Write one sentence about who you are for, then put your last nine posts side by side and check each one against it. The posts the sentence does not cover, like a flash sale between calm evening posts, show you which kind of post to leave out.
Here is how to write the sentence, how to run the check by eye, and how to keep five kinds of post feeling like one brand.
Matching is not the same as meaning the same thing
You can have the same colours, the same font and the same logo in the corner, and still feel like three brands. Matching comes from rules. Meaning the same thing comes from the subjects you choose and the kind of pictures you post.
A candle brand posting calm evenings on Monday, a flash sale on Wednesday and a meme on Friday follows every rule in its style guide. A new visitor still cannot tell what it stands for.
Write the sentence
One sentence: who you are for, and why you do it this way. "Good bread for people who cook." "Candles for the hour after the laptop closes." It has to be specific enough to rule things out. If it does not tell you what to leave out, make it narrower.
This sentence stays for years, while the month's idea changes every month. A bakery with "good bread for people who cook" knows at once that a recipe using its loaf fits, and a cartoon about Mondays does not.
Put nine posts side by side
Open your Instagram profile and look at the top three rows of the grid: your last nine posts. Look at the subjects and the pictures, not the captions. For each one, ask: does the sentence cover this?
A florist with "flowers for ordinary days" sees seven bunches on kitchen tables and two discount banners. With the sentence in front of her, the two are easy to spot. The wording of your captions is a separate check, where AI compares your captions with three you are proud of.
Coherent brands do not just look the same everywhere. They mean the same thing everywhere.
Leave that kind out, not only that post
When a post falls outside the sentence, ask what kind of post it is, and stop making that kind. It is usually the subject that strayed, not the colours. If you still need what the post did, make it your own way.
The candle brand still runs its sale, but in a calm evening picture, in the same light and the same voice as everything else, and the grid holds together.
Five kinds of post, one sentence
Variety keeps a feed alive, and the five kinds of post give you that: product, proof, process, people and point of view. The sentence is what keeps them together, because every kind passes through it.
A ceramics studio with "mugs for slow mornings" shows the mug, a customer's breakfast photo, the glaze going on, the potter at the wheel, and why it makes its mugs heavy on purpose. Five kinds, one brand. To hear how it reads to someone who has never bought from you, ask a stranger for thirty seconds.
What CP3® does here
Brand Scan reads your tone of voice, visual identity and channels into one brand profile, and consistency is one of its four scored measures, refreshed monthly. Branded Content drafts every post from that profile, so each one starts in the same voice and look. Writing the sentence, and deciding which kind of post to leave out, stay with you.