Of course it depends on many factors, but a lot of our social media clients prefer to use Instagram as their platform of choice. We’ve handled Instagram posting for many clients over the years and work with them to create a posting schedule that works for everyone. How do we approach planning and scheduling social media content each month to ensure that nothing gets left behind?
1. Monthly Strategy Meeting
We start each month by having a meeting to gather ideas and inspiration and look at a calendar together of the month. From there we decide what we would like to focus on and if there’s any specific ideas that have come up, or big events during the month to build content around. Clients can be as big picture or as detail oriented as they’d like to be during this process to provide direction for what they’d like to see on the grid.
2. Content Ideas to Calendar
Once we have a bunch of ideas, we will add them to the shared social calendar with any details or options so that both parties can see what is upcoming for the week. A Google calendar is a simple solution that provides notes, descriptions, file uploads, and more for easy post collection and planning. For the clients that provide photos throughout the month, they can easily edit those events and attach the appropriate photo to use.
3. Insight and Assessment
As the month progresses, the posts from the calendar get created, edited, and published (and shared to stories of course) on behalf of the client. We frequently use the professional tools section of Instagram to review the top performing content of the month and see where there’s been the most engagement. This will help drive next month’s planning session. We also check carousels vs static photos vs reels to see if a certain type of content is outperforming another.
If this sounds like a lot of work for you to do on your own, you’re not alone! There are so many small business owners that can’t also be full-time content creators but have so many fun ideas they want to share. We’d love to sit down and review your Instagram account and talk about your goals for social media marketing.