Every successful social media campaign has a supporting backbone plan in place. If you’re an agency, then you should have a plan for each client. A content calendar forms one chunk of this plan that helps you to organise all your available resources. It requires forward planning which involves a significant investment of your time but is key to pay off dividends at the end of each campaign.

Keep on Track

“Keep control of the expansive river of images flowing into your content calendar and out onto Instagram in front of audiences’ eyes. Ensuring there is always something in the pipeline to engage with followers, the detail you include will require innovative thought to make each post stand out in front of your target viewers.”

So the idea is to create a marketing strategy that is so well formulated, that you know what you will be posting 3 Tuesdays from now. Or even the third Tuesday, three months away.

A content calendar will give you clear vision, so you can focus on:

• Clear Communication
• Meeting Deadlines
• Assigning Resources

Creating Your Content Calendar

On social media terms, calendars should be attractive as possible. It’s what gets us motivated and excited to plan ahead and always be 5 steps ahead of the future.

Excel is a basic accessible tool to outline all your information with options to highlight cells to make them stand out. Compatible for sharing with others, it’s easy to populate with data and you should always aim to keep it looking clean and simple, so it’s easy to retrieve information at a glance.

CoSchedule is a fancy tool (WordPress plugin) that will ensure you never miss a deadline. It even has a drag and drop feature.

Collect Ideas

Before you can start padding out your calendar, you will need to schedule regular fortnightly, monthly workshops to get creative input on content from all the resources involved, namely your social media influencers, research panel audiences and the marketing manager themselves.

The content ideas you take away from your workshops should align parallel to the marketing goals the brand wishes to achieve. So if your objective is to market a new line of party-ware ceramics for weddings or birthdays, the images should contain enough image power to showcase this; the theme should be party and the props could include mouthwatering canapés served in ceramic platters, alongside crystal clear champagne glasses.

Populating Your Content Calendar 

An annual high level calendar outlining all the months is useful to label all the upcoming campaigns you wish to promote throughout the year.

Your content calendar schedule images against days and times, as well as outlining:

• the type of content you want to publish
• how you plan to create it
• the target audience
• the social media influencer
• location tags
• hashtags
• captions
• promotional codes associated with any products being advertised

Your content calendar will give you the flexibility to swap posts around to alternative dates. Just remember to communicate the latest version to other members of the campaign project, e.g influencers. Version controlling is an effective way to ensure everyone is working from the latest document.

Don’t forget to fill in any gaps!

Review your content calendar periodically

Once you have scheduled your posts on Instagram, make it a point to revisit your content calendar periodically to make sure that your submissions continue to be relevant. This is to make sure that you do not miss any new developments in the industry or the world at large.

Weekends are for relaxing, so use Hopper HQ and schedule your Instagram content weeks in advance.

The post A Guide To Using Content Calendars For Instagram appeared first on Hopper HQ.

In this article, we discuss Instagram bios and ways to make them look right for your brand! Firstly, there’s the decision of making your account open for public view or not. Surely, a public account will lead to a faster rate of growth and likelihood of appearing on the Explore page. You’re more likely to be followed if people can see what they’ll be following in advance. A private account requires you to authorise each follower’s request before they have permission to view your content.

Regardless of your account being private or public, everyone can read your bio and access your displayed links. So if it’s an enticingly good bio, people will click follow anyway if they find you intriguing enough!

Your Instagram bio is a way of telling others about yourself: your name, location, interests etc, and most users will read this before they follow. So think of your target audience, their interests and what might make them click follow!

Let’s get to it:

So, who leaves their bio blank?

The option of leaving your bio blank reflects a status of being content, allowing your images to talk on your behalf. This approach usually only works effectively, if you’re a well-known persona or household name beforehand. The little blue verified badge tick will signify you’re famous for something. It makes it easier for followers to find and follow authentic people, rather than fake accounts which get all the credibility.

The following high profile brands are examples of where a blue tick badge is reflected by ‘less is more’ in the bio, because the majority of the ‘world’s’ population know’s who they are!

Your name should be your proudest asset; don’t be afraid to get it out there in bold letters. It’s a way of shaking hands with new followers, greeting them with open arms to step inside your world.

Get emojis in there

Depending on you as an individual or a brand, using emoijs in your bio can brighten your profile and break up the text – not to mention grabbing attention!

If you’re travelling the world for whatever reason, advertise it in your bio! Millions of people are unable to travel due to other commitments, so the next best thing is to follow someone else’s journey through their eyes.

A short blurb about who you are, e.g. a Birmingham based digital marketing agency, means less deciphering through your posts, trying to guess what you do. You only get 150 characters to write about yourself, so be as spontaneous or pre-planned as you want.

If you have more than one Instagram account that’s worth following (personal or business), highlight it in your bio.

Perfect The Layout

It’s not straightforward to get a new line in your bio. You’ll need to write it as you’d like it to appear in notes or a text on your phone, then paste it back in to make it look perfect!

You can also use bullet point dots or vertical bars to separate your bio information!

Where To Link To?

Links send your followers on an engaging journey from your page. Insert a link to your website or blog, or any significant page that holds priority at any given time of your life. You can create trackable links to see which visitors to your website are coming from which source (e.g. Instagram). You can link to your:

• Online store
• YouTube page
• YouTube video
• Sponsor page
• Latest book

The profile link is usually advertised in the caption of your latest post as ‘’Link is in my bio.’’ Post a new image relating to your link each time you change it. Oliver Jeffers changes his links in his bio quite frequently. You can see as an American citizen, he holds quite strong political views about the whole American presidency vote. Following Oliver often makes you think, where is he taking his followers today?

The post How To Write Intriguingly Good Instagram Bios appeared first on Hopper HQ.

If you’re using a professional camera with an optimum lens, instead of a smart phone, you may be tempted to go nakedly filterless. the hashtag #nofilter is a proud and popular way many instagrammers choose to get noticed. Adding a filter to an already beautiful piece of art can take its beauty away, so refrain from using a filter if you’re photo really would be better off without one.

When a follower scrolls down your Instagram account there should be a consistent theme of filters running through all your images. This is one factor many potential followers will look at before clicking the follow icon. If they see your photos meet an ongoing tone that flows throughout, they will find this more admirable in comparison to another Instagram account which is a mishmash of several tones and inconsistencies.

Your filter should blend in with your branding. Deciding which filter depends on your personal preference and individual style. Here are a few tips to take on board:

1. Outdoors & Nature

If you generally take images in natural light to contain greenery, there are a few filters which will further enhance the boldness and depth of the green to make it more lush and stand out. Experiment with Juno, Lo-Fi or X-Pro II and notice how the greenery becomes more remarkably imposing. The below contrasts are between Normal and Lo-Fi.

The below image of an entertainer in Covent Garden has been filtered using Clarendon. Notice how Clarendon’s green tones change the entire setting in comparison to Amaro’s warmer tones. Clarendon is still the preferred favourite.

2. Historical

Adding a hint of nostalgia to this old printing press at Winterbourne Gardens can be achieved with Aden, Nashville, Valencia or even plain black and white Inkwell. Of the three black and white filter options available, Inkwell definitely offers the most clarity. Willow will give you a grainier ageing effect offering defects with less sharpness for a dramatic 1800s result.

3. Food

Amaro and Clarendon do a great job at creating a flawless look where everything looks naturally perfect as if a lightbulb hangs from the ceiling (or sky). Food is best captured in an unbiased and appetising light using Clarendon. See how much more aesthetically glossier the image on the right looks than its unfiltered matt version on the left.

4. Earthy

Ludwig turns the dullness down one notch on your image so everything appears cloudier even on a  normal day. Other Instagram filters that achieve a similar effect to soften and shift the original palette of colours, include Slumber, Crema and Perpetua. For this particular example, we see the image of the pedal bus in London’s outdoor Borough Market, in Perpetua welcoming subtle green tones. Remember, images taken outdoors and indoors will achieve different effects even with the same filter.

5. Architecture

Unlike many filters that will lose your blue sky, the Skyline filter will keep your blue sky intact behind your buildings whilst enhancing the rest of the photo. Ludwig is an equal favourite to capture your European landmarks, as it captures light and dark in all the right spots.

Once you’ve decided which filter is right for you, try to stick with that filter for all your images. It’s amazing how a filter can transform dull images into vibrant appealing images to entice new followers.

Discovered Exactly What You Want?

To hide filters from your menu, simply scroll right to the end of the filter choices and select Manage. You can uncheck the least favourites from the list and even order them in preference. Surprisingly you may discover old filter favourites that you hid years ago. If you have your heart set on one filter, then go ahead and uncheck all but that one.

If you’re using Hopper to schedule your posts in advance, the answer is yes, you can apply filters while your schedule. To edit your image (currently desktop only) select the blue “Edit Image” button to the right above your picture. From this editor you can make a range of changes to your picture using 25 different Instagram filters.

The post Popular Instagram Filters To Attract New Followers appeared first on Hopper HQ.