Do you love Instagram? I love Instagram. But then again, it’s a bit of a love-hate relationship thanks to the big thing that everyone’s talking about at the moment: bots and spam accounts. You know the ones – they follow you then unfollow a day later, or they leave a generic “Love this!” comment on anything. They’re annoying because my notifications tell me that 10 new people have followed today, only for my follower count to be down 3 on what it was yesterday. It makes no sense, but it’s one of those things. Then there’s the algorithms that decide what they think you want to see – again, annoying, but what can you do?
But then again, I love Instagram because I love pretty pictures. I remarked on Twitter the other day about how I follow SO many accounts on Instagram – over 2000 actually – but not because I want them all to follow me back or because I have ulterior motives, simply because they post inspirational, pretty or fun images and I like seeing those.
I also really like sharing pretty pictures. Okay, not all of mine are pretty – I just like sharing photos from my life on there sometimes, but I try to make them look as good as a I can! It’s always fun getting lots of likes on pictures, you can’t deny that, and seeing your followers grow. I also try to keep a bit of variety in my Instagram profile too – I don’t want every picture to be a yoga pose, or an outfit photo, or a picture of my cat – yes, it’s very much in danger of that! I post a lot of different images as I class my blog, which my Instagram account is tied to, as a lifestyle blog. I don’t want to come across as all fitness (ha!), all cat, or all fashion, so I want to make sure I’m mixing it up a bit. I also like to post images that relate to blog posts that go live that day, but I very often forget to do so, so they’re often #ICYMI style images reminding people to check out the blog.
I recently started using a WordPress Calendar plug in to organise my blog posts (which I wrote about here) and it’s made me SO much more organised in my blogging. I know what posts I have to write, what posts I have half-written, days I’d like to publish them and I can also look back and see how often I blogged in previous weeks or months – great for motivation. And I thought to myself, it would be awesome if I had something like that for Instagram.
It can be a bit exhausting trying to remember what images you want to publish on each day and constantly checking back on your profile to make sure you’re getting a good variety of images. I’ve been scribbling in my diary when I post something on Instagram and trying to note down ideas for future posts there too because they get lost in my camera roll or forgotten about. Like I said, I wanted something more like my WordPress Calendar for Instagram, but I couldn’t find anything. So I decided to make my own, and I’m going to share it with you now!
You can download the Instagram Planner for free here!
This is a really simple calendar/planner for Instagram that literally just has a grid that you can number (if you choose to) and fill in with your plans for the month on Instagram. For mine, I’ve annotated the days along the top, numbered each box for March and just filled it in. I’ve kept it in black, grey and white to be simple and not use up precious colourful printer ink. It’s customisable for every month as you just write your month at the top and get to work.
For mine, I’ve been writing in the image I plan for the day in blue ink with the “category” in black ink underneath to make it more obvious where I’m mixing up the styles a bit. Having the open boxes means you can use them any way you like.
I’ve also included a couple of extra bits down the side to help with any goals you might have and notes. I decided that if you’re wanting to use an Instagram Planner, you’re probably quite serious about your Instagram goals so will be tracking your following to some extent, so there are a few boxes where you can note your followers at the beginning and end, plus your goal for the end of the month. And finally, a section for notes – or you could just doodle there, whatever takes your fancy.
What do you think – is this helpful to you? Would you change anything?
