Power Your Research w/ Dr. Sheena Howard

Automate Your Instagram Strategy

• Dr. Sheena Howard

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Imagine having a foolproof Instagram strategy that practically runs itself for an entire year. Yes, it's possible, and we’re here to show you how. In this eye-opening episode, we break down the nuts and bolts of scheduling your posts, starting with a solid two to three months of consistent posting to understand your audience. 


Follow Dr. Sheena Howards' socials:
@drsheenahoward | Power Your Research

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you have to post two to three times a day for at least two months, preferably three months, so that you know what your audience wants.

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Because once you have that body of work, you can go back and look at the analytics and you can say, okay, these posts did really well, these posts did really well, these posts didn't do good, toss those out.

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I don't want my work to be stuck behind an academic paywall. I want to leave a legacy no-transcript and one day join the Power, your Research program, where you can work with me one-on-one Scheduling your content for the entire year. Now you can do this really on any platform if you use the right scheduler, but I'm gonna talk about it specifically on Instagram, because, while I haven't scheduled my content out for the entire year, it is completely possible for me to do so, but I have had my March content on Instagram scheduled out since last month. So I don't even have to log into Instagram if I don't want to and the content is doing really well. Now, why the title of this was called schedule your content for the entire years? Because I was watching an interview with a hip hop artist who was doing very, very, very well on Instagram. I'm talking about a huge number of followers and he posts. It looks like he posts like three or four times a day, every day. His name is LaRussell. He's an independent artist. Go check him out to see the quantity and quality of the things he's scheduling. So, in this interview, he said his content is scheduled out for the entire year. He said he doesn't even have to log in, and I thought about it, and anybody can do this. I can schedule my content out for the entire year. There are a couple of things that you want to have in place before you do this, though, which I'm going to talk about in a second, but it took me two hours to schedule my entire March content out. That is not a lot of time. That is significantly less time than I would spend if I was trying to create the content every day, and so you take one day, two hours out of that day, and you just schedule everything out Now. On my Instagram, I only typically post on Monday through Friday I'm not talking about weekend posts, but you can certainly schedule that in and then, if something inspires me during the week, I'll create something about it, if it's something timely that I'm responding to, but for the most part in March. I don't have to log onto Instagram at all. Now, the scheduler that LaRussell said he used was Hootsuite. That is the same scheduler I use and I have an assistant who can go in there and help me, so you can have collaborators come into your Hootsuite and help you schedule the post, which is amazing, minimizing the number one complaint that I hear from my clients about not having time.

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Now here's the thing you got to back up for a second because before you go trying to schedule your content out, you need to know what to post and you need to know what your audience likes. So here is what I would say. This is what you have to do. There is not even a. This is what you have to do. There is not even a. You know this is what you should do. You have to post two to three times a day for at least two months, preferably three months, so that you know what your audience wants.

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Because once you have that body of work, you can go back and look at the analytics and you can say, okay, these posts did really well, these posts did really well, these posts didn't do good. Toss those out, the posts that did really well. You can repurpose them into all different types of formats stories, reels, posts on your feed. You can repurpose them into all different types of formats stories, reels, posts on your feed. You can repurpose that stuff, re-say it in different ways. So if it was a carousel that worked well, now you can put that into a reel, into a video.

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Hey everyone, real quick. I don't run any ads on this podcast, so I have to rely on word of mouth. If this podcast has helped you in any way, please share it with a friend and follow me, Dr Sheena Howard on LinkedIn, where I give more free content on building your brand as an academic. If you tell me you came to my LinkedIn from the podcast, I'll make sure I accept your request. But you need the data first, because you don't know what your audience wants and likes and when you are on these platforms, you have to give the audience what they want so they can give you what you want back, and that's value content, help content based on who you are, your personality and the people that you're trying to reach.

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Instagram also now has its own scheduler, so for March, my content is scheduled out. I did a combination of Hootsuite to schedule the carousels and I have branded Twitter quotes on my Instagram, but for my videos I scheduled directly using the Instagram scheduler, because I found it more user friendly to add the thumbnail picture, and so, either way, spend two hours, create the content and then go on with your month, and you could use Hootsuite for LinkedIn, twitter, all of the major platforms that you're going to be posting on and make it easy for yourself. Now I also had a videographer just chop up some of my old interviews and create 30 second small videos for Instagram, and so if it's an hour long interview and he's sending me 15, 30 second clips, well, that's content that I could use for the next two months. I can literally schedule those videos out for the next two months. If you want an example of what this looks like, check out my Instagram at Dr Sheena Howard. So, again, I do use a scheduler.

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For LinkedIn, I do use Hootsuite. There, you want to make it easy for yourself, giving you free information. Hootsuite does have a free version. That, I think, will get you pretty far, but if you really want to get into it and maximize it to its full potential getting the analytics and all of that stuff and having collaborators there is a paid version. You can pay by the month or the year, I believe. So hopefully this helps with your content game, because content is king. If you want to build a brand and translate your work for a mass audience, reach a critical mass of people, you know these are some of the tools that you need to be using. So you're not out here doing it all on your own, spending every day feeling overwhelmed and like and like it's a chore, because we don't want you to feel like this is a chore. You.