the easy way to create consistent content for Instagram

You really want to grow your Instagram following and you’re ready to put a decent amount of focus into it. 

But the hardest part — creating all the content. It’s just so time-consuming!

Sure, even if you love creating, sharing, and engaging on Instagram, it’s hard to fit into your schedule. 

You’ve been dedicating a few hours to it each week, but all that effort only lands you three posts. If you’re balancing a paid group and free content, you’ll need to create even more.

What the heck do you post the rest of the time?

And how much time do you have to spend on this Instagram thing (or Facebook, TikTok, or whatever social media platform all the cool kids are using)?

If you’d love to be able to post 5 times a week (or more), here are some ideas I teach inside the Unfussy Writing Community to help make it easier for you. 

1. What kinds of posts work well?

Once a week, scroll back through what you’ve shared on Instagram and look for these four key things:

1. Likes

2. Comments

3. Shares

4. Profile clicks

The latter two being a more important measure for a service business or coach.

2. Choose your feel-good creation method 

Some of the Unfussy Writing Community members love tapping out an Instagram post and then later turning that into their blog post. Some prefer to blog, podcast, or creative videos. This has nothing to do with your ideal client and how they want to consume information. This has to do with what feels good to you. 

When you focus on what feels good to you to create: 

• You’ll spend less time creating

• You’ll enjoy it more

• Your people will notice the stuff that felt good to you — everything you create has an energy to it

Whatever your primary creation method or medium is, start there, and then repurpose the crap out of it. Create it once, repurpose a dozen ways. 

3. Create a list of topics you enjoy talking about 

And then, notice the themes. Do they naturally fit into a handful of different buckets? I like to keep a big long list of everything I could possibly write about. If I’m ever unsure what to write about, I look to the list, choose a topic that stands out, and write an SFD (shitty first draft). 

4.  Think of your weekly blog/podcast/video as your pillar content

And then, share snippets, excerpts, and ideas from that piece of pillar content all week long.

Here’s an example of repurposing for Instagram: 

1. Write your blog post

2. Share 2,000 characters of it on Instagram and the rest in the comments

3. Break out ideas from your blog post into at least 5 posts (I bet if you look closer, you can get 10 or more post ideas!)

   1. This can be anywhere from a sentence to a paragraph and then review to make sure the context fits if it’s shared on its own. Sometimes it will need an intro sentence to frame it up or an outro sentence to close it out.

   2. Feel free to flesh out some ideas with more thoughts. You’ll probably get some other content ideas during this process, too!

4. Then, each day following the day you posted your blog post, post one of those snippets on Instagram. 

5. Take it further and think about each Instagram post as the anchor for your Insta stories for the day too. Talk it out and riff on that one idea. 

While talking about the same thing for a week or more might make you feel like you’re saying the same thing over and over, keep in mind that your reader very well might not see every single post. 

And, since you’ll change up the actual content of each post, different topics will resonate with different people. And quite often, it takes people several times of hearing something, said the right way for them, and then it will finally click. 

You’re starting a new conversation with each post and approaching it in a slightly different way. 

Creating a dialogue around a unique topic all week long will help you focus your Instagram effort and gives you more mileage for every piece of content you create. 

Save time posting on Instagram

If you work repurposing into your weekly content creation time, estimate that you’ll add approximately 15-30 minutes to your time each week. I track my time and this is all it takes me! 

And you can create new content and share it in a way that feels fresh all week long.

Every time I share this advice on our weekly Unfussy Writing Community co-writing sessions, business owners react with a sigh of relief, “Oh, that’s so easy!”

If it sounds like this Unfussy Writing Community is awesome, it’s because it is. And I’m totally biased. Learn more and apply over here.

And if you want to keep reading articles like this, you might like these:

1. writer's block is bullshit

2. 28 crave-worthy blog posts to kick up your creativity

3. your body of content is a charcuterie board