Posting on Social Media can be an arduous, time-consuming and intensive task – especially when it comes to posting on multiple business accounts!
The most vital (and difficult) thing to ensure when posting on Social Media is to be consistent! Audiences nowadays crave the regular, exciting and engaging content that comes with the platform – of which is a tough task for a person to handle!
In this article, we’ll teach you how to easily save precious time when it comes to posting – and being active – on Instagram!
Batch Creating Content
One of the most time consuming parts of posting on Social Media, is (unsurprisingly) generating the content to post: from thinking up concepts, to designing graphics to writing up accompanying text.
In order to reduce the overall time you spend posting on Instagram, it is vital that you have processes to allow you to ‘batch create’ the content!
Using Instagram Post Templates is one of the best (and affordable) ways to do this. These templates can be accessed on websites, such as Canva and our very own library where we have a 28 day free trial offer, and are easily-customisable to fit your brand’s aesthetic.
By doing so, you can save and have a batch of customisable, cohesive graphics that are suitable for any occasion – which the ability to switch out pre-designed photos and text, in relation to the post’s intended content and use.
This cuts out the need for thinking up what post to do when - be it a review from one of your clients, a sales pitch, a customer 'hook' or a tip of the day. You can use this alongside your social media strategy as well so that you hit all of the necessary posts - attract, promote, retain, etc.
Scheduling Posts
Another way to save time on Instagram, of which could be better used to benefit your own business, is to use available online software to schedule your posts.
One of the best platforms to use for scheduling content is Meta Business Suite – a complete social media management tool for Facebook and Instagram. It allows you to do everything: from creating and scheduling content, to responding to engagement and analyzing insights, to planning campaigns and ads. (Sonnenberg, 2022)
When scheduling posts for Social Media, it is important to always stay ahead of the game: make it a regular task to have some posts prepared for the next few weeks – rather than just having everything scheduled for the current week.
The best part about scheduling content, is that you can go back and edit it at any time: you can change the hashtags, the time and date and many other features – handy if you need to juggle the content around.
Using Presets
Presets are a group of photo-editing settings that are designed to transform your digital images into a professional-looking, finished product at the click of a few buttons – and a great way to edit your Social Media photos, if you’re not editing-savvy!
The reality is nobody wants to spend countless hours editing batches of photos, ready to upload on Social Media, and even more of a reality is that 99% of people don't or can't. This means that more often than not photos from your phone are used, and whilst they can take quite a remarkable quality photo nowadays, they aren't at the level of standing out from the crowd. Using presets gives you a bit more of a professional look for those photos in-between branding shoots and also ensure that your page has cohesive aesthetic: by using presets, you ensure that every photo has the same look.
We offer Lightroom Mobile presets on our shop; allowing your photos to have a professional, creative edge that will define and set your brand identity apart.
Fully customisable, professionally-curated and easy to use – presets are one of the best ways to elevate your post photography and save time on Instagram.
Using Stock Photography
Stock photos are an easily-affordable, accessible and helpful tool that businesses should take advantage of – not only for their versatility, but their practical use, especially when it comes to Social Media.
They save you precious time and money, meaning that you don’t have to keep remembering to take photos of your work - which lets face it, unless you know what you are doing can mean the photos are OK but not great - or hire out a studio and a professional photographer every time you want to post - which whilst I suggest you do this at intervals throughout the year, isn't enough to see you through a whole year of regular up-to-date social media posts.
When using stock photos, ensure that you switch up the content every now and then – make sure that you include photos of your own products and brand as well, to ensure that not only is your feed aesthetic, but it is also relevant and true to your business (your branding photos from your photographer would be perfect here to help you stand out from the crowd).
Did you know that we offer a free, 28-day trial for our monthly stock membership? Try it today and see how stock photography can benefit your business!
Responding to Direct Messages
Responding to messages can take up so much of your day – making sure that you curate a professional, detailed response to each one, with some queries often repeated a few times over again.
Instagram allows you to set up ‘Quick Replies’; you can craft a few pre-written responses to common queries and messages that you receive – meaning that you can save precious time, by clicking on the relevant option when you receive a message.
In addition, using ‘Quick Replies’ allows you to spend less time on responding to repeated queries, and more time crafting detailed responses to unique messages – ensuring that your followers are still engaged, but not at the cost of excess time and effort.
Conclusion
Posting on Social Media can be a time-consuming, demanding task – but not if you create an efficient process that allows you to batch create cohesive, aesthetically-appealing posts that can be easily customised and scheduled to post at a later date.
Using pre-designed templates and presets, batch creating and scheduling content are some of the key things that a business must master – in order to make sure that their Social Media presence and identity is rich and visible, amongst the sea of other influencers.
For more advice and guidance for posting on Instagram, check out our Creating an Effective Instagram Strategy post - as well as our other Business tips on the blog!
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