Once upon a time social media was about creating and posting individually great pieces of content. Thanks to the world of Instagram, this has changed.
Yes – your individual posts are important; the images should be quality, on brand, and the copy should be spot on. But if they don’t all fit together to create a cohesive and aesthetically appealing grid then you’re not “doing Insta right”.
Representing your business on Instagram via “the grid”
I’ve always said that your last nine squares, aka “the grid”, should represent your whole business. If you are a product based business, a good overview of your whole product range should be represented in those 9 squares. Why? When a potential follower looks at your profile for the first time they are assessing whether to follow you or not. If you have something for them, they need to be able to see it. Don’t miss that opportunity.
The other thing that needs to be properly represented in the grid is your brand. The right colours, quality images, and if you are a service based business – a photo of you is always a good idea to add personality!
Putting the grid together – the key is in the planning
Failing to plan is planning to fail, right? Pretty much. I’m a big fan of planning out my Instagram (and that of my clients); when I do the results are great, when I don’t it’s a bit hit and miss.
Your feed needs to be cohesive. The colours need to work well together. The colours and images need to (yes I harp on this) represent your business and brand. Planning also ensures that you cover the 5 types of content (but more about that in this blog post – I’m talking more about visual planning in this one).
So, how to plan?
(I should note that I am in no way affiliated with either of these apps, I just find them super useful and what to help you!)
These are the steps I follow…
- I collect a whole heap of images that I want to include in my Instagram
- I upload them to the Plann app
- Once uploaded, I can shuffle them around to see what works – what flows, what images look good together. With my new brand re-fresh, I plan to post all pink and turquoise content. But – I don’t want big blocks of pink together, or turquoise – I want a balance. This is what I have put together on Plann…
- Now, you can write captions and schedule your posts on Plann which is awesome. But I’m crazily time poor so I need auto-scheduling at the moment. I therefore use Plann to, well, plan, and then upload my images to a desktop program called Onlypult to schedule and post. You can upload a whole heap of images at time, write out the captions, and schedule when you want them to post. From there it is done for you. You can then view what you have scheduled to make sure it’s all right.
That’s it – the why and how of planning your Instagram content.
If you’re stuck with creating content then you might be interested in my e-book or content creation service. For more info on what I feel are the critical content types check out this past blog post.
Happy planning!
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