belief with customers new to your model in the event that they see a put up 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 put up, the place she apparently despatched probably 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 opponents 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 footage and fascinating movies, the captions and name to motion nonetheless matter.
In case you hooked the patron together with your image or video, you continue to wish to reel them in together with your caption and CTA.
Screenshot by creator, July 2025It’s important to craft the best CTA to make sure customers comply with your web page, interact together with your put up, or buy your product.
Think about A/B testing to determine the best method to your campaigns. A compelling call-to-action is obvious, concise, and written in an lively voice.
6. Select The Appropriate Hashtags
Researching and choosing the proper hashtags is essential to make sure your posts attain the supposed viewers and a few new ones that is likely to be keen on your area of interest and model.
Hashtags enable your content material to succeed in customers past your profile’s following as you create content material for particular hashtags. Notice which posts carry out notably effectively.
That means, you’ll be able to create future posts for particular hashtags that may enhance your content material’s visibility to a broader viewers, serving to you obtain extra model consciousness.
7. Know The Finest Time To Submit
Planning posts forward of time might help alleviate some stress from social media technique.
You need to use Meta Enterprise Suites to schedule posts for Fb and Instagram and set posts for every week or a few weeks.
In case you’re uncertain when to put up, listed here are steered days and instances the place evaluation factors to the place you’ll get probably the most engagement and views.
It might be useful to perform a little research particular to your business to see one of the best time and day so that you can make your posts.
One vital factor to remember once you’re planning your content material is the upcoming holidays.
Are you going to put up celebrating the vacation, use the vacation to do a promotion or give away, or select to not put up on that day altogether?
It doesn’t matter what you choose, preserving holidays in thoughts is essential.
8. Measure Outcomes And Regulate
Instagram Insights, each on the app and thru Meta Enterprise Suites, can present what number of views a put up will get and statistics on the engagement with the posts that can assist you see which forms of content material are working finest. You’ll be able to see your content material’s likes, shares, feedback, and saves.
Manufacturers also can use Insights to get metrics on the paid exercise. Insights are an effective way to see tendencies so that you could modify your content material technique.
You’ll additionally have the ability to see metrics about your followers to see what number of you’re receiving, the age of your followers, and knowledge on when they’re most lively on-line. This manner, you’ll be able to modify your put up instances to make sure you are higher at reaching your viewers.
Other than 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 might be as a consequence of an absence of planning.
Don’t miss the chance to tie your conversion targets, advertising and marketing campaigns, tendencies, holidays, and artistic campaigns collectively and provides it the well-planned, in-advance finances it deserves.
It may possibly solely assist, not harm, to create a proactive content material plan to your social media crew to remain aligned, keep consistency, and ship measurable outcomes.
Attaining your targets by growing an Instagram-specific content material calendar guided by present advertising and marketing goals and data-driven themes will assist your model interact on the platform.
Obtain our Instagram content material plan and begin being simpler together with your Instagram technique.
Extra Sources:
Featured Picture: Paulo Bobita/Search Engine Journal
