Six ways to
do this.
There is more than one sensible answer, and which is right depends on how much time you have, how much you want to be involved, and whether you enjoy it. Each of these genuinely works for some shops. Here is what each one actually asks of you.
None of these is the wrong answer.
They solve different problems, and the differences are mostly about who does the work rather than about what comes out.
A shop owner who likes taking photographs and has forty minutes on a Tuesday should do it themselves and keep the money. A shop that wants paid campaigns, a photographer and a strategy document needs an agency, and we are not one.
Do it yourself
Everything, by you. Cheapest in money, most expensive in time.
→ BelowDesign tool and a scheduler
Two or three subscriptions and a workflow you run.
→ BelowA freelancer
Somebody else executes; you brief and approve.
→ BelowAn agency
A team, a strategy, usually paid media as well.
→ BelowA chatbot
You prompt, it drafts, you check everything and post it yourself.
→ Below
Do it yourself.
Best for an owner who enjoys it. That is not a throwaway line — the shops with the best Instagram accounts are almost always run by somebody who finds it interesting rather than by somebody who bought a tool.
- 01
Notice
Something worth posting about happens, and you are the only person who will spot it.
Every day - 02
Photograph
Somewhere with light that is not the fluorescent tube over the till.
Five minutes - 03
Write
The caption. The step most owners say takes longest and produces the least confidence.
Ten minutes - 04
Post
And then remember to do the whole thing again on Thursday.
The hard part
What it costs: nothing but time, and the time is not the photography. It is the noticing, the writing and the remembering — three small jobs that have to happen every week for a year before an account is worth anything.
Where it fails: the fortnight after next. Almost nobody stops because it was hard; they stop because a delivery ran late twice and the habit never came back.
A design tool
and a scheduler.
The most common answer, and a perfectly reasonable one. A general-purpose design tool makes the image, a scheduling tool puts it out. Both are good at what they do.
The workflow, per post
- 01Take the photograph
- 02Open the design tool
- 03Lay it out
- 04Write the caption
- 05Export it
- 06Open the scheduler
- 07Upload it
- 08Pick a time
A general-purpose design tool is excellent at design. The trade-off is that it is general-purpose: it does not know what is on your shelf, what you posted last week, or that a bottle you photographed on Monday is worth four more posts. You are still the one turning a shop into a content workflow, every week.
It is also two or three subscriptions and two logins, which matters less than the eight steps do.
A freelancer.
Best for a shop that wants somebody else to execute and is happy to brief and approve. Genuinely the strongest option for creative range — a person can do things no software will.
What you get
A person
Judgement, taste, and ideas that are not a pattern.
Range
Photography, video, whatever the month needs.
Less involvement
You brief, they make, you approve.
Custom work
Made for your shop rather than for shops.
What it asks of you
Finding the right one, which is most of the difficulty. Then briefing, coordination, and teaching somebody your inventory — a freelancer who does not know what a reposado is will write about it anyway. Turnaround is days rather than minutes, so a bottle that lands on Tuesday is a post next week.
Quotes for the full job — photographing, writing, scheduling and reporting — start near three hundred dollars a month and go up steeply from there. That is the range shops tell us they are quoted; it is not a survey.
An agency.
Best for a shop that wants a marketing partner rather than a content supplier — several locations, a paid budget, an owner who wants to hand the whole thing over.
Strategy
Somebody whose job is the plan rather than the posts.
Paid media
Ads, budgets and targeting, which none of the other options here covers.
Production
Photography and video at a level a phone will not reach.
Reporting
Someone accountable for the numbers every month.
The trade-off is scale in both directions. It is the most comprehensive option and the most expensive, and it comes with a working relationship to manage: calls, approvals, a contract, and a minimum term.
For a single independent shop it is usually more machinery than the problem needs. For three shops and a growth plan it can be exactly right.
A chatbot.
Ask a general-purpose assistant for a picture and a caption, check what comes back, and post it yourself. Free or close to it, and genuinely capable — the question is what it asks of you, every time.
It will do the two things everybody expects, and it will do them well.
A caption in ten seconds that beats the one you were going to write at half past nine, and a picture of a bottle on a clean backdrop. If those two are the whole of your problem, this is a complete answer and it costs nothing.
What it asks in return is that you supply the week and check the output. It has no forecast, no local listings and no memory of what is sitting unposted on your shelf, so you bring those. And it works from how bottles are usually described rather than from the one in front of you, which is where the tasting note you never verified comes from.
It also does not post. There is no publishing connection to an Instagram account, so the last step is always you, in the app, at the time you meant to be doing something else.
The long version is on its own page — what it is good at, the five things that go wrong with bottles, and a six-step workflow if this is the option you want.
Side by side.
Deliberately coarse. Anything more precise would be a number we made up.
| Approach | Your time | Creative control | Knows liquor retail | Cost |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Do it yourself | High | Total | You do | Time only |
| Design tool + scheduler | Medium to high | Total | No | Low to medium |
| A freelancer | Low to medium | Shared | Depends who | Medium to high |
| An agency | Low | Shared | Depends who | High |
| A chatbot | Medium | Total | No | Free to low |
| ShelfSocial | Low | Total — you approve everything | Yes, only that | $49 a month |
There is no row for “makes better posts”, because we cannot prove it and would not ask you to take it on trust. The before-and-after on the front page is the honest version of that claim: real output, from a real phone photograph, that you can look at yourself.
Read next.
Liquor store Instagram marketing
The whole system: what to post, how often, and how to turn a shelf you already own into a month of content.
Social media calendar
What should decide the week: the forecast, thirty-nine dates worth planning for, what is on nearby, and the shop's own silence.
Instagram post ideas
Ideas built from what is already in the shop — new arrivals, the shelf itself, the weekend, and one bottle stretched across seven days.
Alcohol social media rules
What Meta's policies actually require, what age-gating is and is not, and the checklist to run before you publish.
Your shelf is
already stocked.
14 days free, 40 credits, nothing to install. Photograph the bottle nearest the till and see what comes back.
$49 a month, one plan · 14 days free first, a card when you make your first post and nothing taken until day 14 · one Instagram account per store