I really love the idea of the time budget! So much that I tried it out this morning. Negotiated an hour's child free time and focussed on Insta content. Got a tricky post done and up and made a plan for next week - that's all I could manage but it's great to be like 'that's how I've used my time and that's okay' 🥳
Love this, Elaine. I'm so pleased to hear it has worked for you as I find this approach to be so useful in managing my overwhelm and expectations (of myself!!).
This sounds great! This year, I am refiguring my IG strategy because the ratio of time : connection was just not sustainable. There was so much focus on “giving your readers high quality content” so they will follow you….but I need to focus my high quality content in places where it lasts longer than a single post.
Hi Christy, nice to meet you and thanks for reading. I completely agree that the life-span of Instagram content is frustratingly small and if you're trying to constantly feed the beast it does eat up an awful lot of time. A couple of pointers that might be helpful:
Oh yes, I do a ton of reusing content! And I format everything in Canva so it’s available later to tweak and use again, or use in a different size or format.
I really love the idea of the time budget! So much that I tried it out this morning. Negotiated an hour's child free time and focussed on Insta content. Got a tricky post done and up and made a plan for next week - that's all I could manage but it's great to be like 'that's how I've used my time and that's okay' 🥳
Love this, Elaine. I'm so pleased to hear it has worked for you as I find this approach to be so useful in managing my overwhelm and expectations (of myself!!).
This sounds great! This year, I am refiguring my IG strategy because the ratio of time : connection was just not sustainable. There was so much focus on “giving your readers high quality content” so they will follow you….but I need to focus my high quality content in places where it lasts longer than a single post.
Hi Christy, nice to meet you and thanks for reading. I completely agree that the life-span of Instagram content is frustratingly small and if you're trying to constantly feed the beast it does eat up an awful lot of time. A couple of pointers that might be helpful:
1. if you create a post that you like/ performs well on Instagram, can you repurpose the idea in a different format? Here is an example of a carousel of mine that worked really well back in Sept: https://www.instagram.com/p/DAVShQ2gE0k/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA== that this week I repurposed (part of the idea) as a reel that has also performed really well: https://www.instagram.com/reel/DFpXj4OAp5h/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA== if you scroll down my grid you'll also notice I've used the same video more than once as well. I like to make my content do lots of heavy lifting as a way to save me time and energy
2. use your Substack essays as 'source content' for Instagram posts. Each essay will probably yield at least 3 ideas for Instagram posts. I created a walk-through of my method for doing this for my paid subscribers: https://open.substack.com/pub/nicolawashington/p/a-writers-guide-to-repurposing-a?r=4mw0i&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false
Oh yes, I do a ton of reusing content! And I format everything in Canva so it’s available later to tweak and use again, or use in a different size or format.
That's great to hear - so many people miss this trick and it can save a decent amount of time!