67: 3 Pinned Posts Every Solopreneur Needs (And Why Yours Aren't Working)

🌟 You Have 2 Seconds. What Are Your Pinned Posts Saying?

Someone finds you on Instagram.

Maybe they caught a Reel. Maybe a mutual tagged you in a story. Maybe they just stumbled across your account.

They click over to your profile. They have, at most, two to three seconds before they decide if they’re going to stick around or keep scrolling.

And what do they see first? Your three pinned posts.

If those posts are random, outdated, or nonexistent, you’re doing the equivalent of handing someone a business card with the wrong number on it.

That’s the problem we solved inside The Content Coven for our April challenge, and the results were good enough that I needed to bring this framework to everyone outside the membership too.

Because the women who did this challenge? The feedback across the board was the same: “I am so glad I finally did this.”

So that’s what we’re doing today. Three pinned posts, three very distinct jobs, and the reason most people are getting all three wrong.

Want the actual templates, AI prompts, and Make It With Me call replay? All of that lives inside The Content Coven. Join us at thecreativebodega.com.

💡 Why Most Pinned Posts Aren’t Working (Even the Ones That Went Viral)

Before we get into the framework, I want to name the most common mistake I see.

And it’s not that people aren’t pinning anything.

It’s that they’re pinning the wrong things for the wrong reasons.

The most common version of this: a post went viral, so it gets pinned. The numbers were big, so it must be worth showcasing, right?

Not necessarily.

A viral post gets eyes. Your pinned posts need to do something specific with those eyes.

The other version: three posts happened to go up recently, and they’re sitting at the top of the grid by default, not by design.

Neither of these is a strategy. And your Instagram profile is too valuable a piece of real estate to treat as an afterthought.

Your pinned posts are not supposed to be your favorite content or your most impressive numbers.

They’re supposed to answer the three questions every new visitor is quietly asking the second they land on your page.

Is this for me?

Does this person understand what I need?

What do I do next?

If your pinned posts can’t answer all three, they are not working hard enough.

🎯 The Three-Post Framework: One Job Each

Three posts, three very distinct purposes, none of them optional.

📋 Post #1: Your About Me Post

Think of this as your first digital handshake.

When someone clicks on this post, the goal is immediate recognition: “I’m in the right place.”

Not intrigue. Not entertainment. Recognition.

Your About Me post needs to do three things:

• State clearly what you do and who you help. Not “I help women live their best lives.” Specific. This is exactly who I serve and how I serve them.

• Give people a sense of the result or support your offer. What does someone’s situation look like after working with you? That belongs here.

• Include just enough personality that someone feels like they know you. Emphasis on “just enough.” This is not your entire professional history.

The gut check: if your best friend forwarded your About Me post to someone who had never heard of you before, would that person immediately understand what you do and feel like they might like you?

Anything less than a confident “yes” means it needs refreshing.

I see a lot of About Me posts that have turned into five-paragraph essays covering thirty years of career history, a meaningful “why” story, their dog’s name, and their coffee order. And somewhere buried in the middle is what they actually do for people.

Keep it focused. Someone should be able to read it in thirty seconds and know exactly if you’re for them.

📋 Post #2: Your Work With Me Post

This is your conversion post.

Its entire job is to show people how they can take the next step with you right now, based on your current offers.

And that last part matters more than people realize.

Your Work With Me post should reflect what you are actually offering today. Not what you offered a year ago. Not a service you quietly retired. Not anything outdated that’s still sitting there because you forgot to update it.

When I was on a one-on-one call with a realtor recently, I noticed her pinned posts were from a listing she’d closed eight months ago. New people were landing on her profile every single day and the first thing they saw was old inventory.

That’s not a small thing. That’s a first impression problem.

Your Work With Me post needs:

• Your current offers, named clearly

• A brief explanation of who each one is for

• A simple, unmistakable call to action

Should they comment a word? DM you? Click a link? Book a call? Tell them. Make it obvious. People are not going to hunt for the next step. You have to hand it to them on a silver platter.

Update this post whenever your offer suite changes. If you pivoted, if you added something new, if you retired a service, this post needs to reflect that. Confused visitors don’t convert.

📋 Post #3: Your List Builder Post

This one might actually be the most important of the three, even though it’s the least exciting to create.

Stay with me.

Instagram’s algorithm can change tomorrow. Your reach can tank. Your account could get flagged. Your ability to get your content in front of even your own followers is at the mercy of a platform you don’t own.

Your email list is yours. Your membership is yours.

Use one of your three pinned slots to drive people somewhere you actually control.

For most solopreneurs, this means pinning your best-performing freebie. The one with a strong DM automation attached to it, a real lead magnet that gets people into your world and onto a list where you can continue the relationship without fighting an algorithm.

If you have a membership you’re actively growing, this is also a solid fit for the slot.

The key thing about this post: treat it as a living slot, not a set-it-and-forget-it.

When your priorities shift, this slot should shift too. When you launch a new freebie with a better funnel, swap it out. When you’re mid-launch and all your energy is going to one offer, let this slot reflect that.

For the realtor I mentioned: I told her to literally swap this out every time she gets a new listing or celebrates a recent sale. Her strategy is always-on, so her pinned post should reflect that.

Dynamic strategy, dynamic post. That’s the move.

🌟 What Happened When We Made This a Challenge

We brought this framework into The Content Coven as our April challenge and I need to tell you how it went, because the outcome genuinely surprised me.

The challenge was specific on purpose. Not “refresh your profile.” Not “think about your content strategy.”

Three posts. Three distinct jobs. Here are your templates. Here are AI prompts for the copy. Here’s a Make It With Me call where we customize one of the templates together in real time. And here’s a place in the community to submit what you’ve designed before you publish it, so you can get feedback on both the design and the words.

Members crossed this off their to-do lists. Members who had been meaning to update their pinned posts for months, sometimes years.

The feedback at the end of the challenge was the same across the board: “I am so glad I finally did this. I feel such relief. This was really fun to do.”

Something that felt heavy and guilt-inducing because it kept getting deprioritized became a doable, even enjoyable, focused session.

That’s the power of specificity. It wasn’t a vague call to improve things. It was: here are three posts, here’s what goes in each one, here are your templates, let’s go.

🎯 Your Action Step

Go to your Instagram profile right now (or the second you finish reading this) and ask yourself three questions:

• Do I have an About Me, a Work With Me, and a List Builder post pinned at the top?

• Are they current?

• Are they doing the job they’re supposed to do?

If the answer to any of those is no, that’s completely okay. This is a fixable thing.

Start with whichever one feels most urgent. If someone landing on your profile wouldn’t immediately understand who you are and what you do, start with the About Me. If you have a freebie that nobody seems to be finding, make that your List Builder. If your offers have changed and your Work With Me is out of date, start there.

You don’t have to do all three today. Pick one and get going.

🛠️ Resources

• The Content Coven Membership: thecreativebodega.com. If you want the Canva templates, AI prompts for your copy, and access to the Make It With Me call replay from the April challenge, it’s all inside. Every past challenge, every template, is waiting for you from day one.

• Em on Instagram: @the.creative.bodega

💪 You’ve Been Meaning to Do This

If the pinned post refresh has been sitting on your to-do list for months, you’re in good company.

It kept getting pushed back because it didn’t feel urgent enough to prioritize, but important enough to feel a little guilty about ignoring.

That stops today.

Three posts. Three jobs. An About Me that tells a new visitor they’re in the right place. A Work With Me that makes your current offers obvious. A List Builder that gets people into a space you actually own.

This is one of those tasks that takes a few focused hours and then works for you in the background for months.

Your profile is earning (or burning) trust the moment someone clicks on it. Make those three pinned slots count.

If you want to join the community of women working through challenges exactly like this one, with templates, feedback, and people genuinely cheering you on: The Content Coven is open. Come find us at thecreativebodega.com.

Did this episode finally get you to update your pinned posts? Drop a comment below and tell me which of the three you’re tackling first. I’d love to cheer you on.