Are your Instagram posts struggling to realize traction?
With over 2 billion month-to-month lively customers, standing out on the platform requires technique and content material planning.
A content material plan is an important blueprint that will help you hold your posts aligned together with your technique and your total advertising targets.
Posting with no plan can simply be a wasted effort with out clear path.
To help your model’s conversion and success, this information has a free Instagram content material plan template and useful suggestions which 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, enable you meet your targets, 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 offer you a chook’s-eye view of your content material.
It’s going to assist you understand if you’ve met your objective and may readjust and analyze methods to enhance your content material technique on your subsequent one.
Plus, an Instagram content material plan can hold 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 material plan and make a duplicate for your self.
Screenshot by writer, July 2025
Start with the Overview tab by outlining marketing campaign cycles, together with key conversion targets, strategic themes, and content material pillars with related budgets.
Transfer to the primary weekly sheet to refine execution. Determine subjects and put up sort, craft acceptable captions, align with marketing campaign sorts, and outline CTAs that help your advertising funnel goals.
Lastly, after you could have the above laid out and preliminary captions, you possibly can transfer to the following 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 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 able to schedule your content material.
Screenshot by writer, July 2025
If you have already got some advertising initiatives, it’s the right time to include them into your advertising marketing campaign. For instance, possibly you could have a brand new product launch.
You may then construct a content material collection round it. Tease the product launch with a number of posts, run a giveaway, characteristic an influencer utilizing the product in a video, and spotlight key advantages all through.
Occasions and holidays provide alternatives to spice up engagement and appeal to new clients. They’re one other enjoyable and optimistic solution to get clients speaking about your model. Vacation giveaways or offers are one other solution to develop model consciousness and acquire followers.
In case you have an occasion arising, you possibly can create a marketing campaign hyping the occasion and discussing the audio system concerned, merchandise that can be there, or superior seize baggage you’re giving freely on the occasion.
We advocate pairing our Advertising 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
Upon getting your content material template and earlier than you intend your posts, what you need to do is create your Instagram targets.
What do you need to accomplish? Is it to develop your viewers, drive extra engagement, or enhance product sign-ups?
As soon as you understand this, you possibly can set the important thing efficiency indicators (KPIs) to mark completely different factors of study you need to observe alongside together with your Instagram marketing campaign.
For instance, you need to develop your viewers by 20% by the top of the marketing campaign cycle, otherwise you want to enhance your engagement fee to a minimum of 0.43%.
After you choose your conversion targets, it’s useful to interrupt down your objective into milestones you want to attain.
This fashion, you possibly can map out the kind of content material wanted for every and monitor your progress utilizing the KPIs you’ve set above.
Screenshot from writer, July 2025
Ask your self: What milestones are you able to mark to attain that objective alongside the way in which? What sorts of content material, subjects, or content material collection are you able to create to extend engagement?
Write down all of the targets you assume your model can fairly obtain (Professional tip: the trick is to make it SMART).
3. Preserve Your Theme And Tone Constant
If you wish to hold your posts partaking, guarantee visible and tonal consistency by growing a model information. You’ll additionally need to preserve a cohesive theme throughout all posts, together with fashion, typography, and colour palette.
For inspiration, you possibly can take 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 contemplate a constant angle or filter to set the fitting tone and search for your content material.
It’s additionally very important to create normal 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 customers on Instagram issues, particularly when you have a number of individuals responding to feedback and messages, to make sure it’s inside the model’s tone.
4. Showcase Your Creativity: Instagram Publish Varieties (With Examples)
Instagram is extra than simply an aesthetic photo-sharing app. It’s a big platform that may showcase your product in several codecs to entertain, interact, 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 them for greatest practices for every use case:
Pictures
Photos are a good way to showcase merchandise’ USPs, share thought management quotes, relatable memes, or announce new characteristic updates.
It’s additionally nice for posing questions which you could reply in your picture caption, or selling offers or giveaways by using 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 pictures out of your high-end photoshoot however don’t need to put up them right into a grid or oversaturate your feed? Attempt fantastically crafted carousels to make sure return on funding (ROI).
Carousels have been a mainstay on Instagram since 2015. It’s a assortment of 10 pictures you possibly can put up abruptly, now expandable as much as 20.
To entice your viewers, make it attention-grabbing to swipe proper with chronological storytelling, collage/journal cutout components, 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 pictures and tutorial quick movies.
Reels
Subsequent, movies are a superb solution 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 possibly can put up 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 (until you add them to your highlights in your profile), the place you possibly can share posts out of your profile or put up new content material.
It’s a preferred solution to acquire extra followers and have interaction with customers.
- 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, clients, 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 study a brand new product if it’s promoted by somebody they already comply with. Likewise, it could assist construct belief with customers new to your model in the event that they see a put up 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 put up, the place she apparently despatched probably the most Slack messages in a yr.
However what content material goes viral? It may be useful to have a look at what your rivals 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 fascinating movies, the captions and name to motion nonetheless matter.
For those who hooked the buyer together with your image or video, you continue to need to reel them in together with your caption and CTA.
Screenshot by writer, July 2025
It’s important to craft the fitting CTA to make sure customers comply with your web page, interact together with your put up, or buy your product.
Take into account A/B testing to establish the fitting method on your campaigns. A compelling call-to-action is obvious, concise, and written in an lively voice.
6. Select The Right Hashtags
Researching and choosing the proper hashtags is essential to make sure your posts attain the meant viewers and a few new ones that is perhaps focused on your area of interest and model.
Hashtags enable your content material to achieve customers past your profile’s following as you create content material for particular hashtags. Be aware which posts carry out significantly nicely.
That method, 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 model consciousness.
7. Know The Finest Time To Publish
Planning posts forward of time will 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.
For those who’re not sure when to put up, listed below are instructed days and instances the place evaluation factors to the place you’ll get probably the most engagement and views.
It will be useful to perform a little research particular to your business to see the perfect time and day so that you can make your posts.
One vital factor to remember if you’re planning your content material is the upcoming holidays.
Are you going to put up celebrating the vacation, use the vacation to do a promotion or give away, or select to not put up on that day altogether?
It doesn’t matter what you decide, maintaining holidays in thoughts is essential.
8. Measure Outcomes And Alter
Instagram Insights, each on the app and thru Meta Enterprise Suites, can present what number of views a put up will get and statistics on the engagement with the posts that will help you see which sorts of content material are working greatest. You may see your content material’s likes, shares, feedback, and saves.
Manufacturers may use Insights to get metrics on the paid exercise. Insights are a good way to see developments to be able to modify your content material technique.
You’ll additionally be capable to see metrics about your followers to see what number of you’re receiving, the age of your followers, and data on when they’re most lively on-line. This fashion, you possibly can modify your put up instances to make sure you are higher at reaching your viewers.
Other than Instagram Insights, discover strategies for measuring social media impression past vainness metrics to realize deeper perception into buyer sentiment and total model efficiency.
Wrapping Up
In case your Instagram isn’t getting outcomes, it might be attributable to an absence of planning.
Don’t miss the chance to tie your conversion targets, advertising campaigns, developments, holidays, and inventive campaigns collectively and provides it the well-planned, in-advance funds it deserves.
It may solely assist, not harm, to create a proactive content material plan on your social media workforce to remain aligned, preserve consistency, and ship measurable outcomes.
Reaching your targets by growing an Instagram-specific content material calendar guided by present advertising goals and data-driven themes will assist your model interact 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
