🧠 The Ultimate Instagram Content Strategy Blueprint
Plus: Never run out of content ideas again.
👋 Hey, I’m Casandra. I share research-backed business ideas to help you start and grow a business. This is a 🔒 Premium Edition 🔒 of Really Good Business Ideas.
The perfect Instagram content strategy doesn’t exist, but this is pretty close.
Today’s article covers everything you need to know about Instagram content strategy to maximize your account’s growth. In any niche.
Where can you find ideas?
What type of content should you post?
How often should you post?
What does it take to go viral?
What’s the easiest way to create content?
Should you repost content?
We’ll go over all this and more!
Welcome to another edition of Really Good Business Ideas. We’re nearing the end of our Instagram series. If you’ve just joined us, make sure you check out the introduction to Instagram theme pages. It’s a really fun business opportunity for anyone who loves creating content.
Today, I’m sharing a primer on Instagram content strategy. But before we do that, Instagram made a big update to their algorithm this week!
In their own words:
Today we’re announcing four changes to how we rank content to give all creators a more equal chance of breaking through to new audiences.
✔️ A new input to ranking that will give smaller creators more distribution.
✔️ Replacing reposts with original content in recommendations.
✔️ Adding labels to reposted content, linking to the original creator.
✔️ Removing content aggregators from recommendations
This update will help smaller creators break through the noise.
Until now, recommendations favored post engagement as a ranking factor, meaning the accounts with the most followers got the most reach.
The rich kept getting richer.
Now, every piece of eligible content will always be shown to a small audience. The content that gets the most engagement within its small test group will continue to be recommended to wider and wider audiences.
Content quality will be more important than ever.
This update will make it harder for accounts that primarily repost content to grow.
Originality is a big factor in content quality. While the Instagram algorithm already favored original content, this update will make it even more so. From now on, Instagram will only recommend original content.
Reposts will not be recommended at all unless they have been changed significantly.
In addition, accounts that repost more than 10 times in 30 days (without material changes) will cease to be recommended. If they stop reposting unoriginal content for 30 days, they will become eligible for recommendations again.
I’ve already updated my Instagram algorithm article to reflect these changes.
With these algorithm updates, content strategy is more important than ever on Instagram so let’s jump in.
Table of Contents
What Type of Content Should You Post on Instagram? 📸
How Often Should You Post on Instagram? 📆
How to Never Run Out of Content Ideas 💡
How to Create Instagram Content (Without a Lot of Effort) 🎨
What Type of Content Should You Post on Instagram? 📸
You can post three types of content on Instagram: feed posts, reels, and stories.
New accounts should focus on reels and feed content, both of which Instagram will recommend to non-followers, rank in hashtag search results, and feature on the Explore page.
Reels are best. Instagram has made it clear that consistently posting reels is the best way to grow.1
Reels should be between 10-90 seconds in order to be recommended but 30-90 seconds performs best.2
Both reels and regular feed posts benefit from including 3-5+ hashtags and long captions.
Stories do not get recommended to users by Instagram and should be reserved for engaging existing followers and posting sponsored content that monetizes your account.
But always remember, no matter what format you’re using, your content needs a hook. Ensure you give Instagram users a compelling reason to look at your content.
