13 Strategies to Become an Instagram Content Machine
Here’s the scene on Instagram right now — almost every business has an account. Every niche is saturated with content. The algorithm is ever-changing. Users’ attention is fleeting, but you somehow need to capture it. Quantity has become as important as quality. And so the solution every Social Media Guru proposes is to BE CONSISTENT with your posts on Instagram.
This simple advice is easier said than done. And so I have curated a list of 13 strategies you can use to never run out of content ideas:
- Establish Content Pillars
First, define your Content Pillars. Read this article if you need assistance narrowing down the content pillars for your social media accounts. Content pillars give structure to all your content on Instagram. With each content pillar, you can explore different content formats like reels, GIFs, stories, etc. to keep it diverse and interesting. By keeping your pillars in rotation, you will always know the type of post you should create next.
2. Keep a Content Ideas Bank
I am sure you come up with ideas at the weirdest places, doing totally unrelated things, or while just scrolling through your Instagram. When inspiration strikes randomly, capture it immediately in a notebook or a notes app on your phone. This way, if you keep organising your ideas based on bucket, format, etc., it will be easy to plan your content calendar and always have a repository of ideas to refer to for your next post.
3. Ask your Audience
The best way to know what to post for your audience is by asking your audience. Use Instagram’s built-in features like polls, questions, and quizzes to spark conversations and gather ideas directly from your followers. You could also go to Quora or just Google to see what questions are being asked in your industry. This way you will be sure you are providing value to your audience.
4. Launch a Series
A recurring Series can act like a content bucket in itself. For example, you can start an ‘AtoZ’ series for your niche — that is 26 days of content you don’t need to think about from scratch! Whether it’s a weekly Q&A session, a monthly challenge, or a behind-the-scenes series, creating a consistent format will foster familiarity and keep your audience coming back for more.
5. Stay Updated on your Industry
Visit online forums and follow relevant hashtags around your niche regularly. You can get ideas from Reddit or newsletters that talk about and give you the latest news in your industry.
6. Leverage Instagram Trends
Keep a pulse on trending topics, hashtags, and challenges circulating on Instagram. Joining popular conversations and leveraging trending content can amplify your reach and visibility. But make sure it suits your brand personality to maintain authenticity.
7. Draw Inspiration from Competitors
Observe what your competitors are posting. You shouldn’t replicate their content, but analysing what kind of posts they are posting, and around what topic, can give you insights and ideas for your posts, and help you identify any gaps and opportunities for your own content.
8. Embrace Topical Marketing
Capitalize on current events, holidays, and cultural moments to create timely and relatable content. Use relevant hashtags to increase reach and discoverability.
9. Repurpose Content
You can never go wrong with reusing your best-performing content. It saves time and reinforces what you want to say. Create a carousel from an informative reel, an infographic from a carousel, or extract a testimonial from a user-generated content piece. Only a small percentage of your audience would have seen your content the first time anyway. So maximise the value of your content by reposting it.
10. Harness the Power of User-Generated Content
Encourage your followers/users to share their experience with your product/service, and share testimonials, and success stories. Re-use this content on your own feed. You can re-purpose it in different ways like creating a compilation testimonial video or extracting a bit from their content.
11. Pay Attention to Audience Conversations
Extract insights from comments left by your audience on your posts, your competitors’ posts, or your DMs. Audience conversations can reveal what they enjoy, what they want to know more about, and what are their problems.
12. Utilise ChatGPT
Don’t ask AI to write your content for you, but do use it liberally to generate ideas for your content calendar. Engage with ChatGPT in conversation, present it with prompts related to your niche, and it will give you unique ideas based on your requirements. It can give you ideas on how you can repurpose your existing content also.
13. Share your Personal Experience
Whenever you are out of ideas, just share your personal experience, insights, and anecdotes, work-related and otherwise too. This will help you humanise your brand, and help your audience feel more connected with you.
Please don’t feel overwhelmed by the marketing gurus telling you to post every day. Creating content on Instagram consistently is a marathon, not a sprint. Take it slow. 3–4 times per week is enough. And bookmark this article so that you can come back to it when you feel stuck!
