How To Plan Your Instagram Feed Using Canva | Why I Don’t Use Planning Or Scheduling Apps!

if you use a planning app like plany Unum later or preview to plan your Instagram feed you might be overlooking the Simplicity of using canva instead what's up everyone it's Modern Millie welcome or welcome back to my channel where I post videos every Wednesday teaching you the latest strategies and Trends on social media to help you grow your brand so give a little love tap on that subscribe button and stay up to date on all the latest tips and tricks that I have for you first I want to say a huge thank you to this video's shout outs I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for all of you so if you want to shout out in one of my future videos screenshot yourself watching this video and tag me on Instagram stories or leave a comment below and subscribe to my channel as always time Stamps will be in the comments down below because I value your time and you already know why you're here so let's get into it so in this post on my Instagram I shared with you guys some of my favorite apps that I use for Instagram and a lot of you guys were shocked that I use canva to plan out my Instagram feed so that's why I decided to make this video so I could show you what I mean by that first we're going to jump into the how with the screen recording and show you how I plan everything through canva and then we're going to talk about the why I choose canva over all the the other planning apps out there all right so we are in canva now I know I said I'm going to jump straight into canva but I know a lot of people love plany and later because of their abilities to both plan your feed on desktop and your phone no hard feelings okay no hard feelings there I have used every planning app that I I mean the popular the most popular ones and I've I've tried un them preview later plany I'm not a fan I'll tell you why but first let's jump into canval show you guys how I plan everything so this is my little social media posts folders because you can organize your posts and your content into different folders so I have a folder for my social media post templates all that stuff with my Instagram feed I find it easier to plan everything on my laptop because one I get so distracted on my phone you know what I mean you know what I mean I get so distracted I will get sidetracked like that when I use my phone and two since my feed uses more Graphics it just makes more sense since I'm already on my laptop I'm creating the graphics I might as well stay on my laptop and plan out my visual of my feed so what I do is I created my own little template called my planning feed template within canva this is what the template looks like this is my old feed this is like the more recent stuff that I'm planning and I'll show you how I made this I just typed in the Instagram story sizing because that's the dimensions that I wanted I used a blank template and then I went to elements frames and I choose the square frame now you can scroll through and try to find the square frame but be careful cuz this is not a square it has like a little on the edge Square can be hard to find I know my shapes so let me do this I'm going to bring this down to 360 copy and paste it then I'm going to copy that and paste it copy that and paste it and we'll do one more row boom so now I can plug and play all of my different images into these elements so what I do is I upload my photos here the the great thing is with a lot of other planning apps you can't plan out your reels very well with my experience and they don't keep the reels in the feed layout after you've posted it into your feed so that's why again I like using canva because I can have a Real's cover image so this was a cover image that I used for a reel and I can see when I plug it into the feed what it will look like how it will look cropped so I can drag it into a box and that's what it'll look like on my feed with that cover image let's just say I want the pattern I like to use the checkered pattern I'm sure you guys know my feed is a little checkered box so I'm just going to keep dragging pictures planted out like this yeah and it's like okay well I don't like these two blue ones side by side so let me put this one here I'll do I like the look of that this one here there we go now we're getting somewhere this white one I'm sure you guys are starting to see what I do and then since I'm able to plan so far in advance with my Graphics it's easy for me to be like okay this is Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Monday Tuesday this is three weeks of posts all I have to do is plug this into my Trello board and see what it looks like in the calendar view I use Trello to plan out my content calendar but there is an option on canva if you have a business account to plan out your content calendar so this is to show you how I got here if you just are in the canva home on the side they have a Content planner and they recently updated it so that you can also plan out your Instagram content before it was like every social media platform but Instagram and now Instagram is finally integrated into that so this is really great but it's only available for business platforms or business accounts so if you have a Creator account this won't work for you but if you have a business account you're able to schedule out your entire feed here which is really cool just so you guys know that exists I don't use it because again it's for business accounts and I use Trello you guys know I love Trello I already said that woo I'm going to show you guys what my content calendar kind of looks like on Trello and how I then plan everything after canva so this is my Instagram planning board I have the layout set for Monday through Friday because I only post on Monday through Fridays I try to take the weekends off and I plug in the captions and the photos here and I also like add the date to each card so that way when I go to my calendar power up it looks like a Content calendar I try to do this just like week by week because that seems to be manageable for me when it comes to batch writing my captions but usually I have the images planned out two weeks in advance now at the beginning of this video I said that I'm first we're going to show you the how and then we're going to talk about the why so before jumping into that I want to tell you guys about today's sponsor which can actually help you increase your Instagram engagement and it's $180 $180 is inspired by Gary V's growth strategy this is a simple concept where you basically leave your two cents on nine posts for 10 10 different hashtags while that might sound like a lot of work $80 is a Chrome extension that makes the strategy a lot easier than having to do that manually on your phone what I love the most about do8 is that it's not like a bot system or something it's a software that's literally designed to make it easier and a more organized way for you to comment on other users posts and increase your engagement and 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