What to post on Instagram when you have no idea
You open Instagram to post, stare at the screen, and nothing comes out. Half an hour later you close the app and go do something else. Next day, same thing.
The problem is not creativity
The conversation usually stops at "I am not creative". That is not it. You can explain your entire business to a customer who walks in: what you do, what it costs, how long it takes, why yours is different from the place down the street. That is content. It just is not in post form yet.
What is missing is a question that gets the information out. "What do I post today?" is a bad question: it asks for an idea from nowhere. Swap it for "what did a customer ask me this week?" and you already have three posts.
Four questions that always give you a post
These four cover almost everything a small business needs to publish. Answer them in writing, without worrying about making it pretty.
- What do people ask before buying? Every repeated question is a post. If three people asked about delivery time, delivery time becomes a post.
- What do you do that nobody sees? The early mornings, choosing the supplier, redoing it because it came out crooked. That is what separates you from any other account.
- What went wrong and you fixed? Nobody believes an account where nothing ever fails. A mistake told by the person who fixed it sells better than a success.
- Who bought, and why? Not a testimonial with little stars. The story: what the person needed, what they took home, what happened afterwards.
Group the answers into themes, not days
The next mistake is taking the ideas and scattering them across the calendar right away. That is how you post three behind-the-scenes in a row, disappear for a week, and come back with two testimonials stuck together.
Group first. Those four questions usually become four themes: questions, behind-the-scenes, proof of work, customers. A balanced month alternates between them. Not because it looks good on paper. It is that people who follow you get tired of seeing the same thing.
You can weight them, too. If you sell made-to-order, "questions" deserves more room than "behind-the-scenes", because it is doubt that blocks the sale. If you are starting out and nobody knows you, proof of work weighs more.
Write the whole month in one sitting
Writing one post a day is the part nobody can keep up. It is not the time. It is thirty small decisions, each one costing that half hour staring at the screen.
Sitting down once and writing the whole month costs less than thirty sittings. You are already in the subject, already in the voice, and the ideas pull each other along. Whatever comes out bad you swap later: a bad draft is easier to fix than a blank screen.
If you want to skip the sitting-down-and-writing part, that is exactly what ReadyMonth does: you write two sentences about your business and it gives back the month laid out, with the themes separated. Whatever does not fit, you change or delete.