Your first week of planned reels: a day-by-day checklist

The first week sets the habit. Keep it modest and finish it. Here is a day-by-day checklist you can follow with any AI chat tool and a simple spreadsheet.

Day 1: The sitting

• Write your context: what you sell, who you post for, three real customer questions, your voice in three words.
• Choose four pillars: teach, show, prove, talk.
• Write thirty hooks and cut them to the strongest fifteen or so.
• Lay the month into a calendar with a format and a pillar for each day.
• Write down the honest number of posts you can manage each week.

Day 2: Script the week

• Script only the next seven days.
• Keep each reel to one idea and one ask.
• Read every script aloud with a timer. About seventy-five spoken words fill thirty seconds.
• Write the caption after the script, and save one detail for it.

Day 3: Film in one batch

• Group reels by location, not by posting date.
• Follow the light: window shots first.
• Film every hook twice, two different ways.
• Capture a clean cover frame for each reel.
• Check battery, storage and lens before you start.

Days 4 to 6: Publish and observe

• Post what the calendar says. Change nothing mid-week.
• Before each post, check: no greeting before the hook, text in the middle of the frame, subtitles corrected by hand, one ask in the caption.
• Reply to comments in full sentences.
• Write down every question people ask. These are next month's hooks.

Day 7: The first review

• Wait until posts are at least three days old before judging them.
• Copy the numbers from Instagram's own insights into a log.
• Work out saves and shares per hundred reach, so small and large posts compare fairly.
• Rank posts by the metric that matches their goal, not by views alone.
• Write four answers: what to repeat, what to change, what to stop, what to test.

What not to do this week

1. Do not add extra posts because one did well.
2. Do not delete a post because it started slowly.
3. Do not change your pillars. Seven posts are not enough evidence.
4. Do not compare your week one with someone else's year three.

If you published what you planned, the week was a success whatever the numbers say; the publish rate is the figure to protect first. Reelmint includes this plan in full, with the thirty-day calendar, a weekly log and a pre-post checklist of twenty-two checks ready to use.