my INSTAGRAM strategy for 2021 EXPOSED 📈 Grow on Instagram and Increase your Engagement in 2021

if you stay at the end of this video i'm gonna show you my exact content calendar for january of 2021 get ready to take screenshots cause you're not going to want to miss this one keep on watching hello hello everyone welcome to a brand new year and a brand new instagram strategy i'm so excited to be sharing this video with you it feels like a fresh start we all are ready to walk away from the flaming pile of garbage that was 2020 and we all are still naive enough to have hope for the new year so feels good doesn't it before we get into it i feel like i just need to pour a piping hot cup of tea and that is this so many people at the beginning of a new year or really at any point in time feel like there's a new instagram algorithm and they have to learn how to beat the new algorithm constantly i'm seeing people talk about this on instagram there's a new algorithm like here's what instagram wants you to do now i think there are a lot of misconceptions around algorithm changes and what that even means and if i'm totally brutally honest with you i think a lot of people are very apt to blame an algorithm change for why their engagement is low or why their reach is low when really what they might need to do is analyze the content they've been creating because trust me the instagram algorithm is not making some massive change every time you see somebody post about this this is just a way for people to kind of explain why they maybe aren't seeing the results they want to see that's not to say nothing ever changes it definitely does in 2020 we saw the addition of reels and we also know that stories are way more important than ever and new live features have been added so every time new features are added to instagram you can imagine that those features are going to be integrated into the way the algorithm works in some way that being said i don't want you to be duped by the people that are claiming that there are new instagram algorithms like every other month because it's just not true however it is still important that we reassess our instagram strategies on a regular basis such as at the beginning of a new year and talk about what is most effective right now this is not some secret sauce or mysterious formula that instagram is hiding from us this is just simply understanding what content can be made on instagram right now what type of content are audiences connecting with most and how can we create that content in the most effective and efficient way possible instagram is not out to get us as creators instagram is just prioritizing keeping users on their platform for as long as possible so that they can show them more ads and when you acknowledge that and accept it and stop feeling like the algorithm is some crazy mysterious thing that is trying to ruin your business you're gonna have a lot easier of a time creating content and being successful on instagram so i'm gonna be honest in the later months of 2020 i kind of fell off the rails with instagram a little bit my business got really crazy and busy which is awesome but it meant that i was not prioritizing my own content nearly as much as i was prioritizing my clients content thankfully i was able to hire a bunch of new people and now i'm on track to start off 2021 right and create all kinds of awesome content for instagram and i'm going to share my strategies with you today in case we haven't met before hi i'm katie and i'm the owner of a social media content creation agency called katie steckley creative services my team and i help influencers and business owners with their instagram podcast and youtube content if you're interested in working with us you can go to katysteckley.com or just leave me a comment below and we can chat all right why don't we jump into the conversation about my instagram strategy go grab yourself a snack grab that afternoon iced coffee that you need to get through the day oh is that just me okay obviously the first major component to my instagram content strategy is the content that ends up in the feed in case you haven't seen one of my videos before i normally like to categorize instagram content into three main areas the first is instagram feed content so that includes anything like photos videos graphics that you would post to your feed i also group reels and igtv into this because you can share previews of those to your feed so that's what i call instagram feed content the second part of any good instagram strategy is going to be your stories right we know stories are so important and it's a totally different ball game something that i'm gonna address later on in the video third part of an instagram content creation strategy is your live streams and when it comes to how much you should focus on any of those given areas it's gonna depend on your specific niche and your goals but i would say that the feed is going to be your priority with stories coming in at a close second like maybe you want to spend like 50 of your time on feed content 40 of your time on stories and then like 10 on lives that's my personal ratio okay so let's talk feed content by far my number one priority for 2021 is let's all say it together reals we know that tick tock is like the biggest thing on the planet right now and reels is instagram's attempt to capture some of that attention and so i am going to be focusing a lot more on creating reels that have the purpose of extending my organic reach connected to this is outside of instagram i'm gonna be focusing a lot more on tick tock and so there's a lot of room for repurposing there honestly a lot of people either watch tick tock or they watch reels i'm personally a tick tock viewer i know a lot of people that follow me on instagram have said that they prefer watching reels so i don't think you have to worry about double posting creating one piece of content and posting it to tick tock and reels totally fine different people are watching these different platforms the reason this is so important is because more so than any other kind of content on instagram right now reels can extend your organic reach reels have the possibility of showing up on that reels feed the for you page of instagram if you will and that is the place where new people can find you hashtags of course also serve this purpose but i would personally hazard a guess that more people are scrolling through the reels feed than are browsing different hashtags that doesn't mean you shouldn't use hashtags i'm actually currently investigating and exploring the importance of hashtags by doing a bit of an experiment with my own content so make sure you subscribe because in the next few weeks i'm going to be posting a video analyzing my results to let you know just how important hashtags really are in 2021 that being said for now keep up the hashtag game but if you really want to increase your reach posting reels is where it's at coming up with reels ideas can be intimidating to some but it's important that one spend some time watching reels watching tick tocks get a sense of what performs well what do you find engaging replicate those ideas for your own niche and i think that you'll see good results it's always important to remember that you're trying to provide value and also you're providing value to people that might not know who the heck you are because if they're scrolling through the real speed they might not have seen you before that's the whole point of this content is to convert people that have no idea who you are into followers so provide value without any other context at all that's kind of the challenge of reels and i'm personally going to be focusing on it a lot in 2021 and i would say with my monthly tick tock or reels content they're basically interchangeable i am going to be focusing on doing 50 evergreen high value educational content and then 50 trends fun entertainment type content now the thing about tick tock if you've spent any time on it is that the trends are changing by the day so in order to accommodate for this i'm gonna be brainstorming my like evergreen content on just an ongoing basis i'll keep adding it to the spreadsheet as i go and then once a week i have scheduled into my google calendar two hours on tuesday afternoons to come up with my trends based content and film my reels and tick tocks for that week i think this is a good structure because you can't really batch work tick tocks slash reels that much in advance because they won't really be relevant anymore by the time you post them especially if you are following some kind of trend however when it comes to the 50 evergreen content that can certainly be back to work so everybody is gonna have to find their own balance of when it works with your schedule or what makes sense for you but i'm just telling you how i plan to do it in case maybe that works for you too now in terms of frequency everybody always wants to know how often do you need to post this stuff so for me personally i'm going to be posting reels and tick tocks every weekday that is my big challenge for 2021 because i know it's important i know how significant it's gonna be for growth so i'm prioritizing that and i'm gonna try to post a real every single weekday if you're just getting started and that seems like a lot then start with once a week try to move your way up to two or three times a week but i think daily is gonna give you the best results and honestly on tick tock you could even be posting like three times a day to see the best results possible but this is about instagram let's talk about instagram katie okay that's enough about reels the next main thing that i'm gonna be focusing on with my instagram feed content is shareable graphics in 2020 we saw a huge surge of the sharing and engagement with graphic carousel posts especially stuff that provides information like in depth a lot of text on the screen it's kind of crazy because a few years ago you never would have expected that text on an image on instagram would perform well but i think the combination of it providing a lot of value and also keeping people on the post for a really long time because it takes you a while to read everything on each slide really makes those kinds of posts like perform really really well in the algorithm because if you didn't know other than likes comments shares and saves instagram does monitor how long any given user spends looking at your content and if somebody spends say five seconds looking at my post over half a second like most people probably would that kind of indicates to instagram okay this is an engaging post it's keeping people on the platform for longer therefore let's show it in more feeds to keep more people on the platform for longer and so that is why text heavy graphics can actually perform really well on instagram so i want to focus on once a week posting a shareable graphic that provides value i'll probably give tips about instagram i'll give tips about podcasting maybe about youtube growth as well and i'll make sure that it is high value and engaging the kind of thing people want to save and come back to later by the way if you want to check out that content when it is going up on my instagram make sure you go follow me at katie steckley on instagram and yes in terms of frequency i think i did say this but i'll try to post those once a week partially because i don't think that you need to bombard people with these every single day but also because it takes a long time to put together something that is high value and high quality so doing that once a week is gonna be a more reasonable commitment okay and the third aspect of my feed content strategy we've got reels huge priority shareable graphics also important and the third piece is even more photos of me with vulnerable captions that share a heart-to-heart real-life type of stuff i think that this historically has been seen as one of the best ways to grow on instagram and i do think it's true if you want to increase your engagement with your audience no you don't need to pull all of your skeletons out of the closet and put all of your dirty laundry out to dry but sharing the stuff that other people are kind of scared to share is good first of all it helps people makes people feel less alone and second of all it does perform well because people are like mad props to you you share this thing that everybody else is too scared to share and i relate to it so i'm going to comment here and encourage you so i definitely want to continue doing that i know that it can sound really contrived and stuff to be like i'm going to make vulnerable posts because it's like hey well is it really that vulnerable if you are like saying that it's vulnerable but anyway the point remains sharing the kind of stuff other people are scared to talk about and just being like it's so loud outside and just sharing what you feel passionate about sharing i'm gonna be honest with you for so long i felt really held back from sharing honestly on instagram because i either felt like hey i needed to come across as this perfect polished hat all my together type business owner or else clients wouldn't want to work with me i learned eventually that's not the case people feel a lot more inclined to work with you if they feel like you're a real person who they can trust and then i also felt held back because i was like oh i want to talk about this kind of thing but i don't feel like my family is going to approve i feel like i'm going to be judged for posting this bikini photo and recently i had this realization well i was sitting in the tub watching a video on my ipad that was like 20 minutes of one direction videos that will boost your serotonin and it was a performance of them singing clouds which if you haven't heard it is an absolute bop and it just makes you feel like a rock star and in that moment surrounded by lush bubbles from my unicorn bath bomb i was like why don't i start acting like the rock star i truly am because clearly unicorn bath bombs and watching one direction videos is true rockstar behavior why not get the tattoos post nudes on instagram who cares do whatever you want the only thing holding you back is you that's at least what i learned about myself and hopefully we can all bring a little bit of that energy into 2021 and if you ever feel afraid of like what if my friends judge me because i'm trying to become an influencer or what if my family thinks it's crazy that i think i can run an online business be the rock star that you were born to be and post what truly matters to you that is what is going to connect with people so i'm like screw it i'm going to talk more about body confidence i'm going to talk more about accepting female sexuality i'm going to talk more about life and the things that i care about and i think that is gonna catch with people i'm just telling you this video is my instagram strategy for 2021 so hopefully this vibes with you but i just think that that is the energy that i need and i think that people will like it i think it'll perform well and those kinds of posts i'm gonna post one to two times a week so my feed at any given week is gonna look like five reels which still figure out how i'm gonna make those look cute in my grid i'll be honest with you and two maybe one photo of me with some kind of honest or vulnerable caption and then one shareable graphic with some high value info so just like i promised here is what that content calendar looks like this is a breakdown of what i am going to post and when so take that screenshot i was mentioning replicate this for yourself if you want i really do think that this is a blueprint for increased reach increased engagement if you execute it right okay this video isn't over yet though so don't click away just because you got the big content calendar thing i was talking about we still need to talk about instagram stories instagram stories are just as important in 2021 as they were in 2020 so if you're still out here scared to show your face on instagram stories my friend it's time to put yourself out there i believe in you you are beautiful the way you are and you don't need to worry about anybody's judgment embrace that inner rock star go listen to clouds by one direction and we're all going to be on the same page but seriously what is the strategy around stories for 2021 so i'll tell you a quick story about something that i discovered about instagram stories a couple weeks ago i was really really busy for a few days i had to go work at my mom's restaurant if you didn't know my mom was also an entrepreneur and sometimes they got a call in the backup so anyway i went in and worked a couple shifts and during those days i was not posting on instagram stories because your girl was serving coffee anyway when i came back after those few days away from instagram stories and posted my first one that was like rather mundane but just kind of like hey guys i'm back it got like 2 000 views in the first two hours full context full transparency i normally get like a thousand or like 1100 views in 24 hours on my instagram story so i was like what is this about this is crazy that i had this huge surge in views randomly anyway through talking to other people and doing a little bit more research i discovered that apparently if you take a few days off from posting on instagram and then you go back to it normally you'll see like a huge surge in story views i've only seen this happen once but i've heard from many other people that this is a common thing so this leads me to believe potentially if you are feeling burnt out from posting on stories every single day it might not hurt to actually post on stories wait a few days and then come back on post on stories again you might actually optimize the number of instagram story views you're able to get at the very least i've been hearing from other people like natasha from soul studio that may be posting on instagram stories every 24 hours like post on stories wait for all your stories to run out and then post again is another good way to optimize the number of views that you get there's a lot of theories flying around i'll be honest with you and i'm not 100 sure exactly what is going to be the perfect thing to get the most instagram story views in 2021 but it is definitely something that i'm going to keep experimenting with on my own account so i'm going to try out posting waiting 24 hours then posting again taking a few days break every week and seeing if that increases my views and i'll definitely report back to you so again subscribe if you haven't already because i'm always doing these experiments on my instagram to see what is the most effective and then reporting back to you all to let you know what strategies you should try out but either way we know that posting on stories posting frequently showing your face and providing value that is important the frequency of that remains to be seen we will find out but starting daily certainly would not hurt especially if you haven't really been posting that often on stories before okay and that third piece of the content calendar that i mentioned at the very beginning is live streams so like i said i'm only gonna be focusing about ten percent of my time and effort on live streams but i do think they are very important something that i wanna start doing is actually a weekly live stream either a q a or planning a topic ahead of time let's say you have a question that you get a lot or a certain topic that you want to talk about related to your niche just plan out a little presentation like pretend that you are doing like a slideshow presentation to a group like a seminar or a speech or whatever and do that on instagram live and then you'll start to get engagement that you can then respond to but i always say when you start doing instagram lives don't expect that you can go on live and then just be inspired by what people who are watching are asking that's not going to give you enough content so make sure that you have something planned going into it so what i'm going to be doing is probably planning out every other week or so what i want to talk about so i'll come up with some kind of story or topic or presentation and then on the alternating weeks i will put out a call for like a q a so on let's say if i'm going to do my live shows on friday on thursday i'll post on my stories and i'll say hey like if you have any questions not so meek i got to be more bold than that like hey everybody if you have questions let me know i'm going to do a live stream tomorrow and then i will take those questions and answer them on the live so i would recommend especially if you haven't dabbled with it before in 2021 make it a goal to do a live stream like every other week even once a month to get started and i think that you'll start to see more engagement from your audience i used to do live streams more often and i would have such great conversations with the people that would join me on live and i just have gotten away from it so i am going to dedicate myself to doing it once a week in the new year this year and that is my content strategy for 2021 as you can see reels shareable graphics and stories are extremely significant they already have been in the past few months and they're just going to continue to be going forward so make sure that you re-evaluate your instagram strategy to incorporate those things if you haven't already also a good instagram strategy is about way more than just the content i didn't even get into the engagement side of things in this video i have a whole playlist about how to use engagement to grow not only your own engagement but also your audience in general how to get more followers by using engagement i have a whole playlist about it that you can check out here but let me know in the comments if you want to see a video about engagement on instagram updated for 2021. as always thank you so much for watching i'm so excited to have another year of youtube with all of you always let me know if you have any suggestions and i will definitely make those videos in the future thanks so much for watching and i'll see you over in this playlist okay bye

Channel: Katie Steckly

Views: 99,617

Keywords: katie steckly, instagram hacks, instagram algorithm 2021, instagram strategy 2021, how to grow on instagram in 2021, how to increase your engagement on instagram in 2021, how to get more followers on instagram in 2021, instagram growth 2021, instagram growth 2020, how to grow on instagram 2021, instagram 2021, instagram engagement tips 2020, instagram engagement 2020, instagram growth 2020 reels, how to grow with instagram reels 2021

Id: y8Ebfvl2FMU

Length: 20min 27sec (1227 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 01 2021