"How do you come up with never-ending content ideas for Instagram?"

Do you ever feel like you’re running out of content?

Do you struggle to come up with content ideas that pack a punch with your audience?

Get ready for my top tips for never-ending Instagram content that lands.

I get this question a lot: “Frances, how do you never run out of content ideas?!”.

As a social media manager, it’s important for me to practice what I preach. This means posting consistently, coming up with engaging content and sharing the stuff that gets my audience nodding their heads and ready to sign up for my services.

But posting consistently comes with its challenges. One of these challenges is knowing what to *actually* post about. 

The 3 best places to find content inspiration

First off, your main place, which is going to get you some inspiration, is the little magnifying glass in the bottom left hand corner of your Instagram feed. This is called the Explore Page. 

This is all the content that Instagram thinks you should be engaging with which is generally stuff that you are already talking about.

So for me, it's all about social media: social media hacks, Instagram hacks, Instagram updates. I can use the explore page to then find inspiration for posts that are relevant to me, my business and my audience. Seeing a carousel or reel or image might spark an idea in my brain that helps me to get started on creating my own content.

The second place is hashtags. Think about these 3 sets of hashtags:

• Hashtags you use personally
• Hashtags your competitors will be using
• Hashtags your ideal audience look at

Then have a look at what's going on in the hashtags and gather that information. If you have any topics that are consistently coming up, make a note of these topics. You can always break them down into other topics that are more relatable for you. 

Remember: We don't copy content from other people. We have our own take on it.

The third place is a really, really obvious one but one that people don't always take on board, and that is to look into your analytics. Your analytics tell you everything you need to know about your audience and how they’re responding to your content. 

Have a look at your posts (split carousels and static images), your stories and your reels and have a look at what topics keep coming out on top. 

This doesn't have to be a massive job. If a piece of content is three months or older, you can repost it, providing you’re posting consistently so there’ll be lots of newer posts in between the two posts that are the same.

You can also repurpose that content into a different type of format. If it was a static post before, you might want to change it into a reel or you could change it into a carousel.

Ask yourself these 5 questions when creating your content

When I sit down to create my content, there are five different questions I ask when it comes to the topic. For example: if I was to look at Instagram as a whole, I would talk about the:

• Why
• Who
• Where
• How 
• What

You can break that down into so many different posts just on Instagram generally. But you want to break down that Instagram topic into more specific topics.

Another example: this post is about Instagram content. I could break it down either further into:

• Why Instagram content is so important
• Who to craft your Instagram posts for
• Where to find inspiration for Instagram content
• How to create content that makes an impact
• What dimensions should my Instagram posts be?

You can keep going on this and you can really, really niche it down. From just one topic, you’ve created 5 posts. Split that into 3 different formats and within seconds, you have 15 post ideas.

The one thing you MUST do with your content

No matter what type of post you’re creating or what content topic you choose, you always need to ensure your content is lifting up your services.

There's no point talking about my dog because my dog has nothing to do with social media marketing, social media management or my social media manager for the day package.

Always stay on topic and make sure that your content supports your services. 

How to effectively use national days to create content

My last tip for coming up with a never ending stream of content is to use National Days. But how do you keep up with the hundreds of national days?!

The Social Brain app has a calendar which compiles all of the national days which’ll make your life ten times easier. You can download The Social Brain app for free here.

Once you’ve downloaded it, have a look at the calendar because it gives you all of the months and all of the national days for all of the months. But again, make sure those national days support your services, your brand and are helpful to your followers or your prospects as well.

What to do if you don’t want to create your own content

If you are really, really stuck when it comes to creating content, I’ve got an incredible offer on it at the moment for my In A Day package.

Here’s how it works:

• One of our Brains comes into your business for a day from nine until five
• We look at your insights and your industry
• We carry out necessary market research 
• We create up to six weeks worth of content for you based on three posts per week (static + carousel only)
• You approve the content the same day 
• We schedule the content and you sit back, relax + enjoy your summer!

You could literally delete the apps from your phone and not even think about your socials for a whole 6 weeks, knowing that your business is still running in the background for you.

The investment is a one off fee of £750 (payment plans are available). For all the information you need and to secure one of the last spaces, go here.