Are your Instagram posts struggling to achieve 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 a vital blueprint that will help you maintain your posts aligned together 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 material plan template and useful suggestions 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, assist you meet your objectives, and schedule campaigns successfully.
For this function, 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 whenever 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 maintain concepts, budgets, themes, and advertising 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 replica for your self.
Start 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 primary weekly sheet to refine execution. Resolve subjects and publish sort, craft acceptable captions, align with marketing campaign sorts, and outline CTAs that assist your advertising funnel aims.
Lastly, after you could have the above laid out and preliminary captions, you’ll be able to transfer to the subsequent step: Create or assign the required 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’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 whenever you’re able to schedule your content material.
Screenshot by writer, July 2025If you have already got some advertising initiatives, it’s the proper time to include them into your advertising marketing campaign. For instance, perhaps you could have a brand new product launch.
You possibly can 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 provide alternatives to spice up engagement and entice new prospects. They’re one other enjoyable and constructive method to get prospects speaking about your model. Vacation giveaways or offers are one other method to develop model consciousness and achieve followers.
When you’ve got an occasion arising, 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 suggest 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 objectives.
What do you wish to accomplish? Is it to develop your viewers, drive extra engagement, or enhance product sign-ups?
As soon as this, you’ll be able to set the important thing efficiency indicators (KPIs) to mark completely different factors of research you wish to observe alongside together with your Instagram marketing campaign.
For instance, you wish to develop your viewers by 20% by the top of the marketing campaign cycle, otherwise you want to enhance your engagement price to a minimum of 0.43%.
After you choose your conversion objectives, it’s helpful to interrupt down your objective into milestones you wish to attain.
This fashion, 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 writer, July 2025Ask your self: What milestones are you able to mark to attain that objective alongside the way in which? What forms 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. Preserve Your Theme And Tone Constant
If you wish to maintain 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 type, typography, and coloration palette.
For inspiration, you’ll be able to take 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 think about a constant angle or filter to set the best tone and search for your content material.
It’s additionally very important to create customary working procedures (SOPs) about your messaging, whether or not for captions, feedback, or responses to direct messages, as a result of chances are high, a number of persons are managing the account.
The way you reply to shoppers on Instagram issues, particularly in case you have a number of folks responding to feedback and messages, to make sure it’s throughout 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, 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 via them for greatest practices for every use case:
Pictures
Footage are a good 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 could have a number of photographs out of your high-end photoshoot however don’t wish 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 photographs you’ll be able to publish abruptly, 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 photograph of its new AI calendar options textual content overlay, seamlessly transitioning between each static and dynamic photographs and tutorial quick movies.
Reels
Subsequent, movies are a superb method to present sneak peeks of one thing arising or create product teasers. You may as well use movies for behind-the-scenes content material to construct product hype.
Think about using Instagram Reels, or quick 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’ll be able to publish longer movies in-feed. Manufacturers use these to go extra in-depth into describing a specific matter.
Tales
In the meantime, Tales are photographs 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 publish new content material.
It’s a preferred method to achieve extra followers and interact with shoppers.
- Instance: Even when Tales expire after 24 hours, they nonetheless stay useful. Sprout Social curated its Tales into its “Trending” highlights, showcasing key occasions and social media insights, such because the Oscars, Coachella, and Artwork Basel.
Consumer Generated Content material (UGC)
Consumer-generated content material, or content material created by influencers, prospects, or different customers, is a good way to increase your attain to completely different audiences and additional promote your merchandise.
Individuals are extra intrigued to find out about a brand new product if it’s promoted by somebody they already comply with. Likewise, it might 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 enjoyable UGC publish, the place she apparently despatched probably the most Slack messages in a 12 months.
However what content material goes viral? It may be helpful 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.
If you happen to hooked the buyer together with your image or video, you continue to wish to reel them in together with your caption and CTA.
Screenshot by writer, July 2025It’s important to craft the best CTA to make sure shoppers comply with your web page, have interaction together with your publish, or buy your product.
Think about A/B testing to determine the best method to your campaigns. A compelling call-to-action is evident, concise, and written in an energetic voice.
6. Select The Appropriate Hashtags
Researching and choosing the proper hashtags is essential to make sure your posts attain the meant viewers and a few new ones that may be focused on your area of interest and model.
Hashtags permit your content material to achieve customers past your profile’s following as you create content material for particular hashtags. Word which posts carry out notably properly.
That means, you’ll be able to 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 may also 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.
If you happen to’re not sure when to publish, listed below are urged days and occasions the place evaluation factors to the place you’ll get probably the most engagement and views.
It could be helpful 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 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, 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 publish will get and statistics on the engagement with the posts that will help you see which forms of content material are working greatest. You possibly can 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 with the intention to regulate 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 knowledge on when they’re most energetic on-line. This fashion, you’ll be able to regulate your publish occasions to make sure you are higher at reaching your viewers.
Apart from Instagram Insights, discover strategies for measuring social media affect past vainness metrics to achieve deeper perception into buyer sentiment and total model efficiency.
Wrapping Up
In case your Instagram isn’t getting outcomes, it could be on account of a scarcity of planning.
Don’t miss the chance to tie your conversion objectives, advertising campaigns, tendencies, holidays, and artistic campaigns collectively and provides it the well-planned, in-advance finances it deserves.
It might probably 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.
Reaching your objectives by growing 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 material plan and begin being more practical together with your Instagram technique.
Extra Assets:
Featured Picture: Paulo Bobita/Search Engine Journal
