Instagram Content Strategy - How to Determine What to Post

How do you know what to post to grow your Instagram profile?

In this video, Chris shares his Instagram content strategy, methodology, and tactical steps on how you can grow your following on Instagram. He shares the combination of strategies he uses to reach 200,000 people and gain 634 followers with just one post that took him less than 20 minutes to make.

To watch part one of this whiteboard session, click here.

Write Down What You Learn

Articulating your ideas is the best way to gain clarity of them. It’s important to write down things you learn, or things you may already know about, to gain a deeper understanding of them.

Articulating what you know and learn can take many forms. You can write, make art, film a video, send out a tweet, record a podcast, or take a photo. Any way you express yourself, you can also express your way of thinking.

Why Share Your Thinking?

Articulating your thoughts and sharing them can strike several chords with your followers more than you may initially think. Sharing your thinking can produce any one of these outcomes:

Inspire, serve, or educate others
Validate your ideas and gain authority
Get feedback
Develop your expertise on a subject
You become a thought leader

In short, it’s essentially harmless to share your thoughts.

Steal, Don’t Copy

People who copy other people’s work typically want to do the bare minimum, yet they expect great results. This simply isn’t feasible.

Copying someone’s work doesn’t challenge you and doesn’t guarantee you’re going to make it better. Instead of copying the final product, copy the process of how it was made. Copy the ideas of how that person came up with the idea.

Austin Kleon, author of Steal Like an Artist, says there’s a distinct difference between bad stealing and good stealing. Bad stealing happens when we steal from just one source; whereas good stealing comes from many sources. Take the things that inspire you and use them as reference points for the things you create.

Business philosopher Jim Rohn once said, “success leaves clues.” And as Chris puts it, it’s up to you to find them.

Make It Sticky

With our attention spans slowly shrinking by the minute, you want to make sure that the content you put out there is memorable. There are three things to do to make sure what you’re posting stands out and sticks:

1. Elicit emotions

2. Use strong images and visuals

3. Tell a story

If you use all three of these things in one post, there’s a pretty good guarantee it will be a memorable one.

Beta Test Before You Launch

If you’ve got an idea for an Instagram post, but aren’t sure if it will generate the results you’re aiming for, try beta testing it.

Send out short snippets of the content, like a tweet or Instagram story. Bring it up with a friend in conversation and get their take on it.

What does the engagement of your beta test look like? And does it perform well?

Collect ideas, share them, and see if they work. Find the right platform to test them out and just see what happens. There’s something to be said about taking the pressure off of things, testing things out, and just seeing where they go.

ABOUT

Chris Do

Chris Do is an Emmy award-winning director, designer, strategist, and educator. He's the Founder and CEO of The Futur—an online education platform that teaches the business of design to creative thinkers.

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