- [Ashlyn] I love a good
meme that makes me giggle
this one did the trick lately
and if you're anything like me
you may love being online
and getting to create content
as a part of your job
you don't necessarily want it to consume
and rule your life.
Well if that's you then stay tuned
because by the end of this video,
you will know all about my
Instagram content planning
strategy for the remainder of 2020.
Essentially, this is
how I've made the shift
from planning a week of content in a day
to a month of content in
a day because why not.
(inspiring music)
So I've officially been
batch creating content
that I posted on Instagram since 2016
and I've put more trial and
effort into figuring out
a content calendar, an editorial
calendar planning system
than I should ever probably
publicly admit on the internet.
I've planned four weeks of
Instagram content at a time
maybe five times ever in my
business and it was so great.
So as I'm getting back from sabbatical
and getting into planning
and showing up on these apps again,
I thought let's go ahead and do it
let's do another month at a time.
I thought I'd take you behind the scenes.
Hit that Like button if
you are ready for this
and again perhaps like
me, if you like Instagram
a pretty good bit that don't
necessarily want to be on it
all the time.
And while you're down there
hit the Subscribe button
and the bell next to it
that way you will be in on the family
and first to know when these
videos drop every single week.
So I've made other videos about Instagram
this little app has changed so
much over the past few years,
right?
So like any framework
or workflow I give you
I want it to be kind of
like the Mary Poppins bag.
Listen if you wanna throw in everything
but the kitchen sink kind
of like I do then go for it.
But if you listen to my system
and just wanna snag the essentials
and use them for your own system,
then do your thing.
I'm giving you the outline
it's up to you to see how
crazy you wanna make it.
Let's go.
Number one, blueprint
out a calendaring system
with content themes, ideas, and prompts.
So this would be the first
step is actually having
content themes.
If you haven't heard my soapbox
on why I'm super passionate
about creating hero
pieces of pillar content
and then taking the whole
concept of content bucket
theme rotation with a grain of salt,
then I'll link down below
a link to my playlist
on pre-launching and planning
out a marketing calendar
that may help give you some
insight into my process
and the strategy that I have behind this
'cause the whole point of marketing
is to lead into the sales funnels.
But regular posting on social
media apps supports this
from a hero hub and
hygiene content standpoint.
So, yep we need a place to
capture our content theme ideas.
And I'll say this, it used
to be really hard for me
to figure out how to
narrow down everything
that I was interested
in into like five topics
that I wanted be known for.
I'll give you this tip in
case it helps you as well
but now I have five theme
buckets and then under those
I let myself have sub ideas, sub themes,
whatever problem solved.
Here's a basic outline
of what that looks like
the color coordination
I think helps you see
that there's really just five concepts
and then within this I
can let myself talk about
a myriad of things.
By the way this is from
an app called Plann
which I've used for years and I love it
I'll tell you more about
it as this video unfolds.
But if you're getting stuck here
or just want more content posting ideas
lemme show you this quick cool thing I saw
when I was playing around
Plann the other night.
So you could just pause this video
and stack some of these ideas
but you could go into Plann and
you'll click content prompts
and it opens up this window
of a ton of posting ideas
look at these and they're
all sorted by industry.
I actually scroll through
this whole list the other week
to just see if there was any
ideas I'd never thought of
or I don't know just ideas
that would give me a prompt
to come up with something to post about.
All right, and as far as
marking this out day by day
eventually all roads lead to Rome.
And I do put this in a digital system
lemme show you what that looks like.
And I'll say here too that
I've done this so many ways
so I'm about to show
you my Mary Poppins bag
my Asana calendar
but I want you to give yourself grace
especially if this is not
your personality style
or it is a little much.
The goal here, at least for me
is what I tell y'all all the time
I hate starting any kind of
writing with a blank page
and no story, no idea, no hook
or just concept that I can
flesh out and run with.
Instead, I'd rather start the writing
or the creative process
with a wealth of ideas
that I could talk about and
then take one of those and run.
Again, Let me just show you
what this looks like in a Asana.
Like I said, I don't want
this to be too confusing
it did take a while to set
up but now that it's all in
Oh my gosh, so much easier
than being all over the place.
So what I like about Asana as well
because we moved over from Trello
that's initially where I learned all this
and then now I have an
integrator who pushed me to Asana
and I love it, kinda changed my tune.
But what I wanted to show
you is how you can toggle it
back and forth between different views
so if you're used to Trello,
this is how this could look
what I've liked too is the
calendar format as well
So let's go back to list though
because what I wanted
just show you in here
are a couple of things
and I can filter right now
like if it were easier into, let's see
custom let's do only
Instagram feed, there it goes.
So these would be only
like Instagram posts
that I wanna go ahead and
have it on all of them
so let's pull back in.
Facebook, Instagram
stories so on and so forth
and my story begins by
date 'cause that helps me.
Okay, what else can I show you in here?
So let's go down to
I had mentioned like this is a week
I know that the content on Instagram
is gonna be around home.
Being in New Orleans,
it's city that I love
and I'm getting to
speak at something there
So I'm gonna pop up in this
and show you what it
looks like on the inside.
So I can choose to the content bucket
that this would go into
it would kinda be go
into a couple of things
it would kind of be like a
testimonial or a media hit
like I'm getting to speak
somewhere that kind of thing.
So let's see, let's put
this one as media hit
because I can talk about
like the South on this day
I can give, you know, like a business tip
that I'm learning on this day
and then I'll include this as a media hit.
So I have the channel entered in here
and I've made all these
you can create custom, like
drop down menus as well
which is super helpful.
Once it's all scheduled,
right now it's not scheduled
once I do populate that
in I'll show you that
in a little later in the video
I'm gonna click yes
and if I want to I can do this as well
this would be, or I could use a carousel
if there's like multiple
images from that day.
So that is essentially what the overview
looks like inside the content
calendar built out in the sun.
I won't lie setting up something like that
takes two to three-ish
hours but it is worth it.
Before I did this, I
used to plan, like I said
a week at a time and I would
do that inside my notes app
just like on my phone or on my desktop
and if what I just showed you looks crazy
that would probably be
a great place to start.
Eventually though as you do
more than maybe seven at a time
it will be more helpful to
move to a system like this
unless you want that notes app
to kinda be as long as a CVS receipt
it's more organized in a
project management tool.
The second part is brainstorming
and looking at your posting calendar.
No matter what, I always
start brainstorming on paper
I can get my ideas out
better when I'm holding a pin
so I printed out four of these.
This is a paper, a
content calendar planner
that is inside my Primed
to Launch Playbook
and I'm gonna use this
and just mark up ideas.
I'll look in advance on the calendar
see what things are coming up
that I could talk about on certain days
so for example, we know that
Labour Day is around the corner
as time of recording so
I'm gonna put that on here
I also know that I'm speaking
at the school styling
on a later date so I can
arrange content around this
and potentially getting New Orleans wrecks
right over here as well.
I'll say it one more time so
hopefully this isn't confusing
does she use paper or digital?
I just need to start brainstorming here
and then I'm gonna to
move it over into a Asana
because eventually I need
everything to go there
because my team that's all spread out
they can't see everything
that's on these pieces of paper
in my office if I'm
traveling or on the road
or just wanna be able
to get to things faster
it's so much easier to
at the end of the day
have it housed digitally.
Comment below and lemme know your style
are you more of a paper
person or straight digital
or like me do you have to have
some kind of hybrid approach?
I always think it's so interesting
to learn what people like.
This is so helpful when I'm stumped
if you're inside Prime to Launching notice
that I do like to have
themes for each day.
So it gives me a starting point.
Every Monday I post about this
every Tuesday I post about this
So on and so forth.
This I also keep over in Asana
so when I am transferring all
that floppy copy into a Asana
I can see what template idea
I am gonna use that day.
Number three, the next part
is writing the actual copy.
I like to rotate through longer captions
and then try shorter ones
I don't really have a rhythm or a system
that just kind of is what I feel like.
I'd also be lying if I said that
I don't depend on my own
caption party starters
it's a shop item I have
but it's just a list of some prompts
that if I am really
struggling with writer's block
I can at least go off those
and play a little to them.
I also tremendously lean on
snippets from my copy bag
and my story bank to myself
going and write faster.
Check out last week's video after this one
if you wanna see how I
organize that and set it up.
I like to write away from the app for sure
so this is where I'm
actually write out the copy
number that idea was brainstormed on paper
I actually wanna put
my fingers on the keys
to type the copy.
You're writing in the notes
app, like I showed you
what I'm gonna do is come over here
and I like to write in here,
let me pull open this is a template
of what like each card looks like
when I have it listed like this
you know you can toggle back
and forth between a list
and calendar and all sorts
of different views in Asana
which makes it great.
But essentially, so here's
where we talked about
the dropdowns and here
is where I would copy.
So when I would start writing
again, this is a template
but whatever the topic is
I would start, "OMG-I can't believe it,
more copy would be right
here, blah blah blah blah."
That's how I would explain.
The beauty of batching then
is that I don't have to
like be creative on demand
and I sometimes hit my
biggest creative burst
early in the morning or late at night
and so when I'm feeling
like that I can go in
and batch trying a ton of
different captions all at once.
I'll tell you then how I
clean them up in a sec.
And number four, assign the
imagery that goes with each post
and schedule them.
Okay, remember when I said that this app
has changed a little bit over the years,
this is where I've seen a big change
because it's not necessarily
about having the most beautiful
captivating, the Matic grid anymore.
Instagram expert Sue B.
Zimmerman talks about these
as neighborhoods
and when the neighborhood
was only the feed,
I think that was way more important.
But now there's DMs, there's
IG TV, there's Stories,
There's so many other
different parts of it.
Now, yes you want to have
some sort of visual congruency
but as I talked about in
a video earlier this year
I learned a lot at Social
Media Marketing World 2020
and this was one of my big takeaways.
I'll sum it up with this
those of us who market on
Instagram used to focus
tremendously on kind of
rotating through certain colors
or going dark light, dark light
and all these crazy things.
That again aren't bad
they're just not quite as
important as they used to be.
That's why I don't start
with the images anymore
like I used to
I used to always start
with my Instagram images
and then I would try to figure out
like what captions would fit with those
but now it's captioned driven.
I will say too I've never
totally been on board
when the experts say that
you don't need to have a
beautiful feed anymore.
For two reasons
A, I like pretty things
and I think that's okay
and then B, I work with
a lot of wedding industry
entrepreneurs, visual artists, creatives
and for those of us that are
in these kinds of industries
your grid is in essence
part of your portfolio
when you're being adjudicated on it.
Regardless, let me hop over
and go ahead and show you
what I do want once I
have the caption ready
and need to install it and
schedule it so it's ready to.
So you inside this tool called Plann
and I opened a new like dummy account
so I can show you what it would look like
because mine has a lot of photos
and a lot of things scheduled out
that I kinda do wanna keep
a little bit of a secret
but what I wanted to
show is this specifically
I imported just five photos here
so you can kind of see how it would go.
And what we'll do, I'm
gonna open up one of these
and I do like that once I click this
so say I want to use this photo.
Well, the first thing
let's go back to media
so you can import different
media folders and files
but what I can do as well is drag them in
into this specific spot
that they would come.
And once I have this ready
what I can do is edit this, click it open
and instead of writing it here
which could totally feasibly do,
I would rather, like I
said, I would rather write
when I'm over here copy it based of
where it is in this content calendar
and then just paste the
caption here and then I am done
and that's a lot easier.
I can also schedule it so if
you're into looking at times
like your ideal posting time
and all of that kinda thing
you can set it up.
And I also like that it gives
me a reminder on my phone
this is time to post and I
just pretty much click open
and paste and it runs
it which is so, so nice.
Here's bonus tip, if you make
an appointment with yourself
this is a whole lot easier to
knock out in one fell swoop.
I told you earlier about
how it's was gonna revisit
and edit these.
And so what I do as
part of my rest to work
windup routine when I sit down,
is I look at what is scheduled that day
to post on Instagram but also Facebook
and I "jujuuu."
I play with it, I get
it to where I want it
copy, edit a little bit
and then I'll post it.
So lemme make that clear
none of my posts are going
straight from being batch written
and created straight to publication.
I need to get in there and edit them
and maybe even ask some people on my team
what they think about it before I post
but at least batch planning
gives me something to roll with.
And now that you know how to batch create
your Instagram content,
make sure that you have a
pretty sweet system set up
to capture different story
ideas, copy baking ideas,
swipe filing, and more.
The video I have teed up for you next
talks all through my
system on how I do that
I'll see you there.
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