How to use the Instagram Post Planner
- Set the frame. Pick a Start date (it defaults to next Monday), a Length of two to six weeks, how many Posts per week you can realistically make, and a weekday and weekend posting time.
- Tap your preferred days. The planner fills those first. If you choose fewer days than posts per week, it adds the days that keep posts most evenly spaced.
- Weight your content mix. Each slider from 0 to 5 is a content pillar, a recurring type of post. Higher weights get more slots; 0 removes that pillar. Add your usual hashtags, and the planner appends two pillar-specific tags to each post.
- Edit the calendar. Click a post to change its type, time, caption or hashtags, click an empty day to add one, or drag a post onto another day. Dropping onto a day that already has a post swaps the two. The List view shows the same plan as a table, which is easier on a phone.
- Export it. Export CSV opens in Excel, Numbers or Google Sheets. Export .ics calendar adds every post to your calendar with a reminder 30 minutes before. Print gives you a checklist for the wall. The plan saves itself in this browser, so you can close the tab and pick up later.
Why a content mix beats posting whatever is finished
Most artists post in bursts: three pieces in a week after a productive stretch, then silence for a month while the next painting dries. Followers mostly see a feed that goes quiet and then floods. A plan built from content pillars fixes this in two ways.
First, it separates making art from making posts. A single painting can supply a work-in-progress photo on Tuesday, a timelapse reel on Thursday, the finished piece on Saturday and a palette breakdown the following week. You don’t need a new artwork for every slot. You need to remember to photograph the stages.
Second, a mix gives different people a reason to follow. Collectors want finished work and availability. Other artists save tutorials and process videos. People who simply like you respond to the studio cat, the messy desk and the question about what to draw next. A feed of finished pieces only speaks to the first group, and a feed of shop announcements speaks to no one for long.
Consistency matters more than any particular number. Two posts a week that you can sustain for a year will build more than daily posting that collapses after three weeks. Start low in Posts per week, then raise it once a month runs smoothly.
How the planner turns weights into a month
The default settings are 4 posts a week for 4 weeks, which makes 16 posts. The weights are Finished 3, WIP 2, Reel 3, Behind the scenes 1, Tutorial 1, Shop 1 and Community 1, for a total of 12. Each pillar gets 16 × weight ÷ 12 slots. The leftover fractions go to the pillars with the largest remainders, so the total stays exactly 16:
| Pillar | Weight | Exact share | Posts | Share of feed |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Finished piece | 3 | 4.00 | 4 | 25% |
| WIP / process | 2 | 2.67 | 3 | 18.75% |
| Reel / timelapse | 3 | 4.00 | 4 | 25% |
| Behind the scenes | 1 | 1.33 | 2 | 12.5% |
| Tutorial / tip | 1 | 1.33 | 1 | 6.25% |
| Shop promo | 1 | 1.33 | 1 | 6.25% |
| Community / prompt | 1 | 1.33 | 1 | 6.25% |
Then the order is interleaved so the same type rarely appears twice in a row. The month opens finished piece, reel, WIP, behind the scenes, tutorial, then cycles back. Shop promos land between other posts, after followers have seen the work, instead of being stacked together. Caption prompts rotate within each pillar, so four finished-piece posts get four different starting questions.
Getting the plan into your calendar or scheduler
The CSV has five columns — Date, Time, Type, Caption, Hashtags — and starts with a byte-order mark. That small invisible marker tells Excel the file is UTF-8, so emoji and accented letters in captions survive. Dates use the YYYY-MM-DD format, which spreadsheets sort correctly.
The .ics file is the standard calendar format. In Google Calendar, use Settings → Import & export → Import. Apple Calendar and Outlook open the file directly. Times are written as local “floating” times, so 18:00 stays 18:00 wherever your calendar thinks you are. Import into a separate calendar if you want to hide or delete the whole plan in one step later.
Tips from practice
Shoot stages on purpose. Before you start a piece, decide which plan slots it will feed. Then set up the phone for a timelapse and photograph the sketch, the first wash and the halfway point. Those are the WIP and reel posts you would otherwise have to fake.
Batch the captions, not just the art. Use one session a week to turn the prompts in the next seven days into real captions, and edit each post here so the CSV carries the final text. Writing five captions in a row is faster than writing one every evening.
Keep shop posts at about one in six or fewer. If every third post asks for money, people stop reading. The default weights put shop promos at 1 of 12 points. Raise the weight before a launch or a holiday sale, then drop it again.
Leave one day empty on purpose. A planned gap absorbs a sick day or a deadline without breaking the rhythm. Then you can move the post instead of losing it.
Prepare images once, in the right shapes. Feed posts, Reels covers and Stories use different proportions. Exporting all of them in one pass with the Social Media Image Resizer saves a lot of last-minute cropping, and the Hashtag Generator for Artists helps rotate tag sets so every post doesn’t carry the same block.