In this video, I show you how to create content for instagram in ONE day. You’ll learn our instagram content strategy and gather some instagram content ideas for your own content calendar.
If you’re wondering how to create consistent content on instagram and how to plan content for instagram, you’re going to want to press play on this video ASAP.
And to make your life even easier, I created a FREE CONTENT CREATION WORKBOOK to plan and create 30 strategic and engaging Instagram posts in 1 day:
DOWNLOAD WORKBOOK HERE >>
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CONTENT CREATION WORKBOOK: Plan and create 30 strategic and engaging Instagram posts in 1 day >>
How to get your first 1000 instagram followers FAST (and for FREE) video >>
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Are you banging your head against the wall, trying to come up with really engaging Instagram and social media content that will attract more followers, fans of your brand and customers? Well, stay tuned because in this video, I'm going to show you how to create a month's worth of Instagram content in one day. As an entrepreneur, your time is precious. You've got a million things going on. And while you know that social media can contribute to a successful business, you just don't always have time for it. But how is it that some of the other entrepreneurs that you follow have the most engaging, polished, and cohesive posts while they're still running a business? Thoughts like, "They must obsess over this. They must spend so much time and money."... "They must have hired a team"... or "I hope one day that I'll eventually get there." My friend, I'm here to tell you that day is today. Not only are you completely capable of creating this content on your own, as I said, I'm going to show you how to create it in one day. That's right, one month of content in one day. How?
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First I'm going to show you how to plan out your 30 posts using a content sheet. And this thing is going to be your best friend. And no, before you ask, it's not just an aimless list of ideas or random categories. People don't really resonate with that. We're going to go deep to create content that is both engaging and strategically related to your business. Then, we'll talk all things inspo and how to maximize your time spent on social media. As you know, we entrepreneurs love to multitask. I'll cover how to collect inspiration for your future content, how to learn from the social leaders in your industry, and how to maximize engagement potential with your followers and ideal clients. Then we're going to walk through my two favorite tools for designing and organizing your posts.
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But before we get to that, if you are in the market for more tips and hacks to help grow your business, hit the subscribe and notify button so you never miss a beat. I'm Lesley, Co-founder of Brand Therapy Sessions. And in my experience of creating Instagram content for my business and for my clients, having a bulletproof strategy and a streamlined creation process for all of your posts is a non-negotiable. Without a plan, you'll find yourself wasting the better half of each day staring at the wall with post paralysis and writer's block. We've all been there. And then, by the time you actually do post and you go back to your grid to review it, you're probably not even that really in love with your page. But with a plan, you'll be able to create highly engaging and meaningful content that will not only attract followers, but help convert them into clients. I've created a free workbook for you that covers everything I'll share in this video. No need to take notes, it's just a click away. The link is in the description below. Once you have a chance to grab it, we'll dive in.
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So the first step is to plan your content. What you see here is the content sheet I mentioned, I use it to map out all of our posts. This one you see here is a blank canvas, and you'll be able to download this from the free workbook that I've created for you. The link is in the description below. But for the sake of this example, I'm going to share our Align Creative Minds content sheet, so that you can see how this comes to life when you create your own. So in the first row, we have our Align-specific content pillars. These six categories are rooted in our internal brand and also the services we offer through our business. So a little bit of context, we run a boutique brand consultancy, and our mission is to help entrepreneurs like yourself gain the confidence and skills you need to increase your income and continue creating a positive impact in your clients' lives.
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And I'm sharing this with you so you can see how it relates back to our content pillars. What we offer is we share our expertise with wellness and spiritual entrepreneurs by way of online courses dedicated to design and business, and we also create custom branding and website solutions. Our hope is that you'll be able to become a credible source in your industry and expand your online presence and audience, ultimately leading to more healing and transformation in the world. So when we come back to the content sheet, what you see here are categories that strategically connect to our business, what we offer and our ideal clients, and it's content that they're likely to connect and engage with.
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What you see in the next row is what our posts are going to look like, and I use these visual templates as a guide. Of course, I make exceptions if someone hosts us on a podcast or we want to showcase client work or there's a specific event going on. But either way, this is just meant to spare me from starting from scratch each morning, wasting my time and becoming overwhelmed with what to create for each post. If you've watched our free brand bootcamp series, you should be super familiar with your internal brand. Refer to this and what your business offers when coming up with your content pillars. And if you haven't already done this work, then in this particular context, what you'll need to do is formalize the core of your business. This means your Purpose, being your brand's big why your Brand Vision, which is your highest vision of where you want to go. Your Mission, being what you do and how you do it.
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Your Ideal Client, being a detailed description of exactly who you serve in your business. Your Brand Solution, being what you offer, product or service wise, in order to serve your clients, your core values and your brand personality. And if you're feeling confused, not to worry. We made a whole other video about this, and it'll really help you. Be sure to check it out. I'll add the link in the resources mentioned section in the description below this video. So in the free content creation workbook I created for you, I've included an exercise that will help you identify your winning categories in relation to your internal brand and your ideal clients. Now, back to this worksheet. I'm going to show you a couple more examples that are unrelated to Align. The first example is one of our amazingly talented clients, Naturally Nora. She's a preconception coach. So she helps women over 30 achieve their best health before pregnancy so their mind and body are in the optimal state to get pregnant.
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Pretty freaking cool. Her content has the pillars of fertility tips, nutrition, motivation and female empowerment, health education, and Nora-related content so potential clients can start to connect with her as a human. And lastly, she also shares the success of her clients. Th is builds trust and helps illustrate the type of transformation that she creates in her clients' lives. In the case that you sell a product, we could use another client for example. So 100 Years of Love is a contemporary home fragrance label. They create awesome products and I highly recommend that you check them out. Their brand values are art, fashion, travel, design, inclusivity, sensuality, love without limits and fine fragrances. If we were to write down their content categories, it would be scent stories and vignettes, celebration of inclusivity and humanity, design and futurism, sexuality, human connection, and of course, love free of barriers or stereotypes.
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If you do the first exercise from the workbook, you'll be able to come up with some categories of your own. Think about what your ideal clients will need to experience through your Instagram account in order to connect with your brand and to understand what you offer and how it will help them. The next row is a visual reference of the templates I use for each post. And this is to help keep our grid pattern consistent. It might seem a little over the top, but honestly it really helps me not overthink it and I just can go with the flow and focus on design.
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A trick that Vitina and I like to use for our Instagram page, @aligncreativeminds, is to alternate between photography and solid backgrounds. And this allows us to incorporate our brand palette without any problems. We don't have to worry if every single color is going to show up naturally in all of our photos. Another reason is because it allows our images to have breathing room. So you don't have to worry about them matching absolutely perfectly or how they'll crop in conjunction to the next post. Another reason is because when you do a brand photo shoot, you don't want to burn through all of your images in one month. By posting photography only every other day, those images are going to last you double the time. We really like this approach because it gives us flexibility while still remaining consistent and balanced across our grid.
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Some people don't care about the grid pattern and prefer a more raw and unfiltered aesthetic, and there are advantages to both. So if you'd like to have a consistent grid sequence like ours on the left, you would be using the alternating option between photography and images. Otherwise, you can simply just use the content sheet to make sure you're hitting all of your content pillars and not fuss over the visual sequence. Whichever you decide, this worksheet allows you to anticipate how many of each image style you'll need to create for the month. While you're in a growth phase, you want to create the most shareable content as possible. This is a really powerful tool when trying to expand your reach and grow your audience. I've put a column on the right of this sheet to remind you of the different types. It's really important to try and include at least one of these in each of your posts to increase your engagement.
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And it's good not to just focus on one type so that your account can achieve well-rounded engagement. Meaning you'll get likes, shares, reposts, views, and saves. So here are the different types of posts. Reels are a new feature on Instagram. And what they are is it's kind of like a visual storytelling that goes a little bit further than just a story. And it's a little bit similar to something like TikTok, but Instagram made their own. And because they're new and Instagram really wants people to use them, the algorithm is rewarding reels like crazy these days. And so instead of a story disappearing, you put all this hard work into creating this fun video and it goes away in 24 hours, they actually stick around on your page. They stay on your feed and they can also stay in a different tab, similar to IGTV.
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It allows you to add music, graphics, GIFs, and make them super fun. And they might seem intimidating, but think of it as a visual list. Write out the message you want to convey and do some simple movements in the background or take a video of a related scene to support the text. Don't put too much pressure on yourself. They're really raw and fun, so it doesn't have to be polished. Next we have long form captions and this can look like a personal story, a breakthrough, sharing a challenge, busting a myth or a limiting belief, a testimonial, or a client success story. Selfies. Selfies and photos of the founder do really well in terms of likes. Your followers will always want to engage with the person or people behind the brand. Carousels are just like posts, except you're allowed to upload multiple images and you can scroll through to read or look at all the images. If you pack your carousel with valuable content like tips or hacks, it will prompt followers to save your posts and come back to it later. Inspirational quotes are also another highly engaging post style.
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Make sure that they're related to your business and ideal client. And if you do them in a branded template, it's another great way for your followers to like and repost your content to their pages and stories. If you're sitting here thinking, "Sure Les, this all sounds good. But how the heck am I going to do this?" I've got you. Once you've done the first part of the workbook I created for you, you're going to be really clear on your content categories and how to create the most engaging types of posts. So while you're on Instagram, you'll be doing research as you scroll. Start by going into your saved images section on the app and create a collection dedicated to content ideas for your posts. You'll want to make sure you're saving stuff that is relevant to your content categories and ideal clients.
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You can find inspiration on accounts of other coaches or businesses that offer similar products and services, popular quote accounts that have similar values to your business, and other business moguls whose insights might be in alignment with your biz. And I'm not suggesting you steal or copy accounts directly, but use this collection as inspiration for posts of your own. Another way to find inspiration is to check out the accounts of your followers and see the content that they're liking and reposting. This is a great indicator for content they find useful and worth sharing.
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If you find yourself hitting a wall as you plan your next month's worth of content, this collection will help you fill in the gaps. It will spare you the writer's block, I promise. And if you want to take it a step further, you can also include which relevant hashtags will go with each post. And if you have any great tips for creating content or growing your Instagram account, let me know in the comments below. And what I'm going to do for you is I'm going to make your process even easier when it comes to creating your content. In the link below this video, you'll also be able to download six free Canva templates that I've created for you.
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These are going to help you make a ton of different kinds of images. Some text-based for educational posts, you can make graphic posts, memes, inspirational quotes, and branded images. This is going to save you a ton of time and they're going to look great. I built them on Canva. And no, I'm not endorsed by Canva, it's just an awesome program that is free and super easy for non-designers to use. You'll be able to customize each post template with your brand's color palette, your fonts, your own text, and this will help you inject your brand throughout your grid. So now that you have your content and your imagery sorted, it's time to pull up Unum to bring it all together. Unum is a grid planning app that lets you upload your images and then organize how they'll appear on your grid.
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With Unum, you'll be able to set the post order and receive notifications at the time that you want to post each day. And unfortunately, it doesn't actually automatically post for you, which is sort of a good thing because as you know, Instagram flags if you use any bots or anything to post. They don't want you to do that. If you watched our last video on how to go from zero to a 1,000 followers in one month, you would learn that engaging 15 to 30 minutes before and after posting with your followers and the accounts of your ideal clients, it will actually fuel the algorithm and will boost your posts to show up on more people's feeds.
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Once you've posted, instead of adding hashtags to your caption, you can always add hashtags in a comment. V and I like to add five rows of periods so they remain hidden and don't clutter the comments. Still with me? Okay, we're almost at the end. The last thing I want to talk to you about is IG stories, and they're an amazing engagement tool for the following reason. If you decide not to post daily, you can still engage with your followers each day by posting relevant content from other accounts to your story on your days off. The benefit is that great content is already out there. There are so many accounts and creative people building beautiful things, and they're just waiting for you to come and pick it up.
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When you do that, make sure that you tag the original creator of the content they may in turn repost your post of their content, giving you exposure to their audience. This is a really strategic and sneaky way to get a lot of exposure quickly. You can also share your in-feed post to your story to give followers multiple opportunities to like, save, comment or share it. Stories can also be used as a great research tool to enhance your service or product. You can take polls to learn what other products they might want, you can use tools like This or That to get some feedback, you can get their rating for something or offer to answer any of their questions. They're also a great way to amplify your client's success, share their posts, mention or tag them, and provide some context of the work you did together. You can also show off testimonials by screenshotting reviews, nice emails or texts you've received and sharing them on your story. Reposting content by others, be it a client or another brand, could prompt them to reshare your story if you mention them in the story.
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And on that note, you always want to reciprocate. If someone posts about your brand, repost it and tag them in your story, be generous about sharing exposure to your audience when someone is kind enough to share yours or mention you. Reposting works as great social proof and an engagement win for everyone across the board, end of story. Now you know how to create a month's worth of content in a single day. I'd love to see what you come up with, so don't be shy. Leave your Instagram handle in the comments below, or feel free to tag us @aligncreativeminds so that we can see your awesome content out in the wild. And if you haven't already, be sure to download the free workbook I created for you. I assure you it will be so helpful in creating content that resonates with your ideal client and keeps your business top of mind. If you like this video, be sure to hit the thumbs up and the subscribe button. Thanks for watching.