Strategies to Keep Your Instagram Content Flowing When You Have Run Out of Ideas
If you’ve been regularly posting content to your Instagram account, there must have been a moment where you stared at your phone, absolutely blank, wondering what you should post next.
This is totally normal and happens to even the most prolific of content creators.
However, there is a content calendar you have to stick to, and you can’t disappoint an audience that has gotten used to your frequency of posting.
Today, we are going to talk about some fun ways to get the creative juices flowing and come up with post ideas for your Instagram when you’re searching for inspiration.
1. Showcasing memorable events and people from your community
If you’ve been on Instagram for a while, you have likely cultivated some number of dedicated followers, even if this number is small.
And inevitably, your Instagram community is going to have a few people who are doing remarkable things in their lives. You can use your profile to showcase success stories or highlight memorable pieces of content from members in your community.
This content could be mini-interviews, memorable quotes or just you highlighting innovative ways people are using your products and services.
2. Sharing the right quotes that fit your brand voice
Quotes are widely accepted as filler material on Instagram. They are the things you post when there’s literally nothing else you can come up with.
However, even quotes can become valuable marketing material and can be used to generate brand awareness and even drive sales in some cases.
If you are a design brand, for example, you can showcase your talent by using innovative typography and image editing to spice up what would otherwise be a plain quote.
You can also pick and choose quotes that appeal to your niche audience, such as women-centric quotes if you are a women’s wear brand.
3. Sharing holiday or special day-themed content
A lot of days in the year are notable for some occasion or the other, such as International Coffee Day or #NationalDonutDay. These fun holidays are great for putting out some themed content on your Instagram.
You can use eco-friendly causes such as #WorldEnvironmentDay to create some content that talks about a genuine issue and then tie it back to your brand at the end.
There’s an entire social media holiday calendar that you can find online, and you’ll find enough days every month to put out some topical content.
4. Sharing eye-pleasing lifestyle content
Lifestyle content isn’t properly defined, but it could be anything from sharing a great picture from your day at the beach or an artistic picture of the tiramisu you had for dessert.
What matters when choosing which lifestyle content to post is seeing whether it fits in with the rest of your style and aesthetic on Instagram. You also need to ask yourself if this is the kind of content that your prospects would be interested in.
If you’re a fitness brand, you can probably post a picture of your in-shape friends playing volleyball at the beach.
5. Sharing the best User-Generated Content (UGC) from your community
Posting UGC is not just a way to fill up some slots on your content calendar. It shows your audience that you value their content and how they engage with your brand.
Social media studies show that users are 50% more likely to trust UGC than any other type of content.
Of course, you can’t just start sharing every picture that you are tagged in. Instead, you should focus on creating a branded hashtag and promoting it so you can see all of your audience’s content under one banner.
6. Posting behind-the-scenes or vlog type content
One of the easiest ways to create content is just document what you do throughout the day. You can record snippets of your days at the office, conversations with team members or presentations and then edit it with a phone app to post on Instagram.
Your users will love getting a glimpse into the lives of the people who are creating their products and services. It is an authentic way to engage with your community, and it doesn’t take too much effort to create.
7. Using stock photography, animation and videos from your unused pictures
Stock photography is one of your biggest assets as a marketer on Instagram. You have a wide array of pleasing pictures to choose from that you can incorporate into your storytelling on Instagram.
With so many new apps offering professional quality animation, transitions and filters, it is now easier than ever to combine elements of stock media with your own content to create engaging posts for your audience.