When you’re just starting out as a business, whether selling products and services online or in person, it can be difficult to brainstorm enough ideas for all your social media posts, especially for Instagram.
Instagram is a visually-rich social medium, with square images for posts being the first thing viewers see, hence your posts will need to be pictorial (photos, graphics, diagrams, memes) in the first instance, with the accompanying caption text as secondary.
Even though secondary to the images, the accompanying text below each image is important, as it signposts potential customers to information about your products or services, and can include a call-to-action such as “Click on the link in the bio to get a special discount on this“.
If you’re an ecommerce business, then posting to your Instagram feed about different products, deals, discounts or special offers is a no-brainer. Ditto if you’re offering services such as consultations, speaking engagements or courses.
Having an Instagram page full of photos of products or services for sale, which really amounts to lots of sales pitches, can be too much of the same, and may even be off-putting to potential customers.
Social media for businesses should be about building relationships with your audience, which is much more than just creating a product or service catalogue within your social media accounts.
In order to turn viewers into raving fans, you’ll need a variety of post types created with your niche market in mind, and in order to ensure your social media account offers up interesting, engaging and relationship-building content.
Viewers will be much more inclined to stop, read and take action, than scroll past, because your posts will seem more carefully constructed and personalised, as if you’re speaking directly to them (because you are).
This translates into your audience wanting to buy from your company, rather than from your competition.
However, when you’re the business owner or manager, and especially if you’re just starting out with your business and there’s only one of you, trying to think of what to post each time besides lots of things for sale, can be challenging.
If you structure your social media plan, it’s much more likely you’ll come up with appealing and relevant content.
So why not break it up into different categories as part of an overall framework?
My advice: think in fours.
Introducing the Four Quadrant Formula.
The plan is simple. If you create a mix of the following four types of posts in your Instagram feed every month, you can plan and create most of your content for a month, in just a day.
You should aim to create 1-2 posts from each of the four quadrants per month.
This means you’ll have enough posts, and a good variety of posts, to be able to put out one or two every week, which is a good average, especially for start-ups.
Posting regularly with a variety of posts that add value to your potential customers’ lives means you should easily gain traction with more followers and customers.
Plus you’ll be able to regularly dish up a mixture of entertaining, intriguing and educational content which Instagram algorithms should pick up on, especially if there are lots of comments, sharing and link-clicking by your viewers, resulting in an increase in relevant followers.
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Keep reading – details below.
Let’s take a deeper look at the Four Quadrant Formula.
Quadrant One: INSPIRE
Inspire posts will include inspirational material, such as encouraging, profound or uplifting quotes from experts (or you!) and down-to-earth good advice. In this category, you could also include positive reviews from your customers. The point is, these posts are ‘short and sweet’.
These posts should be consistent with your niche target market’s needs or concerns, so for example, if you sell beds, a relevant quote might be: “Sleep is the best meditation” – Dalia Lama.
Or if you offer services for high performing entrepreneurs, a suitable quote might involve productivity tips or inspiring words on success or wealth.
Inspire posts are quick and easy to put together, as there are thousands of online sites which list suitable quotation texts. Be careful not to use copyrighted images or memes, but if you have permission to do so, always acknowledge the source.
Alternatively, it’s easy enough to use a graphic creation site like Canva.com to create your own social media images incorporating quotes, advice or well-known proverbs.
More on how to do this soon.
Quadrant Two: INFORM
Inform posts give information. They will usually link to a blog post or some other information-rich content, such as a report, article, downloadable ebook or informational video, which may sometimes require users to sign up first to access these.
Note that links in images or caption text in Instagram are not clickable – only the one link in your Instagram Bio (profile) is clickable. See note below about using a link aggregator site instead.
Either way, you’ll need to create or have the linked-to content ready too. If you plan to do only one Inform post a month, that means you’ll only need to write or source the blog post or article once a month, but you can choose to increase the frequency of these as your business grows, or if you have access to more team members to assist with content creation.
For this type of Instagram post, you’ll also need an Instagram-size image with the article title and/or some other information on it as your graphic, with caption text inviting viewers to link to your article, report or blog post.
Again, using Canva.com will help with the image, as they provide a ready-sized Instagram square post template (1080 x 1080px) and lots of ready-done examples, which you can simply edit.
Quadrant Three: EDUCATE
Educate posts are about teaching your subscribers something, by providing ‘how to’ instructions, a mini-course, or a tutorial.
These types of posts are most suited to Instagram Reels, which are 30-90 second videos (not to be confused with Instagram Stories, which can also be video format, but which are not permanent).
For your Reel, you can shoot a short video – usually in 9:16 vertical format – explaining some quick tips or instructions about something, or make a presentation-style video using the Canva.com Reel template, and incorporate sub-titles as well as music, in addition to the soundtrack. Another video template site with lots of pre-done, editable videos is Animoto.com.
Instragram also allows users to host a livestream, so you could run a live class or mini-course, with viewer participation and interaction. Remember to promote your live event frequently in the week leading up to it, to ensure maximum attendance.
You can also, of course, link to a video or tutorial article hosted elsewhere, such as Youtube, but you’ll need a square cover image or video preview to post on Instagram, with the link in your Instagram Bio (or link aggregator account – more on this below).
Quadrant Four: ENGAGE
Engage posts are all about interaction with your followers. These posts ask for their input, such as their responses to polls or surveys, or simply for them to comment. Although you could ask them to click away to a poll/survey which you’ve set up elsewhere, such as on an online survey website, it’s more likely users will engage with your content when the poll is within Instagram, as well as short and easy to partake in.
You can use the Polls feature with Instagram Stories (Stories are photos or short videos which disappear after 24 hours), to ask your audience questions.
Keep the questions simple and short, but unique, occasionally using humour too, to encourage viewer participation. There are two question options – yes or no (can be edited to two other possible answers), or a sliding scale to rate something. Although Instagram Stories (and thus Polls) are only shared with followers, you can choose to share them to Facebook too.
Or, if you’d prefer your Engage posts to be more permanent, simply create an Instagram graphic with an attention-grabbing picture and question, and ask your audience to comment below the post.
Live events can also encourage engagement, as viewers of your livestream can comment during the event.
Some Tips for Extra Impact
Post content from a different quadrant each time. That way, you’ll always be posting a variety of content. You can mix the four types of posts with other posts about your products or services and special offers, making for a vibrant and varied feed.
Instagram wasn’t designed to work with lots of website links included in images or in post caption texts (links are not clickable there). Instead use a customisable link from a link aggregator page like Pensight.com or Linktr.ee as the ONE link in your Instagram Profile/Bio.
The links will be viewable when someone clicks on your Instagram Bio link, and can be changed or added to over time. Here’s an example of my Pensight account: https://pensight.com/x/kathrynrosenewey
Get your own Pensight link page, with 40% off your first two months of Pensight Pro if you use this link.
Although you can now post Instagram content from a laptop/desktop as well as your smartphone, remember that when viewed on a phone, your Instagram profile/home page will only accommodate three square images across in each row of the grid. The images are small when viewed on a phone (until someone clicks on an individual image), so use a large font and not too much other detail for your Instagram post graphics.
As sound is often disabled on people’s feeds, your Instagram Reel or Story might not automatically play sound when visitors are scrolling. A get-around technique is to also include large sub-titles across the video, so that your message will still reach your viewers, even without them hearing the audio.
Include hashtags (phrases prefaced with # and with no spaces) at the end of your text captions, because hashtags act like keywords and are thus searchable, when users are looking for a specific topic.
Obviously , you can post other content too – the Four Quadrant Formula is not meant to restrict social media managers, but free them! Note too that some posts simply won’t fit into only one of the four quadrants – you’ll probably end up creating hybrid posts too, which is great.
Once you reach that point, you might find you don’t need a definite structure for your post creation plan anymore, because you’ll be naturally tuning into your followers’ needs and aspirations. Whichever way you get there, quality content makes for lots of raving followers and eager customers!
By the way, this blog post will be turned into an Instagram post too – can you guess which of the four quadrants it belongs to? Let me know what you think in the comments below.
Happy creating! 🙂
Useful Links
21 Instagram Interaction Post Ideas to Boost Your Engagement Rates – https://skedsocial.com/blog/instagram-interaction-post-ideas/
Glossary of Instagram terms – https://blog.kicksta.co/the-ultimate-glossary-of-instagram-terms/
How to Create and Run an Instagram Poll – https://www.makeuseof.com/how-to-create-poll-instagram/
How to make an Instagram Poll to ask Questions or Survey your Followers – https://www.businessinsider.com/guides/tech/instagram-polls?r=US&IR=T
Instagram Feed vs Stories: Which One Is Better? – https://animoto.com/blog/video-marketing/instagram-feed-vs-stories