If you’re anything like me, you’re wearing multiple hats, juggling the day-to-day operations of your business, answering emails, servicing clients and customers, managing your team, and closing sales just to name a few. I get it. Finding the time and resources to consistently create high-quality content that resonates with your ideal customers can be a real challenge. This is something I’ve definitely experienced, running my business over the years, and is a struggle so many of my clients have.
With that being said, I have some great Instagram hacks that will save you time (your most precious resource) and supercharge your content so you can create engaging content your audience loves without it taking up hours of your time.
1. Batch Your Content Creation
The first Instagram hack for saving time and supercharging your content is to batch your content in advance. Do you ever find yourself staring at your computer screen, trying to come up with the perfect Instagram post? You brainstorm, search for inspiration, and finally come up with a caption and image you’re happy with, only to realise that you’ve spent an entire hour on it! By setting aside dedicated time each week or month to plan and create your Instagram content in advance, you can save yourself a ton of time and reduce the stress that comes with creating content on the fly.
Not only does batching your content help you be more strategic with your content creation, but it also helps boost your creativity. When you’re not rushed or stressed, you’re able to approach your content creation with a clear mind resulting in better and more engaging content for your followers. Content batching will help you to avoid this situation, save you SO much time, and help you create better content!
2. Use a scheduling tool
The next Instagram hack to save you time and supercharge your content goes hand-in-hand with the first hack and that is to use a scheduling tool! This has saved me countless hours, especially as an agency owner who manages many clients! Manually posting to Instagram might seem like it only takes a few minutes, but these minutes add up not to mention having the stress of having to remember to manually post each day.
Once you’ve batched your content, plan out and schedule your Instagram content in your chosen scheduling tool so that you can be sure you have a consistent posting schedule, a super important ranking factor of the Instagram algorithm. There are so many scheduling tools on the market but two of my absolute favourites are Plann Than and Flick. I’ll leave both of these linked in the show notes if you want to check them out!
3. Create Custom Instagram Templates
The next Instagram hack to save you time and supercharge your content is to create custom Instagram templates. Custom templates are pre-designed layouts that you can customize for different posts using your brand’s colors and fonts. Post templates I’ve created for both myself and my agency clients include quotes, carousel posts, infographics, testimonials, and promotions and sale events. I also like to create different content formats for my templates including feed posts, stories, and reels. Using custom templates will save you time, not having to create content from scratch each time and it will also ensure your content has a cohesive, on-brand look and feel which will help you stand out and be more recognisable.
4. Create custom hashtags groups
The next Instagram hack to save you time and supercharge your content is to create custom hashtag groups. Firstly, I don’t want you to overthink hashtags. Instagram has recently said that hashtags that using more hashtags won’t necessarily increase your reach and they advised that instead, you focus on using a small group of hashtags that are highly relevant to your content for the best results.
With that being said, I recommend creating 4 – 5 groups of 5-10 hashtags that are relevant to your business and the key pillars of your content strategy. Having these pre-created hashtag groups is going to save you so much time and overthinking when it comes to creating new content because all you have to do is determine the theme or pillar of your post and then simply copy and paste the relevant hashtag group!
My absolute favorite tool for finding the best hashtags is Flick. Flick works by using Instagram’s Hashtag Search API, which allows its customers to find the best hashtags for their content by analyzing hashtags in different niches. I’ll leave a link to flick in the show notes if you’re interested in checking it out.
5. Repurpose Your Content
The next Instagram hack is to repurpose your existing content. It’s all about working smarter, not harder. If you’re currently creating content creating longer-form content in the way of a blog, podcast, YouTube video, or presentation, don’t make the mistake of just sharing it once and leaving it at that. There are so many different ways to repurpose long-form content into engaging Instagram posts. Some of these include breaking it down into bite-sized clips, summarising key points in a carousel post, creating helpful infographics, and creating quotes from notable things you’ve shared. You can also re-share your popular Instagram content. This is a great way to connect with new followers and keep your existing ones engaged. I like to look at my Instagram insights, see which posts or reels have performed the best, and then recreate that content in different formats.
6. Use User-generated Content
Hack number 6 is to share user-generated content. Sharing content created by your own customers or clients is one of the best forms of social proof you can get! So why not make the most of this when you’re tagged in their posts. Not only will this save you time not having to create a post from scratch but when your followers can see the results that other people have had using your product or service, they’ll be much more likely to want to purchase from you in the future.
7. Use Instagram’s save feature to save posts that inspire you or have great ideas
The final Instagram hack to save you time and supercharge your content is to use Instagram’s save feature to save photos that inspire you. In a similar fashion to Pinterest, you can save inspirational content on Instagram and even organise your saved content into catergorised folders. Any time I see a post that catches my eye and stops my scroll, I save it to an inspiration folder. I always refer back to these folders when creating new content and look for ways I can recreate them with my own unique spin and branding. Consistently creating high-quality Instagram content can be time-consuming, especially for busy entrepreneurs and marketers but these Instagram hacks will definitely help you to save time and create better and more engaging content.
If you found value in this post and want to learn more about how you can work 1:1 with me to master Instagram marketing so you can reach more dream clients and customers, without the overwhelm, click here to apply for a free strategy call with me where we can chat more about what it would look like to work together!
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