How to Create an Instagram Grid That Will Engage and Grow Your Audience
Feeling overwhelmed when it comes to creating an Instagram grid that will grow your following and engagement rates? You aren’t the only one. Did you know that:
Social media is an integral part of marketing and advertising your business for so many reasons: brand reputation and loyalty, competitive positioning, customer-centric business strategy, public relations, and social commerce are among some of these reasons.
Homemade Social can help you develop a beautifully designed and strategic grid, rooted in Instagram growth strategies, that will multiply your Instagram’s performance.
IDENTIFY 9 PILLARS
First things first, identify what you will post about to your Instagram feed. This is where our signature “9 Pillar Method” comes in. The “9 Pillar Method” allows you to identify 9 areas of content you will post about most on Instagram. Anything that falls outside of these 9 pillars is not allowed to be posted on your grid. This doesn’t mean you can’t still talk about it on your Instagram, it simply means you have to do so through a different avenue, like posting it to your Instagram story.
Identifying these 9 key pillars will create content themes that stay consistent. This method encourages follower retention and prevents people from unfollowing in the event that you post something that your account normally doesn’t share.
Now that you know why the “9 Pillar Method” is important, it’s time to identify what your 9 pillars will be. Start by going through your current grid and pulling out overarching themes, using our 9 Content Pillars downloadable as you go. Once you’ve developed a list, go through the themes and circle or star the ones you feel speak most to your brand, tone of voice, and target audience. Continue going through this process until you’ve narrowed it down to the desired 9 pillars.
To help stimulate some ideas, here are Homemade Socials 9 Pillars:
Our Services
Our Clients
Our Team
Social Media Tips
Self Care Tips
Puppies
Office Pics
Company Culture
Pop Culture
P.S. Make sure you don’t make all your pillars ones that center around sales. While that is the end result, you want to provide your audience with value. We recommend sticking to the 80/20 rule, which states:
80% of your content should be useful and provide value to your audience
20% of your content should promote your product or service
Want to learn more about why you should stick to the 80/20 rule, click here to read about the 4 Types of Content You Should be Sharing on Social Media.
CHOOSE YOUR CONTENT MIX
Now that you’ve identified what you're going to be posting about, it’s time to decide through what forms you're going to do so. There are two main forms of posts on Instagram: Stills and Reels. While these are the two main forms, there are millions of ways for these to be executed, so let’s identify what is best for you.
Let’s start off by talking about Instagram grid cohesion. There are a couple of elements that factor into keeping your grid cohesive:
Color scheme
Content
Tone of voice
Fonts
Within your graphics and photography, you should be maintaining the same color scheme and fonts. While you want to keep your grid cohesive, that doesn’t mean you should post the same thing all the time. For example, you wouldn’t want to post two similar graphics back-to-back. Instead, change up the media types that you use. So if you just posted a meme, the next time you’ll want to post a picture or Reel, so on and so forth. This will keep your grid cohesive without being repetitive.
The second part of choosing your content mix is understanding which content format to go with by referring to your analytics. Different formats accomplish different goals and understanding which types do what is key to getting the results you want. For instance, Reels are great for reach, memes typically prompt engagement, and graphics can be great tools for educating, This allows you to align your content goals with the format that will best allow you to achieve them! Want to learn more about getting result-driven content and understanding analytics? Take our Instagram analytics course Decode Your Data!
IDENTIFY YOUR POSTING CADENCE USING INSTAGRAM ANALYTICS
If you noticed your heart rate rising throughout any of this or your head racing with everything you need to do, take a deep breath. You don’t have to do everything all at once. Posting once a week is better than not posting at all, and as we talked about before, cohesion is our goal. This means figuring out how many times a week you can commit to posting. Start small and begin to work your way up as you get comfortable with the process. Taking it slow also allows you to try different forms of content to see what resonates with your audience. As you ease into things, refer to your Instagram analytics and make subtle changes that align with what your audience likes.
To identify which content is performing the best and which isn’t? The best way to understand which content is performing best and which content needs a little TLC is to look at Instagram analytics, data doesn’t lie! A couple of key metrics we always look at are:
Engagement rates
Impressions
Reach
Saves
Shares
Comments
Check out our Instagram analytics online course, Decode Your Data, to become an expert on your analytics.
FOLLOW ASPIRATIONAL ACCOUNTS
The best way to attain a stellar grid is to get inspiration from the ones you already love! Here are a couple of our favorites:
@eatdeux
@takearecess
@bala
@rhode
In addition to following aspirational accounts, scrolling through your Instagram Explore page can inspire your next round of content. We recommend saving your inspiration once you’ve found it so you don’t forget it by the time you sit down to create your content.
One of the ways we do this is by creating Instagram Save Folders. These help organize your content into collections, allowing you to go back and search for a specific collection or add inspiration to your collections. If you really want to commit, create 9 collections and name them with your 9 content pillars. This will help to organize your inspiration by where it fits in your grid, as well as ensure everything you create falls into these 9 pillars.
We hope you found this blog post helpful in learning more about how to create Instagram grids that will engage and grow your audience! For more digital marketing tips, be sure to follow us on Instagram and subscribe to our digital marketing newsletter. Chat soon!
xx,
The Homies