Instagram is growing in popularity as a social media platform than ever before. It’s a great place to share moments from your life with friends and family, as well as build up your personal brand and promote your work.
It was only two years ago that Instagram had about 100 million monthly active users. In 2017, they surpassed the 1 billion mark. And it doesn’t look like they’re going to stop any time soon – their most recent data estimates that they will have more than 4 million new monthly active users by the end of 2018.
You’re probably wondering how you can use Instagram to leverage your business. But before that, there are a few things you need to think about before starting your Instagram account:
What is the purpose of your account?
How should your profile look?
What content will you post?
How often will you post it?
Creating a Grid Layout For Your Instagram Feed
The grid layout is a method of spacing layouts and objects in a predictable and orderly fashion. It allows you to create great-looking content without having to worry about the placement of each individual object on your feed. When creating a grid, it’s important to know how many rows and columns there should be in order for everything to fit the way you want it to.
Planning out your content before uploading them using a grid layout allows you to have a consistent look at a glance on your profile. Your feed’s aesthetic will be enhanced and your posts will be easier to read and follow. At times, you can try to portray a large image broken down into small posts. People will be able to look at the entire image by looking at your profile.
The layout grid is a bit more complicated than the other layouts, but it's worth the time for presenting your content in a way that looks visually pleasing and is easy for your followers to consume.
How Many Posts Per Day for Optimal Engagement
There is no perfect number of posts per day that will work for all businesses. This is because every business and each account are different in terms of goals, followers, and niches. Posting too much can lead you to be seen as spammy, and posting too little might make you look inactive. So how many posts is the perfect number?
We can make assumptions about the number of posts per day to see which one would be best for us. The optimal number of posts per day is that which maximizes reach and engagement while minimizing fatigue. It is said that the optimal number of posts per day tends to be around 4-5 posts a day if you have less than 10K followers. But if you have more than 10K then the optimal amount would be around 7-8 posts a day due to the increased reach.
Finding Inspiration For Your Future Posts
Many people find it difficult to come up with content ideas for their feed posts. They may be unsure of what to post on social media. There are many ways to find inspiration for your future feed posts. One way would be to follow certain pages, accounts, or people on social media, and take a look at the kind of content they post. Another way is to research certain hashtags that have similar interests as you and read through their recent posts.
If you want to be more original when it comes to your posts, keep a journal of your thoughts from the day before you go to sleep in order to think deeper about them in the morning. You can also be observant of things that happen around you, find something that inspires you and try to make a post about it.
Why Planning Your Instagram Feed is Important
Content is key. It’s one of the best ways to build your brand and reach more people. But what’s the point in producing beautiful content if it never gets seen? That’s why you should invest time in planning your Instagram feed for maximum reach, engagement, and exposure. An efficient way to plan your Instagram feed is to use a social media scheduling tool that helps you pick the best time when your content will have the most impact on followers. Scheduling tools are useful for saving time, so you don't have to post everything at once by yourself.
Having no social media manager means you need to be constantly planning ahead for what's coming up in terms of content, creative ideas, and campaigns. When you're not planning ahead for the next few weeks or months, you end up spending more time on posts later on to catch up or fill gaps in between posts.
Feeling overwhelmed?
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