The most important part of your Instagram strategy is how often you post content. Your posting frequency is a major debate on the app—should you post daily? How often should you post what type of content Instagram?
I’m Natasha from Shine With Natasha, an Instagram strategist and video content creator, and I’m here to share the exact steps I take my clients to build a custom posting plan for Instagram.
The pros and cons of posting daily
Posting on Instagram 1-3 times per day can benefit your account in a few ways:
- Posting more often can help accelerate your growth
- More content means a higher chance what you post performs well in the algorithms
- This strategy absolutely works for some marketers and brands
For most brands, I don’t recommend posting daily because it isn’t sustainable long-term, especially for small business owners and creators.
Focus on consistency over posting frequently
A sustainable strategy you can stick to will yield better results, and there are plenty of compelling reasons as to why:
- Social media apps reward brands that create and post regularly on the app, even if it’s as little as 3 days per week
- Showing up for your audience consistently will help you build trust with your community. That trust often leads to engagement
- A sustainable content schedule helps you avoid burnout and ghosting your audience, which can be harmful for your reach and engagement
Create your own sustainable posting plan
I usually break this into two parts – picking where on Instagram you want to post, and then deciding the frequency. Let’s go through it together.
Step 1: Pick the Instagram surfaces where you want to post:
- Regular Stories
- 1-3 Grid: Reels, Lives, Feed Posts
Step 2: Decide on your Instagram content frequency for those surfaces on a weekly basis:
There are a few options to help you be more consistent with your posting. I call them the “Bare Minimum” and a “Scaling” plans. Each has non-negotiables to fall back on. Here’s an example of what each of those may look like:
- Bare Minimum plan: 3-4 days of Stories + 1 feed post each week
- Scaling plan: 5 days of Stories + 4-5 feed posts each week
I recommend creating a monthly routine you can easily maintain without much effort when implementing your posting plan. The more you stick to this plan, the more efficient you’ll become, and can progress towards more ambitious goals in your “Scaling” plan. And the longer you stick with it, the more you’ll learn about your audience’s engagement, which you can use to optimize your schedule for the best days and times to post your Instagram content.
If you’re looking for more tips on how to revamp your Instagram strategy, head over to my profile for more content.
Pro tip:
Check out these easily customizable Instagram templates on Microsoft Create..