I remember when I first started using Instagram, I would just post whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted. I never thought that, one day, Instagram would become part of a career I was trying to pursue, never mind the fact that I'd be running it almost like a business.

Instagram is a huge part of the blogging world and today I thought I'd give you a little look into how I run my Instagram account and why I find it useful to do the little things that I do! Currently, I find the key to Instagram success is to plan ahead. I like to plan my posts about a week in advance, that way I'm always on top of my content. The way that I do this works in steps *kind of*, so let's go through them, shall we?

1. First of all, I will have already taken my outfit/blog photos. I find that taking them in bulk (around 5 outfits) works best and gives me about 2 or 3 weeks worth of content. I'll usually go through, edit them, put them in order of what needs to go first, bla bla bla. Then, I'll download them from Dropbox onto my phone.

I organise my Instagram on the app VSCO and therefore, need to have access to my blog photos on my phone. Dropbox is a great way to import photos from your computer to your phone and visa versa as it simply allows you to save the photos to your Camera Roll.

2. Second of all, I also try and stock up on other Instagram photos such as flat lays or cute pictures I've stolen from Pinterest/Tumblr. These are great for posting inbetween outfit photos or on days that you haven't got other content going up.

3. The next step is to plan my feed and figure out a posting order. Now, weirdly, I schedule my blog posts off of what day I will be able to post the outfit on my Instagram account. This is because my Instagram is my most popular account and therefore has the most interaction. So, what I do is import an outfit photo into VSCO, put it in an order with all the other photos which works and looks aesthetically pleasing and then work out which day that photo will be going up on. I then head to my blog and schedule the post for the coherent date.

After I've figured out what day I will be posting the first outfit on. I will then begin to import other images (usually 4-6) into VSCO to figure out what days these will also be going up on. Some of these photos (say, a flat lay including a product sent to me by a brand) might need to go up on specific dates, so I always take that into consideration however, other than that, I just put them in an order that looks pretty haha.

Once I've ordered around 4-6 photos after my first blog photos on VSCO, I then import the next outfit and basically repeat the process. This means that there's always a few days gap between my outfit posts but there's still content to be posted and fill up my Instagram!

4. Then, really all that there is left to do is ensure that these images are then posted on the correct dates. This means, that even if I'm at the gym looking like a sweaty mess, I might have an Instagram picture to post that talks about my brand new outfit on my blog, (where I do not, indeed, look a sweaty mess.)

I pretty much just make sure that no matter what I'm doing or what happens, that the particular image that needs to go up, goes up. I've often been in situations where what I'm posting on Instagram, literally has nothing to do with what I'm doing in real life but at the end of the day, if something (especially sponsored work) needs to go up, it needs to go up or else I find things become incredibly un-organised (and I'm an organised freakkkkkk). I've even been having a major meltdown before and suddenly had the thought 'shit, I need to post that instagram' hahaha.

As well as making sure I'm posting on the right dates, I also have to ensure that I'm posting at prime times for engagement. I find that posting at specific times allows my images to get more 'likes and comments' compared to just posting willy nilly. There are apps such as Iconosqaure that are able to analyse your account and give stats about what times of day you receive the most engagement (pretty handy huh?) but I've also just found that if you think about what times of day people are most likely to be checking their phone (eg, first thing in the morning before work, at lunch and after work/school in the evenings) then that's a great way to figure out when to post too!

5. When posting Instagram photos, I also have to ensure that I'm tagging, hashtaging and mentioning the things that need to be mentioned. For example, if it's an outfit, I will often tag the brands that I'm wearing, accounts which share other people's outfits such as '@ootdsubmit' or accounts that work with affiliate links like '@wearisma'. I will also hashtag words such as '#fbloggers' or #ootd', which are relevant to the photo and I will then also be sure to include my blog URL and the name of the outfit post. That way, nothing is missed out!

Hopefully this all made some sense and can give any of you other Bloggers or Instagrammers out there a little idea of how I personally run things, but I do also think it's good to just have fun with Instagram sometimes too! I don't always stick to this religiously ... I'm just very organised haha!

Let me know what sort of things you do to plan out your instagram down in the comments and whether it's as much as a military operation as mine!