Have you ever wondered how some brands are so consistent on Instagram? It seems crazy how they pump out engaging and trendy content daily. That’s because they use an Instagram content calendar!
If you struggle to maintain consistency in your Instagram postings, you must create a calendar for Instagram.
A calendar will sort your daily dilemma of: what do I create next? Do I need anything else for this post, or when was this post supposed to come out? You are entirely liberated from the mental space occupied by these questions once you start using an Instagram content calendar.
So, if you are looking for the easiest way to create an Instagram calendar, you have stepped in the right place. In this blog, we will see how to create a content calendar for Instagram from scratch.
Let’s go!
What Is an Instagram Content Calendar?
An Instagram content calendar is a well-organized publishing schedule for all of your content. It is a content production headquarters, and it has everything, such as captions, media, dates, time, hashtags, and the process, laid out in one place for weeks of your posts.
If you are a beginner and want to manage Instagram marketing effectively, a content calendar might seem like a big commitment, but trust me, it pays off in the long run. Following this process can free up a lot of your time. Your calendar can be as personalized as you want or as complex as you need it to be.
Why Instagram Content Calendar Is Important?
When your Instagram content ideas are scattered, a content calendar helps you stay organized and in control of your planning. It gives you the power to create a regular posting schedule through batching and saves you from burnout.
To Save Time
Alex is a marketer who manages five brands on Instagram with unique demands and audiences. Now, just imagine his life without a content calendar. He will have to write down ideas on paper and then shuffle between them for hours daily to find the right fit for the day.
With an Instagram calendar, he can dedicate a few weekly hours to plan posts for each brand over the coming months. This frees up his time and allows for strategic tasks like reviewing performance and engaging with the audience. It also ensures that no brand is neglected due to time restrictions.
To Maintain Consistency
Regarding consistency, each brand Alex manages demands regular posting at set time intervals so that the audience is engaged and the brand is building an Instagram presence. This means Alex has to determine the best time to post on Instagram and tailor the social media strategy to the audience and the brand identity.
Having his plan laid out on a calendar helps him ensure each brand shares posts consistently at the optimum time and nurtures the relationship with the audience. This way, he can maintain the brand voice and aesthetics across all posts.
To Balance Content Types
With five different brands with diverse identities and audiences, the type of Instagram content (photos, videos, Stories, carousels, and Reels) that will work well for them will also differ. As each brand’s identity changes, the theme of the content also shifts.
Alex cannot ensure the balance of all this post-type and content mix and how often to post along with maintaining their freshness with manual planning using pen and paper. Only with a content calendar can he visualize the content plan, prevent any post-type from dominating the feed, and share what is suitable for a particular brand.
To Sequence Content for Storytelling
Storytelling is a powerful tool in social media marketing, especially for Instagram, where visual storytelling is most entertaining. Prior to discovering the Instagram content calendar, it was impossible for Alex to plan storytelling arcs and connect with the audience in a progressive journey.
A calendar is a catalyst for planning out several posts and unfolding them through storytelling. For a product launch, which starts with a teaser launch video a week before, then moves to a live launch event, and finally, sharing a customer testimonials series on the stories each week, a content calendar enables Alex to visualize the sequencing of the storytelling arc.
To Conveniently Automate
Life without an Instagram content calendar means planning and sharing posts on the same day. However, with the calendar, Alex plans weeks of content for each brand he manages way ahead and then schedules them for automated posting.
This is how Alex became capable of managing five brands simultaneously and generating results for each. If you want to achieve something similar, stick around to learn how to make an Instagram post calendar from scratch.
How to Create an Instagram Content Calendar?
Creating a content calendar tailored to Instagram and your audience preference will enhance your social media efforts 360 degrees. It is supposed to ease your job, especially when you are handling multiple brands or clients.
Here’s a step-by-step guide to making an Instagram Content Calendar:
1. Determine Your Instagram Strategy
Before you move on to making a calendar, you need to establish a clear Instagram marketing strategy. This step is like setting a destination before starting the journey. An Instagram strategy is made with the suggestion of all stakeholders based on the ROI they expect.
In an Instagram post calendar, having a strategy benefits you as it keeps you aligned with the goals. Your plan will act as a guiding star for your calendar in terms of what kind of post you need to create and at what interval you want to publish. What will be your content pillars? How many campaigns will you be running at once?
2. Run an Instagram Audit
You can conduct an Instagram audit, either before or after strategy making. This step is like checking the health of your vehicle before your road trip. You should audit your Instagram based on three aspects:
Profile Audit: Optimize your Instagram profile bio, picture, user name, links, contacts, keywords, hashtags (optional), highlights, pins, etc. Below is an example of an optimized Instagram profile.
Content Audit: Identify which content type has performed best in the past and which hasn’t. Look at the recent posts and evaluate captions, hashtags, content, and time to see if they need optimization! Based on this, you can balance different post types on your calendar.
Competitor Analysis: Analyze your top competitors and find out which content is performing for them. Compare your profile with them and look for gaps.
An audit also helps craft the goals and strategy for the calendar so you can conduct one before developing your Instagram strategy.
3. Define Your Instagram Content Pillars
The next step is to pick relevant content pillars for creating a calendar. Content pillars are the foundation on which your calendar stands. These pillars are a set of a few broad themes that define the basis of your content creation.
Examples of Instagram content pillars and post themes:
- Educational: Tips, how-tos, and tutorials.
- Entertaining: Memes, behind-the-scenes, and fun facts.
- Inspirational: Motivational quotes and success stories.
- Promotional: Product launches, sales, and offers.
- User-Generated: Customer reviews and user photos/videos.
Once you have decided on a few content pillars and themes that align with your brand identity and audience, distribute them across the calendar, ensuring a balanced mix of post types.
Post type for Instagram for different themes:
- Images: High-quality images that represent your brand
- Videos: Interactive and informative videos
- Reels: Short videos and keep it entertaining
- Stories: Brand’s or product daily updates
- Carousels: Instagram storytelling with videos or images
For a beauty brand, product tutorials, customer testimonials (UGC), and beauty tips will be their major content pillars, and they can plan them for various post types on their calendar.
Tip If you are a new brand starting Instagram marketing, you should prioritize quantity over quality and avoid sharing similar content together.
4. Create a Posting Schedule
After aligning your strategy and content pillars, you can start laying down these pieces on the calendar to make a posting schedule. However, to make a schedule, you need some more essential elements of an Instagram post calendar for effective planning.
Essential elements of the Instagram content calendar are:
- Day: Date of sharing a certain post.
- Date: To plan the post for a certain date.
- Time: For different times of the day when you plan to share content.
- Post type: Content pillar most relevant to your brand and audience.
- Post Format: Different types of content formats (images, videos, Reels, Stories, etc) you will share on your feed.
- Description: Caption and explanation of the post.
- Hashtags: Prepare hashtags based on post type, theme, and format.
- Media: Images, videos, reel with cover attached to the calendar.
- URL & UTM: Product or website links that will be shared with the content in the first comment.
- Campaign: To track down the designated campaign of the post.
- Goals: Expected goals or KPIs for the content or even for the campaign.
- Status: To track which stage your content is currently in (review, published, draft, scheduled).
Before making a schedule with the help of essential elements, you need to finalize certain aspects to create an effective posting schedule that yields results. Here are the factors you should consider:
- Posting frequency: This means how often you post your content. If you manage more than one brand, this frequency will vary for each one.
- Content mix: Balance the mix of different content types and formats on your calendar to keep your feed interesting and engaging.
- Best time to post: Identify your best time to post based on audience insights for different brands and their various post types.
- Seasonal content: Lay out the holidays, events, and important dates that you will acknowledge in your plan or create a campaign around them.
Depending on your preference, you can prepare a weekly or monthly Instagram calendar to help your team better understand the plan, maintain consistency, and maximize the impact of your content.
5. Prepare Content in Advance
Once you know what to post, when to post, and why to post, more than half of your job is done. Now, you only need to create high-quality content and align it effectively with your plan. If you have planned a carousel product promotion post for the 1st of the month, just prepare and keep everything ready in advance for scheduling.
This is similar to packing your bags before a trip, ensuring you have all the necessities you might need while traveling. Once you’ve finalized the day, date, time, post type, and format in the previous stages, it’s time to prepare the following elements:
- Description/Caption: Prepare multiple variations of engaging captions for every post.
- Hashtags: Instagram has different hashtag counts for every post format. Stories should have only 1-2 hashtags, but a Reel can have up to 30. Find the relevant hashtags for the post or generate them using AI.
- Media: Prepare the media in advance based on your post format and theme. If you share an image post, ensure it is high in quality. A video should be informative or entertaining, and a story should be relevant and interesting.
- URL & UTM: Keep the links that will be shared within the post caption, bio, or the first comments ready. They should be relevant to the theme of the post. For instance, if you share a customer testimonial, you might want to share the link to the product they are discussing.
- Campaign: If you have an upcoming campaign planned for a certain event or holiday, ensure that you mention that while preparing your content.
- Goals: You should also include the campaign goals. For example, if you have a Mother’s Day campaign planned for a specific women-friendly product, you might want to see increased sales of that product.
Now, you are all set! With this plan in hand, your Instagram content calendar is almost complete. Now, you only need to save the time you would waste sharing every piece of content manually. In simpler words, you need automation.
6. Schedule Posts with Social Media Management Tool
Strategizing, planning, and preparing an Instagram calendar is already overwhelming. Now, if you don’t want to add the double work of manually posting every post on Instagram daily to the plate, you must schedule your posts in advance. This can be done in two ways:
Use Instagram Native Schedule
The Instagram native app lets you schedule images, videos, and reels in advance. However, the Instagram native scheduler comes with several restrictions, lacks advanced scheduling, and can not schedule Stories.
Using a Third-Party Tool
A scheduling tool works for you better than the native solution. It manages your posting time, sends reminders, and automates social media posts. SocialPilot’s Instagram scheduler will help you automate your social media scheduling efforts in advance.
You can schedule Reels, Stories, or posts on Instagram using SocialPilot with just a few clicks. While scheduling, you can also queue posts, save them to draft with a date or repeat posts multiple times after a certain time interval.
After scheduling your Instagram post using SocialPilot, you can send it for approval to the clients and stakeholders or publish it directly.
7. Monitor Performance and Adjust
The aim of the Instagram content calendar does not end with publishing posts on the platform; it goes beyond that to analyze and adjust the calendar according to the performance data. Having a calendar means ever-improving content planning.
You can analyze your Instagram content performance in two ways:
Instagram Analytics Insights
If you have a business account, Instagram provides you with insights into the performance of each post. This data will help you understand how your audience reacts to different content shared by your brand.
Here is what the analytical details of your Instagram Reel look like after publishing:
SocialPilot Analytics
When you use SocialPilot to schedule Instagram posts, you also get analytics and reporting for each post’s performance. SocialPilot provides comprehensive Instagram analytics, allowing you to track personalized metrics and KPIs and download branded White Label Reports.
It makes it easy to understand the performance data, share it with clients, and, if necessary, plan an improved calendar for the future.
Here you go! Take the steps to plan a data-driven Instagram calendar to improve your engagement and consistency.
So, after establishing a foundation for a standard plan, your next step is to create a tailored approach to fit your unique calendar needs and audience.
4 Personalized Instagram Content Calendar Template
Marketers can use a social media calendar template for several purposes. They can use it to plan content for different brands and clients, plan campaigns around holidays, or even schedule content according to the best time to post.
Here are a few examples that you can use to create a calendar for Instagram posts that fits your needs and plans effectively.
Instagram Content Calendar of Clients
When managing more than one client, it becomes confusing to identify which post will be shared for which client and when!
Here is an example to help you overcome this difficulty. The below calendar view gives you an easy way to manage the Instagram accounts of multiple clients effectively.
Instagram Content Calendar for Best Time to Post
Even if your planning is on point, not posting the content at the optimum time will eventually waste your efforts. So, it’s crucial to post at the best time. Here’s a sample that showcases how you can plan your Instagram content for the best time to post on the calendar template for different post types.
Finding it hard to discover your best time to post on Instagram?
Here’s a handy tool for finding the best and worst times to post on Instagram and increasing your engagement and reach.
Instagram Calendar for Campaigns and Activities
If you want to plan and organize your Instagram strategy around different campaigns and activities for a brand, use the below sample of a monthly calendar template that can make your planning and execution process smooth.
Holidays-Specific Calendar for Instagram
Holidays and events are crucial to every content plan as they offer unique opportunities to connect with the audience.
So, to help you plan your social media holiday calendar around popular dates, here’s a holiday-specific Instagram content calendar template so you can capitalize on seasonal trends and generate higher engagement.
However, managing all these calendar templates separately might become overwhelming after a time. Eventually, you will feel a need for an auto-filled content calendar that combines all these aspects of your planning in one visual calendar and offers many other helpful features.
An All-in-One Social Media Content Calendar Tool – SocialPilot
Imagine how much of your Instagram efforts will be saved if you have a tool like SocialPilot that schedules all your social media posts and generates an auto-filled visual Instagram content calendar. You can say goodbye to manually creating a separate sheet.
SocialPilot’s Content Calendar enhances your marketing and schedules and automatically publishes your content across Instagram and all the other major social channels from one place. Here are the key features you get inside SocialPilot’s Instagram calendar tool:
- Holiday and Special Day Indication
- Filter for Different Clients
- Color-coded Calendar Notes
- Post Tagging
- Customizable Daily, Weekly, Monthly View
- Drag and Drop to Any Time Slot
- Preview of Scheduled Posts
- Schedule for Multiple Accounts
- Delete Published Posts
- Collaborate with Team on Drafts
- Schedule Drafts by Date
- Know Content Status
- Quick Clarity of Post Type
- Post Approval Workflow
- Reshare Existing Posts
- Event and Campaign Planning
- Advanced Search and Filter
- Historical View of Posted Content
Unlike a spreadsheet, where you have to alter the entire calendar just to fit in a new post or reschedule an existing one, using the SocialPilot calendar allows you to drag and drop a scheduled post to another date in seconds without hampering your other posts.
The SocialPilot tool solves all your content calendar worries with the benefits of planning, scheduling, publishing, and analyzing.
Engaging Instagram Posts Ideas to Fill Your Calendar
If you are looking for post ideas to fill your Instagram content calendar, here are a few popular ideas on which you can prepare your upcoming Instagram post.
1. Holidays
While posting about certain holidays, look for unique ways to connect them with your brand to keep them original, fresh, and brand-aligned. For example, Hauser Wirth promoted their newest bookstore on World Book Day with weekend discounts for visitors to encourage sales.
2. Promotional Posts
There are several ways to promote your product, but you must find a creative way so your audience remembers it. Microsoft promoted its newest version, Windows 11, with a cake showing the transition from Windows 10 to 11.
3. Company Culture
Showing the culture of your company and how your internal operations work will develop a higher connection with your audience. Below, you can see how Big Bake Face shared an appreciation post for their employees’ hard work.
4. Industry Updates and Event
In any specific industry, you often come across new updates and events, and to build authority, you can share this information with your audience and keep them informed.
This is a post by SocialPilot discussing recently rolled-out features by social media platforms and what they actually mean for users.
5. Customer Testimonials
Sharing customer testimonials is a popular way to promote your product, build authority, and connect with your audience in real-time. You can share your customer reviews on Instagram as a post, Reel, or Story.
Here is a representation of how Biteable has shared their customer testimonials on their Instagram Stories.
6. Polls and Surveys
If you want your audience’s opinion on something or are looking for what most of them prefer, polls and surveys are a great way to achieve that. On Instagram, you can share Stories with polls asking your audience to pick what they like most, or you can share posts about something and create polls in the comment sections to understand your audience’s preference.
Just like WePollDaily, you can also ask your audience anything.
7. Contests and Giveaways
Contests and giveaways are a great way to promote your products, increase sales, and get more engagement on Instagram. Here is how SocialPilot promoted their latest collaboration with SMMW with a giveaway for a free ticket to the event.
8. FAQs and Q&A Sessions
Asking questions to your audience or letting them ask you questions is a perfect way to increase engagement and share more insights about your brand and products. The most popular way to connect with your audience for a Q&A is through Stories; brands can also create a separate Story to highlight the question they have answered.
Here’s how to allow your audience to ask you anything and promote products, brands, and engagement.
9. Brand Values
When it comes to Instagram best practices, one effective strategy is to share the value that makes your brand unique. This means enlightening your audience more about the depth of your efforts. You can post about the intention behind your campaign or product and easily create an impact on people.
Recently, Slack shared a post about its brand value, which was explained by its CEO when she attended an event recently.
10. Infographics
An infographic is a type of post that contains detailed information on a specific topic. You can create high-quality image posts and even leverage the Instagram carousel to share long pieces of information in an aesthetic way.
Similar to SocialPilot, you can also share detailed content with infographics in the form of a Story, Video, or post.
11. Influencer Collaboration
Influencer collaboration is a great way to reach new audiences on Instagram. Nowadays, almost every brand collaborates with creators to promote products or services. The collaborations can be for a single Story, a post, or a series of collaborative posts for a campaign.
As shown in the Instagram post example below, Semrush promoted its product using a simple influencer collaborative Reel that talked about how it helped several entrepreneurs succeed.
12. Brand Milestones
If you want to build a happy community, you must keep your Instagram family updated about your achievements and milestones. Sharing posts on such concepts creates a sense of togetherness in people, making them part of your journey after all.
Here’s a post example from when Salesforce celebrated its 25-year anniversary with its Instagram audience and thanked them for believing in the idea.
These are the 12 most engaging Instagram post ideas that can ensure you better reach and connection with your audience. You can alter them for your brand and campaign to fit your plan effectively and schedule them in advance using Instagram automation tools.
Parting Words
Forming a strategy for an Instagram campaign, creating an engaging posting schedule, drafting a balanced calendar for Instagram posts, and scheduling posts to be published at the best time are the four pillars of success not just on Instagram but on every social channel.
Hopefully, this blog has taught you all that is needed to create your own business Instagram content calendar and achieve your company’s goal with efforts in the right direction. If you are looking for a partner to be a catalyst for your success, SocialPilot is here to help with its features like Calendar, Publishing, Collaboration, and Analytics.
