Exposing my Instagram strategy for 2025!

Instagram is changing but you already knew that I talk about the changes coming to Instagram all the time on this channel but the truth is in order for us to really thrive in this new world of Instagram we need to make some changes too and that brings me on to today's video in today's video I'm going to be telling you my new Instagram strategy for 2025 and spoiler alert things are changing by the way this video is sponsored by HubSpot more on them later all right let's start off with the fundamental elements of my strategy

I want to make sure that we talk about these elements because you might be making some changes to your own straty and maybe you're using this video as a source of inspiration so with that in mind we have to make sure we cover two initial points when it comes to our new strategy the first is our audience so who are we trying to speak to and the second is our value points now when it comes to my audience the way that I like to describe you guys are people who use social media for a purpose

so you might be using social media to build a business become a content creator build a community whatever it may be you're using social media for a purpose Beyond you just using it for personal use that's how I group my entire audience together if you do not have a clear idea of who your audience are you will struggle to follow along with the rest of this video your audience is the essence of any social media channel if you do not know who you're talking to how on Earth are you going to talk to them now

the second point that I mentioned were my value points now if you've watched a lot of my videos you've heard me talk about my audience and my value points quite frequently but don't worry for the rest of this video we're going to be diving into some elements that I've definitely not publicly shared with you guys before but in case you're new here we do have to ensure that you've put some thought and attention into the value that you will be providing your audience through your social social media channels now the four key value points are

educational inspirational relatable or entertaining you don't have to just pick one you can have multiple different value points that you rotate between whenever you create content the best way to think of your value points are basically a vehicle for you to share the content that you want to create so for me I know that my audience use social media for a purpose all of my content is about marketing and Entrepreneurship my value points are the vehicle in which I connect those two things is educational content so I'm going to talk about marketing and Entrepreneurship through

an ed ational content lens and I'm going to be speaking directly to an audience of people who use social media for a purpose do you see how I beautifully linked all those things together that's what you're going to need to do too now before we move on to the changes that I'm going to be making to my content this actually makes me nervous cuz I'm like you know when you say something out loud then you have to really do it that's how I feel about this video I'm basically enlisting all of you to keep me

accountable before we dive into that though I do want to share a resource with you which is going to make your new strategy a lot easier to implement in 2025 now I'm well aware that nowadays a lot of us are across multiple different social media channels and managing multiple social media channels can get very very messy that's why for today's video I want to share HubSpot social media calendar templates because these are going to help you streamline your strategy and simplify your workload all right so let's break down what's inside this free resource gives you

access to calendar templates for every platform from YouTube to X to Instagram to Tik Tok and so on and so forth a monthly planning calendar to schedule your content for the rest of the year a Content repository to track and reuse your Brand's white papers ebooks and other assets for different audiences a ready to upload template for HubSpot to automate your social scheduling and a user guide packed with insights from Samantha Mela who is the head of the hustle social media team these templates essentially make managing your post across multiple different social media sites so

much easier for you so that you can focus on building your brand and engaging with your audience and the best part guys I've said it before and I'll say it again these are completely free to download and use so to streamline your social media strategy and to save time I recommend you get the social media calendar templates free fre of charge from HubSpot you can get them via the link in my description and a huge thank you to HubSpot for sponsoring this video all right let's talk about the juicy stuff my content how is my

content changing this year well I'd be lying to you if I said that when I look back on my content on Instagram from 2024 I was super proud of it I'm not there are some pieces of content that I absolutely love I did a Content series called Creator confessions and I love that series but for the most part Instagram has really taken a backseat when it comes to my overall social media strategy YouTube was a channel that I really focused on this year and to be honest the year before that as well I am going

to to try to change that in 2025 I am determined to give some other social media platforms some love as much as YouTube is still my fave other ones deserve attention too right so I've come up with a few different content formats that I'm going to be testing in 2025 and I've come up with these based on what's working in the market and also what's worked for me previously the first type of content which I'm really excited for is going to be the more raw unedited style of real where I'm talking about specific news stories

or Creator updates now this this is an example of one that I shared recently I filmed it very very quickly and I was talking about a change that Instagram are going to make to their story highlights this video actually performed really well and it made me think previously my content on Instagram has always been quite highly edited and whilst that's not going to go away completely I do think I'm missing a trick by not at least triing the more raw Tik Tok style content on my Instagram feed and the type of content which works really

well for that is when I'm talking about something that is hot off the press I always get confused if that's actually the phrase so I'm just going to run with it hot off the press like some news article that's just landed to do with an Instagram update or the creater economy or something like that that I can film very quickly get it up within minutes previously I would think to myself I can't get this up too soon because I need to set up my studio I need to get it edited and it would be this

whole kafuffle and I think that's actually holding me back from sharing more content on Instagram so that is one type of content that I'm going to be pushing or at least triing for the first few months of 2025 I should also say that this test is a reflection of where Instagram is going they are trying to become a less polished platform similar to Tik Tok they've been trying for a while though and I don't think it's fully caught on for everyone so let's just see how this test goes the next type of content I did

tried to implement this year but I'm not going to lie I struggled with it a lot more than I thought I would and this is more like personable content this is also reflecting a general content Trend across multiple platforms where creators are seeing a lot of success when they Implement a bit more of their personal life into their content this isn't to say that you should completely deviate from the content that you already create if you're known for creating Finance content still create Finance content this is just a note to say that creators who inject

a bit of their personal life into their content strategy let's say 20% of their posts are actually to do with their personal life not just their Niche or their usual content people often see higher engagement from this because it's a reminder that they're human it's a chance to connect with your audience on a deeper level and that usually results in a spike in overall performance of your content I said already that I struggled with this this year and I think the reason why I struggled is because my initial approach to this was once a month

I'll share a photo dump and it will just be a mixture of photos my life what I forgot to account for is in order for you to have a photo dump from your personal life you need to be taking more photos of your personal life this isn't something that I used to have an issue with I used to do this naturally but I think as a result of the career that I've built for myself I've realized when I scroll through my photo and video library that almost everything is to do with work which is actually

a little bit depressing I don't even really take photos like if I'm out with Jamie my husband like we used to go and do like full-on photo shoots cuz we used to have a joint Instagram together and we just do not even reach for our phones anymore and I think it's because I'm so used to having my phone and content as part of my job that I just don't reach for it when I'm not working so I would get to the end of the month and be like hm I don't have anything to share so

that's something that I need to be a lot more intentional about next year because I do really really want to share more of my life keep in mind that I'm always going to be a somewhat private person because at the end of the day you're not following me to know about my life but I do think there's more that I could share even about my life through the lens of my work and like what's going on behind the scenes speaking of behind the scenes this is another type of content that I'm going to be integrating

more into my main feed on Instagram now I did say Main feed there because I do think I share this already on my stories so if you follow me and you look at my stories you'll often see my day calendar where I break down every single thing that I'm working on that day the feedback you guys give me on that content is insane like I'll meet people on the street and they will tell me that those calendar posts are actually their favorite content that I share which is wild when I think about it and that

tells me that you guys want that content I've fallen into the Trap as we all do okay none of us is perfect if there's one thing you get from this entire video it's that even when your job is to know everything about social media you still are going to fall short on some elements right we're all human I have fallen into the very human trap of convincing myself that my life is boring and I'm therefore hesitant to share like what I do on a day-to-day basis on my main feed cuz I think it's boring and

it's so silly because I know my life's not boring in fact none of our lives are really boring people find so much comfort in the mundane or in a usual schedule so I want to start integrating that more into my feed so whether that's like a time lapse of me working and breaking down every single thing that I did that day just an example of what that might look like that is definitely a content type that I'm going to be introducing a lot more this year if you notice me switching between next year and this

year it's because I'm trying to rationalize the fact that this video isn't going to go out for a little while and by the time you're watching this it probably is already 2025 another area that needs to be considered is the frequency of my content up until this point I have been posting around three times a week for like years for years because my objective was engag M and Instagram just wasn't my core Channel whilst it still won't be my core Channel I do want to increase my posed frequency to five times per week in 2025

which makes me a bit nervous but it's fine we're going to talk about how I'm going to make it happen but it is worth saying that that is part of my strategy as well and the reason why I do want to increase my posting frequency is because a healthy posting frequency which is usually between five to seven times per week go hand inhand with a healthy view count I have to feed the platform and feed the algorithm with content okay so those are the changes I'm going to be making to my content I now want

to touch on the metrics that I'm going to be using your metrics are essentially the units of measurement that you're going to be using to analyze your content and see if it's performing well I'm so passionate about this because so many people get this part wrong let me explain there are a few different ways that you can measure the success or the effectiveness of your Instagram Channel you can look at your content's views interactions and your followers there are other metrics but these are like the Three core metrics that you tend to see when you

open up your analytics dashboard right so we're just going to focus on those now the bit what people get wrong is that they focus on the wrong metric for their goal so previously my goal for my Instagram channel has just been engagement and you can kind of see that in how my content has performed the views haven't been great it's fluctuated quite a lot but the engagement when you look at the amount of views that my content is getting has actually been quite high so let's say for example a real gets 5,000 views I likely

would have received 500 interactions or like different forms of engagement on that real and that would have actually been an engagement rate of 10% because out of the 5,000 people who saw or it 10% engaged with it and that's really healthy but it's only healthy if my goal is engagement if my goal is views that's not good we want to be aiming for a lot more views than 5,000 we want to be in the 10,000 20,000 100,000 million plus Mark right and that's why it's important to have a good idea of what your goal is

and to match your metric to your goal so if you are trying to get more views on your content your metric should be your views if you are trying to get more engagement build a community then your metric should be your interactions if you are trying to grow your audience in terms of followers then your metric should be your follow account do you see where I'm going with this obviously you can pay attention to the other metrics but it's important that you identify what your key metric is so when it comes to my key metric

as I mentioned previously it was engagement we are switching it up and that makes me nervous we are now going to focus on views I have not focused on views for years and my account has suffered as a result we're switching up it's important to know when it's time to switch things up and the time has come and now we're going to be focusing on views as my key metric so that is going to be the thing that I'm looking at and accessing when I'm uploading my content right okay so let's talk about your tactics

now if you're following along and you're also making some tweaks to your own strategy your tactics are the smaller things that you do on a regular basis that help the overall performance of your account and hopefully help you reach your goal now there are so many different tactics you can use on Instagram I will link to a master class that I have inside the collective where I dive into this I'll also link to a Master Class about analytics as well below but essentially we all want to have a few different tactics that we are triing

at any one time let me explain to you what my tactics will be and one of them I actually need your help on CU I'm not sure if I should really do it or not so I need your thoughts so the first tactic is really really basic but it is something that I have struggled with in the past and this tactic is to respond to at least 90% of my comments under my content now as I said this is a very basic tactic the reason why this works is because it allows you to connect with

your audience it allows you to understand how your audience are responding to your content and also it feeds the algorithm the more comments you have under your content the more the algorithm sees you engaging with your audience the more likely it is that your content will be pushed out to more people the reason why this is one of my tactics though is because as I said it's something that I've always struggled with as I've already established at the start of this video Instagram's been pretty low down on the pecking order when it comes to my

hierarchy of social media channels and as a result of it being low down it means that when things have gotten busy for me it's been one of the first things to go so when that comes off my to-do list so does responding to comments the way that I'm going to improve this is actually to do some habit stacking there's a book called oh my God what is that book called It's so it's like such a popular book know what I'm not going to Google this cuz I know I know it a few moments later Atomic

habits knew I'd get it Atomic habits in atomic habits they talk about this idea of habit stacking it's basically when you take an existing habit and you stack a new one onto it increases the chances of you actually completing this new habit for me the Habit that I'm going to stack responding to comments on top of is going to be my daily walks with my beautiful dog where is she oh she's asleep when I take mojo on long walks we often like find a bench and sit for like 5 minutes so that she can chill

and practice watching the world go by so what I'm going to do from now on is respond to comments when I'm taking that bench break right I'm going to merge those habits together another tactic that I'm going to be doing is adding monthly analytical reviews of my Instagram Channel onto my end of month general reviews so at the end of every month I go over my finances my goals my YouTube channel and now also my Instagram I do actually have a analytics tracker that I use again available inside the collective I'll link it below and

I'm going to make a point to update that more regularly and also just spend some time in my analytics on a monthly basis so that I'm actually staying really close and connected to what's working the third and final tck the one that I need your help on and just your thoughts on is lives should I go live on Instagram more I do these events with my other brand the Creator project where a few times a year we'll do a big deep dive into a subject related to creators sometimes I'll get guest speakers and that's like

a whole production and that's not going anywhere right I think because I already do that I'm often hes hesitant to go live on any other channel because part of me is like okay well I want to say like the Deep dive heavy valuable content for that those events are free by the way if you don't follow the Creator project already the links are below so part of me things just like save all of that for that but then that doesn't mean that I can't just go live sometimes just to talk about what's going on in

the Creator space and like what's going on with social media but if I do go live on Instagram I want it to be that I want it to be really casual I want it to be a conversation I don't want it to be me just presenting like I always am like I want to speak to you guys can you let me know in the comment section just write the word live if that would be something that you'd like for me to do okay last but not least and an essential part of this entire process is

we have to talk about the how so I've talked about all these different changes that I'm making to my Instagram and it all sounds so nice and so exciting but we often make these plans to change our social media content and a lot of the time the plans never come to fruition why is that it's because we've not answered the question how are we going to make all of these changes if your changes to your strategy are going to require more work from you you need to figure out how you're going to facilitate that work

okay this is the hurdle a lot of us fall over on fall of hurdle a lot of us fall on I think that's right God I feel like I bounc between articulate to con string a sentence together like within minutes I don't know how you guys keep up with me so for me a lot of these changes are going to require me to spend significantly more time on my Instagram Channel like at least an additional few hours a week at a very minimum right I don't currently have a few hours spare so I need to

figure out where I'm going to find that time an industry secret many creators that you currently follow have content managers content managers are essentially people who sometimes do the editing of their content but more often than not they just focus on Distributing their content so they will be the ones who schedule their content across multiple platforms make sure it goes live etc etc I have never had one of those because in my mind I was like I just don't need one I've always been really on top of my scheduling for YouTube and therefore I thought

I'm on top of this and I don't really need any help anywhere else but the truth is if I'm going to increase my posting frequency on Instagram and if I'm going to be spending more time on Instagram per week I need to find some way to save some time and I think the way that I do that is by training my current employee Haley to actually do my content distribution for me so that is what I'm going to do and that is going to be my how that's going to be how I actually make these

changes obviously if you have a team member and you're thinking of doing the same thing and I'm aware that it's an incredibly privileged thing to have a team member remember that you now need to figure out how they're going to have the time to do that so the challenge of Saving Time never really goes away it just gets passed on to someone else but you have to make sure you're on top of that and that is my new Instagram strategy for 202 if you're not following me on Instagram already now is the time to go

and follow me to see if I actually stick with any of the things that I've just said no I'm kidding I'm sticking with it the content is going to be great you won't regret it don't forget that you can grab HubSpot social media calendar templates for free via the link in my description if you feel like hanging around I recommend watching this video it's all about the social media trends for 2025 this is one of my favorite videos to film it's so important to every single person watching so I really recommend that you go and

watch it thank you so much for watching this video as always I cannot wait to see you in my next one