If you haven't created a plan to follow on social media, your posting is quickly going to be forgotten, and your small business could suffer because of this. Posting pictures of your products may not seem like the most important thing to you, but 90% of people follow at least one business on social media, and you won't be a strong competitor if your lacking brand awareness and potential customers can't trust you. Once you have a good plan in place, you can create more useful content and ultimately gain more results for your business.
1. Create your Theme
Once you know what content you want to post (this should be easy to decide based on your business), you need to decide how you want your overall feed to look. Having a consistent theme is helpful because:
Having a pre-selected font and colour scheme that fits your brand means it's easier to quickly create posts
Your posts will look co-ordinated which your customers will appreciate
Your account will look much more professional in comparison to an account with random posts being put out sporadically
If you wanted to create a pattern for your overall feed, make sure that every third post is in the same template, this means you'll end up with a column that shows you thoughtfully planned your posts. You could use a plain background with the same font style and colour to share a tip or quote for every third post.
2. Create a posting schedule
You should post at least once a week to keep your followers interested in your content and to show that you have a reliable posting pattern. To keep this pattern, pick a set day and time that you’ll post each week, and research what time is the best on each platform to increase engagement. There are several ways you could do this:
Use a posting scheduling tool, this means all you have to do is upload your content and caption, and it will automatically be posted at the time you selected
Create a spreadsheet or notes section with your captions and hashtags and just upload your posts straight from your phone
3. Create your visuals
To make your posting easier, set aside a few hours a week to create a week/months' worth of content. Some ideas you could use are:
Aesthetically pleasing texts graphics with tips or quotes
Pictures of clients or staff using your product
Event images
About your company
Funny videos
4. Write your captions
Your caption depends on your audience and what you’ve been sharing, for example if you want to come across as an industry expert, your captions should be filled of tips to educate your audience. However, if your content is more aesthetics based, short, funny captions might perform better.
5. Choose your hashtags
We recommend using the full 30 hashtags, but if that’s too much for you around 15 will do! You'll want to use a mix of trending hashtags as well as local and branded ones to get the most out of them. You can research the hashtags you want to use by typing them into the into the search bar and seeing how much reach they get.
No matter what you eventually decide to post on Instagram, you need to make sure it will attract your ideal audience, what does your dream customer care about and what will motivate them to follow a business account?