Are your Instagram posts struggling to acquire traction?
With over 2 billion month-to-month energetic customers, standing out on the platform requires technique and content material planning.
A content material plan is an important blueprint to show you how to preserve your posts aligned along with your technique and your total advertising objectives.
Posting with out a plan can simply be a wasted effort with out clear route.
To assist your model’s conversion and success, this information has a free Instagram content plan template and useful ideas you could customise on 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 goal, our template comes with an Overview tab and month-to-month planning tabs with versatile weekly layouts to provide you with a hen’s-eye view of your content material.
It would assist you realize if you’ve met your purpose and may readjust and analyze methods to enhance your content material technique on your subsequent one.
Plus, an Instagram content material plan can preserve concepts, budgets, themes, and advertising initiatives categorized. It additionally helps you establish any content material gaps and construct consistency – a key to Instagram success.
Begin by downloading your Instagram content 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 most important weekly sheet to refine execution. Resolve subjects and publish kind, craft acceptable captions, align with marketing campaign sorts, and outline CTAs that assist your advertising funnel aims.
Lastly, after you’ve got the above laid out and preliminary captions, you possibly can transfer to the subsequent step: Create or assign the needed key visuals or belongings.
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 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 if you’re prepared to schedule your content material.
Screenshot by writer, July 2025If you have already got some advertising initiatives, it’s the excellent time to incorporate them into your advertising marketing campaign. For instance, perhaps you’ve got a brand new product launch.
You’ll be able to then construct a content material sequence 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 enhance engagement and appeal to new clients. They are one other enjoyable and optimistic manner to get customers talking about your brand. Vacation giveaways or offers are one other manner to develop model consciousness and acquire followers.
You probably have an occasion arising, you possibly can create a marketing campaign hyping the occasion and discussing the audio system concerned, merchandise that will probably be there, or superior seize baggage you’re freely giving at the occasion.
We advocate pairing our 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 before you propose your posts, what you need to do is create your Instagram objectives.
What would you like to accomplish? Is it to develop your viewers, drive extra engagement, or enhance product sign-ups?
As soon as you realize this, you possibly can set the key performance indicators (KPIs) to mark completely different factors of research you need to observe alongside along with your Instagram marketing campaign.
For instance, you need to develop your viewers by 20% by the finish of the marketing campaign cycle, otherwise you want to increase your engagement rate to at the very least 0.43%.
After you choose your conversion objectives, it’s useful to break down your purpose into milestones you want to to attain.
This manner, you possibly can map out the kind of content material wanted for every and observe your progress utilizing the KPIs you’ve set above.
Screenshot from writer, July 2025Ask your self: What milestones are you able to mark to obtain that purpose alongside the manner? What types of content, subjects, or content material sequence are you able to create to enhance engagement?
Write down all 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 need to preserve 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 model, typography, and colour 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 on your posts.
Take into consideration the look of your content material for each footage and movies, and think about a constant angle or filter to set the proper tone and search for your content material.
It’s additionally important to create commonplace working procedures (SOPs) about your messaging, whether or not for captions, feedback, or responses to direct messages, as a result of probabilities are, a number of individuals are managing the account.
The way you reply to shoppers on Instagram issues, particularly if in case you have a number of individuals responding to feedback and messages, to guarantee it’s inside the model’s tone.
4. Showcase Your Creativity: Instagram Submit Varieties (With Examples)
Instagram is more than just an aesthetic photo-sharing app. It’s a major platform that may showcase your product in numerous codecs to entertain, have interaction, and educate audiences.
There are numerous methods to create content material for Instagram that may spotlight your model and enhance engagement.
Let’s discuss by way of them for greatest practices for every use case:
Images
Photos 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 you could reply in your picture caption, or selling offers or giveaways by way of the use 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 got a number of pictures from your high-end photoshoot however don’t need to publish them right into a grid or oversaturate your feed? Strive beautifully crafted carousels to guarantee return on funding (ROI).
Carousels have been a mainstay on Instagram since 2015. It is a group of 10 pictures you possibly can publish abruptly, now expandable up to 20.
To entice your viewers, make it attention-grabbing to swipe proper with chronological storytelling, collage/journal cutout parts, textual content overlays, or a story.
- Instance: Clickup’s photo of its new AI calendar options textual content overlay, seamlessly transitioning between each static and dynamic pictures and tutorial brief movies.
Reels
Subsequent, movies are a superb manner to present sneak peeks of one thing arising or create product teasers. You can too use movies for behind-the-scenes content material to construct product hype.
Think about using Instagram Reels, or brief movies, to showcase merchandise, share tales, and develop your viewers.
By the manner, 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 pictures or movies that final 24 hours (except you add them to your highlights on your profile), the place you possibly can share posts from your profile or publish new content material.
It’s a well-liked manner to acquire extra followers and have interaction with shoppers.
- Instance: Even when Tales expire after 24 hours, they nonetheless stay invaluable. Sprout Social curated its Stories into its “Trending” highlights, showcasing key occasions and social media insights, corresponding to the Oscars, Coachella, and Artwork Basel.
Consumer Generated Content material (UGC)
User-generated content, or content material created by influencers, clients, or different customers, is an effective way to prolong your attain to completely 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 may assist construct belief with shoppers 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 fun UGC post, the place she apparently despatched 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 interesting movies, the captions and name to motion nonetheless matter.
In case you hooked the shopper along with your image or video, you continue to need to reel them in along with your caption and CTA.
Screenshot by writer, July 2025It’s important to craft the right CTA to guarantee shoppers comply with your web page, have interaction along with your publish, or buy your product.
Think about A/B testing to establish the proper method on your campaigns. A compelling call-to-action is clear, concise, and written in an energetic voice.
6. Select The Appropriate Hashtags
Researching and selecting the proper hashtags is essential to guarantee your posts attain the supposed viewers and a few new ones that may be excited about your area of interest and model.
Hashtags enable your content material to attain customers past your profile’s following as you create content material for particular hashtags. Notice which posts carry out notably effectively.
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 brand awareness.
7. Know The Finest Time To Submit
Planning posts forward of time may 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 per week or a few weeks.
In case you’re not sure when to publish, here are suggested days and times the place evaluation factors to the place you’ll get the most engagement and views.
It could be useful to perform some research particular to your business to see the greatest time and day for you to make your posts.
One necessary factor to take into accout if 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 not to publish on that day altogether?
It doesn’t matter what you choose, maintaining 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 publish will get and statistics on the engagement with the posts to show you how to see which kinds of content material are working greatest. 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 developments so as to modify your content material technique.
You’ll additionally have the opportunity to see metrics about your followers to see what number of you’re receiving, the age of your followers, and information on after they are most energetic on-line. This manner, you possibly can modify your publish occasions to make sure you are higher at reaching your viewers.
Apart from Instagram Insights, discover strategies for measuring social media impact beyond vanity metrics to acquire deeper perception into buyer sentiment and total model efficiency.
Wrapping Up
In case your Instagram isn’t getting outcomes, it could be due to a scarcity of planning.
Don’t miss the alternative to tie your conversion objectives, advertising campaigns, developments, holidays, and artistic campaigns collectively and provides it the well-planned, in-advance price range it deserves.
It will probably solely assist, not damage, to create a proactive content material plan on your social media staff to keep aligned, keep consistency, and ship measurable outcomes.
Attaining your objectives by creating an Instagram-specific content material calendar guided by present advertising aims and data-driven themes will assist your model have interaction on the platform.
Obtain our Instagram content plan and begin being more practical along with your Instagram technique.
Extra Sources:
Featured Picture: Paulo Bobita/Search Engine Journal
Disclaimer: This article is sourced from external platforms. OverBeta has not independently verified the information. Readers are advised to verify details before relying on them.
