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 can assist you hold your posts aligned along with your technique and your total advertising and marketing targets.
Posting with no plan can simply be a wasted effort with out clear course.
To help your model’s conversion and success, this information has a free Instagram content material plan template and useful ideas 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 targets, and schedule campaigns successfully.
For this objective, our template comes with an Overview tab and month-to-month planning tabs with versatile weekly layouts to offer you a fowl’s-eye view of your content material.
It should assist you already know whenever you’ve met your aim and might readjust and analyze methods to enhance your content material technique to your subsequent one.
Plus, an Instagram content material plan can hold concepts, budgets, themes, and advertising and marketing 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 creator, July 2025Start 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 principle weekly sheet to refine execution. Resolve subjects and publish kind, craft acceptable captions, align with marketing campaign varieties, and outline CTAs that help your advertising and marketing funnel targets.
Lastly, after you have got the above laid out and preliminary captions, you possibly can 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 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 whenever you’re able to schedule your content material.
Screenshot by creator, July 2025If you have already got some advertising and marketing initiatives, it’s the proper time to include them into your advertising and marketing marketing campaign. For instance, possibly you have got a brand new product launch.
You possibly can then construct a content material sequence 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 supply alternatives to spice up engagement and appeal to new clients. They’re one other enjoyable and constructive option to get clients speaking about your model. Vacation giveaways or offers are one other option to develop model consciousness and acquire followers.
When you have an occasion developing, you possibly can create a marketing campaign hyping the occasion and discussing the audio system concerned, merchandise that will probably be there, or superior seize baggage you’re gifting away on the occasion.
We advocate pairing our Advertising and marketing Calendar for 2025 when creating your Instagram content material plan to tie in your inventive campaigns with holidays and seasonal themes for the week, month, and even quarter.
2. Outline Your Objectives
Upon getting your content material template and earlier than you propose your posts, what you wish to do is create your Instagram targets.
What do you wish to accomplish? Is it to develop your viewers, drive extra engagement, or improve product sign-ups?
As soon as you already know this, you possibly can set the key efficiency indicators (KPIs) to mark totally different factors of study you wish to observe alongside along 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 improve your engagement charge to no less than 0.43%.
After you choose your conversion targets, it’s useful to interrupt down your aim into milestones you want to attain.
This manner, 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 creator, July 2025Ask your self: What milestones are you able to mark to realize that aim alongside the way in which? What kinds of content material, subjects, or content material sequence 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. Hold Your Theme And Tone Constant
If you wish to hold your posts participating, 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 colour palette.
For inspiration, you possibly can have a look at your web site, content material, and logos to assist create the correct tone and theme to your posts.
Take into consideration the look of your content material for each footage and movies, and take into account a constant angle or filter to set the proper tone and search for your content material.
It’s additionally very important to create commonplace working procedures (SOPs) about your messaging, whether or not for captions, feedback, or responses to direct messages, as a result of likelihood is, a number of individuals are managing the account.
The way you reply to shoppers on Instagram issues, particularly when you have a number of individuals responding to feedback and messages, to make sure it’s throughout the model’s tone.
4. Showcase Your Creativity: Instagram Put up 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, have interaction, and educate audiences.
There are numerous methods to create content material for Instagram that may spotlight your model and improve engagement.
Let’s discuss by them for finest practices for every use case:
Photographs
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 you could reply in your picture caption, or selling offers or giveaways by 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 have got a number of images out of your high-end photoshoot however don’t wish to publish them right into a grid or oversaturate your feed? Strive 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 images you possibly can publish suddenly, 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 images and tutorial brief movies.
Reels
Subsequent, movies are a wonderful option to present sneak peeks of one thing developing or create product teasers. You may as well use movies for behind-the-scenes content material to construct product hype.
Think about utilizing Instagram Reels, or brief 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 publish longer movies in-feed. Manufacturers use these to go extra in-depth into describing a specific subject.
Tales
In the meantime, Tales are images 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 publish new content material.
It’s a well-liked option to acquire 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, clients, or different customers, is a good way to increase your attain to totally 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 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 essentially the most Slack messages in a 12 months.
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.
If you happen to hooked the buyer along with your image or video, you continue to wish to reel them in along with your caption and CTA.
Screenshot by creator, July 2025It’s important to craft the proper CTA to make sure shoppers comply with your web page, have interaction along with your publish, or buy your product.
Think about A/B testing to establish the proper method to your campaigns. A compelling call-to-action is obvious, concise, and written in an lively voice.
6. Select The Appropriate Hashtags
Researching and selecting the best hashtags is essential to make sure your posts attain the meant viewers and a few new ones that is perhaps concerned with your area of interest and model.
Hashtags enable your content material to succeed in customers past your profile’s following as you create content material for particular hashtags. Be aware which posts carry out notably effectively.
That approach, you possibly can create future posts for particular hashtags that may improve your content material’s visibility to a broader viewers, serving to you obtain extra model consciousness.
7. Know The Greatest Time To Put up
Planning posts forward of time may help alleviate some stress from social media technique.
You need to use Meta Enterprise Suites to schedule posts for Fb and Instagram and set posts for per week or a few weeks.
If you happen to’re not sure when to publish, listed below are prompt days and occasions the place evaluation factors to the place you’ll get essentially the most engagement and views.
It might be useful to do a little analysis particular to your trade to see the very best time and day so that you can make your posts.
One vital factor to bear in mind 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 decide, preserving holidays in thoughts is essential.
8. Measure Outcomes And Modify
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 can assist you see which kinds of content material are working finest. You possibly can see your content material’s likes, shares, feedback, and saves.
Manufacturers also can use Insights to get metrics on the paid exercise. Insights are a good way to see developments so as to regulate 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 knowledge on when they’re most lively on-line. This manner, you possibly can 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 self-importance 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 resulting from a scarcity of planning.
Don’t miss the chance to tie your conversion targets, advertising and marketing campaigns, developments, holidays, and artistic campaigns collectively and provides it the well-planned, in-advance finances it deserves.
It will possibly 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 targets by growing an Instagram-specific content material calendar guided by present advertising and marketing targets and data-driven themes will assist your model have interaction on the platform.
Obtain our Instagram content material plan and begin being more practical along with your Instagram technique.
Extra Sources:
Featured Picture: Paulo Bobita/Search Engine Journal