The “Wrong” Instagram Strategy That gets you Posting More
If you’ve ever worked with a content strategist (or followed one on Instagram), you have probably been told to start with the purpose of each post. The purpose of a post are things like what you want your audience to feel, do, or learn after reading or engaging with the post.
While that makes perfect sense on paper… in practice, starting with a post’s purpose can cause business owners stall out, feel overwhelmed, and give up before they ever get close to hitting publish.
Now, I can’t criticize this strategy too much because I used to do the same thing, I’d sit down to plan content and get completely tangled in the decisions. Things like, what do I need my audience to feel? How does this post support my business? Who is the ideal audience this post is speaking to?
By the time I thought I had all these questions answered made, the energy to actually create was gone and I would ghost my audience yet again.
Then slowly over time, I started to change my mindset around the ‘starting point’ of my content creation strategy. Because starting with purpose had me feeling so overwhelmed so often that it just wasn’t a sustainable, long-term content strategy that would work for my brain. Little by little over the past 6 years I said, ‘eff it!’ to conventional content strategy and built my own system around what I call an aesthetic-first strategy.
What “Aesthetic-First” Actually Means
I can already hear the ‘experts’ criticizing this strategy so I’m going to clear something up first: starting with the aesthetics of your feed doesn’t mean your feed has to be Pinterest-worthy, or even pretty. It means using the visual rhythm of your content as the first decision you make. There are two reasons this works: 1) For many business owners the visual of a post (Reel, graphic, photograph) feels the heaviest to create, so we get it out of the way first; or 2) Your visuals really get your create brain fired up and by suppressing that motivator you’ve been making it harder to create content in the name of ‘strategy.’
For the purposes of this blog, I’m going to use my own Instagram aesthetic as an example, but please remember that you any aesthetic can be strategic. If you take a look at my IG feed it follows a dark-light-dark-light pattern (an X pattern if you think back to the old days when grid patterns were all the rage.)
If you didn’t know what to look for you’d probably just think it looked cohesive, but underneath the pattern is a full strategy:
Light posts are Reels → designed for reach and attracting new eyes
Dark posts are carousels, tweet-style graphics, or long captions → focused on value and deepening trust
While the consistent brand colours and post styles do make my feed more cohesive (and increases the likelihood of a new visitor spending more time on my feed), my aesthetic-first system is how I keep posting when my brain would rather do anything else.Step 2: Map Your Long-Form First
If you have a blog or email newsletter, start by writing those. Long-form content helps you organize your thoughts, and once it’s written, you can pull smaller pieces from it for social posts.
This is exactly how I can create more content for less effort for myself and my clients every month. I draft my newsletter, then my blog, and by the time I’m ready to plan my Instagram, I already have half my ideas sitting there.
If you don’t have a blog yet (or you don’t feel like you have the energy to write one a month), this system still works. Just skip this step and head straight to your socials.Momentum Matters More Than Perfection
Why I Start With Aesthetic
Most content managers would tell you this approach is backwards. They’d argue that purpose should drive every decision and that caring too much about the look of your feed is superficial and will lead to scattered posting that never actually does anything for your business.
But I’d argue that they are missing something important… When you are a small business owner juggling a to do list longer than your arm, decision fatigue will kill your consistency.
You may not even realize this but every time you sit down to create, you have to make a ton of micro-decisions, like what to post, how to post, how it should look, and then considering if it’s even worth it. Since I started leaning into my brains natural starting point, the visual structure, I have removed half those decisions before I even begin planning my content.
This Isn’t Just About Colour or Layout
I think I need to pause here and say that I don’t use this exact dark-light system for every client, but the aesthetic foundation of my content strategy is still how I initiate any new client onboarding with me. Sometimes the aesthetic foundation is about media type instead of visuals.
I have one client where we plan based on post type and day of the week:
Mondays: Value-driven posts like infographics or stats
Wednesdays: Organic business promotion
Fridays: Humor or memes
It’s the same principle, just customized for that business because we start with the structure that feels easiest to repeat, and just keep it going.
This is where my strategy, and honestly the whole foundation of how I teach to create content, is different from what the ‘gurus’ say. The goal of any successful content strategy isn’t the purpose of a post or what goal you need to achieve; it will always come back to just hitting publish, Think about it, you can have an amazing post idea that is full of strategy, expert video edits, and copywriter quality captions, but if you never hit publish, it will do absolutely nothing for your business. This is why a structure that meets you where your energy is will forever be the foundation of my own content strategy, and what I teach to other business owners.
Why It Works: Structure Creates Freedom
Another criticism of this aesthetic first system I hear is that if we are limited creative decisions we are also limited creativity. But while I’ve tested this theory for almost six years now the reality, that might surprise you, is that when you reduce creative decisions, you actually inspire more creative.
Think about it, if you sat down to create a single post and you had ALL the options at your fingertips (ex: stop motion reel, talking head reel, b-roll reel, transition reel, behind the scenes reel, and about 10 more options and that’s just the reels), you need to first decide which type of post you are going to create, and then you still need to film, edit, write text, pair with audio, write a caption, decide what day and time to post, etc. it’s no wonder your brain gets feeling overwhelmed. Once that overwhelm sets in, you end up in fight or flight mode and, often, doing nothing feels safer in the immediate term than pushing through the uncomfortable feelings for just one post.
By starting with aesthetics, my system builds in creative constraints to remove decision fatigue and makes the entire process feel lighter… making it much more likely a post gets created AND posted. At the end of the day I like to help small biz owners find repeatable systems instead of complicated ones to get you posting consistently. Remember that complicated doesn’t equal strategic, it’s the repetition that gives you a strategy.
How to Try an Aesthetic-First Strategy Your Business
If you’ve found yourself feeling guilty, stuck, or burnt out from content creation (or have been avoiding it longer than you’d like to admit), here’s a simple way to start:
Pick two or three post types that feel easy to you (forget what the ‘gurus’ say you should be posting. I love starting with quote graphics, B-Roll Reels, and a short caption post.
Decide on your rhythm. Maybe you alternate Reels and carousels, or post a Reel on Mondays, carousel Wednesdays, and one “easy” tweet style post on Fridays.
Stick to it for at least a month. Giving up after a couple posts isn’t going to do anything for you, you are taking action to build momentum from action. If you give it a real go you will be shocked at how much lighter it feels when you aren’t starting from scratch every single post.
Please remember that the goal here isn’t making your feed look perfect, but creating a system that removes the weight of content creation so you can show up more often and get rid of the content guilt monkey that keeps hanging on your back.
Build Your Own Version of This
If you made it this far, bless you. And… if you read something that clicked I’ve got something that could be the golden ticket you’ve been looking for to get posting again.
Inside Content GPS, my upcoming membership launching in 2026, we will be diving deep into how to design a content strategy that actually fits your energy and business. Don’t worry, this isn’t another course that you buy and it sits in your email inbox for years until it’s no longer relevant for you or your business. I will be personally teaching you how to build systems that make posting feel sustainable for your business. PLUS, I’m giving you access to 5 AI Interns that help you break through content blocks that plagued me for years to support your content consistency.
I’m only opening this up to 5 or so people to start and founding members will get lifetime intro pricing (that my biz friends keep telling me is too cheap). Join the waitlist to be the first to know when doors open and get early access to the live training that will help you design your own version of this system, and restart posting again for good.
