I have something super exciting to share with you today—I know it will be so valuable for you as you are creating content for your Instagram. I am sharing my posting checklist to help you with your Instagram content.

I have talked about how important it is to ONLY post content that will serve your audience and that adds value for people in your niche. But, so many of my students are stumped about what to post when they are creating content because they aren’t exactly sure how to do that. It’s not always easy to figure out if you’re posting just for the sake of posting or if it’s actually a piece of content that will add value for your followers. 

It used to be tough for me to figure out if I was serving my audience every single time I showed up on Instagram, which is why I created a posting checklist for myself to help me make sure all of my posts were valuable to YOU. I genuinely want to serve all of my followers and share content that will help YOU with your business & your Instagram. I use this posting checklist to help me ensure I am doing exactly that. 

Here’s the posting checklist you should use for every single post:

✔     Is My Content Providing Value For My Audience?

Make sure your post—no matter if it’s a Reel, Carousel, Story, or photo—can help your audience. It should serve them and should be something that is worth their time. If you are posting a ton of content that does not provide value for your followers, they will feel like they don’t want to follow you and they are so much more likely to scroll past your posts when they are browsing on Instagram. 

✔     Have I Engaged With My Audience For 15-20 Minutes?

Before you post anything on Instagram, it’s a good idea to engage with your followers. This lets people know that you are active on the app and that you are there for them if they have questions. It’s also super helpful because anyone you talk to or reply to will get a notification, so they are headed back to your page right before you upload something new for them to check out. This is one thing I make sure I do before every post & if you start engaging with your audience, I promise you will be blown away by the amount of engagement you get every time you upload. 

✔     Am I Building Trust With My Audience?

If you are using Instagram to support your business, then you need to make sure that your content will help you sell—without really selling. Use your posts to build a connection and to build trust with your audience because that is KEY when it comes to selling on social. You need to be seen as an authority and someone your audience looks to as an expert in your niche in order for them to buy from you. When you are creating content, keep this in mind so that you are constantly coming up with ideas to help you serve your people and build trust in your community. 

✔     Am I Going To Be Consistent With Engagement After Posting?

You already know it’s important to engage with your audience before you hit ‘post,’ but you also need to be consistent about interacting with your followers once your post has gone live. Meet your followers in the comments, answer questions and keep the conversation going. You should always try to reply to people shortly after you post to boost your engagement. It’s key if you want people to feel like they can and should be commenting on the things that you upload. 

✔     Did I Switch Up My Hashtags?

It’s important to add hashtags to every post if you want to increase the reach of your content. But, you should NOT be using the same hashtags every single time you upload. Instead, you should be choosing hashtags that are relevant to your business and your niche and that include a variety of terms with different search volumes. Mix things up and cycle through your hashtag sets to get the best results from your posts. I like to save several different sets of hashtags so that I only have to copy and paste them in my captions and don’t have to search for them every time I want to post. 

I hope this checklist helps you create content that will help you grow on Instagram & get your followers to be super loyal to you and your business. Make sure that you are following me on Instagram because I share posts like this plus Instagram strategy & small business advice all designed to serve YOU. Follow me here.