Creating Instagram content that your audience wants to see requires a strategic approach to making every post. If your content doesn’t resonate with your followers, you’ll have:
- No likes
- No comments
- Little engagement
You can use tricks to increase engagement, but wouldn’t it be nice to know what your audience really wants to see?
We’re going to show you the exact steps to take to begin understanding your audience further and begin making the type of posts that they will engage with.
View Your Instagram Account Insights
Instagram insights provide you with a wealth of data that you can use to know which posts people really like and which they don’t. Anyone can use insights, but you need to have a business or creator account to view insights.
Don’t worry – it’s free to make the switch.
How To Convert Your Personal Instagram Account to a Business or Creator
A creator or business vs personal account has a few small differences, but the biggest improvement is your ability to see post analytics. Before you go any further, follow these steps:
- Open the Instagram app
- Tap Settings > Account
- Scroll to Switch account type
- Select Creator or Business
You can also connect a Facebook Page or even show your contact information on your profile if you like, but this is 100% up to you.
Need help switching to a business or creator account? Follow Instagram’s instructions.
Ready?
Now, you have everything that you need to access Instagram Insights. You’ll need to:
- Open the Instagram app
- Tap the hamburger icon
- Select Insights
You can select a timeframe within the last 90 days to view information on:
- Impressions
- Interactions
- Views
- Follows
- So much more
What do you do with this data? You need to be honest and begin dissecting what posts people are viewing and engaging with and what they’re not interested in. Start reviewing your top-performing content and try to learn why people like it. Consider the following questions:
- What type of post is it?
- Which day did you make the post?
- Does the post have a special hook?
Once you’re done analyzing your own content, it’s time to see what your competitors are up to on their accounts.
Conduct Competitor Analysis
You don’t want to steal post ideas from your competitors. A lot of creators remake competitor posts and get backlash for stealing their ideas. You want to look through the posts your competitors are making and:
- Create a list of high-performing posts
- Create a list of low-performing posts
With your list in hand, begin going through each post and try to figure out why it worked or didn’t work.
For example:
- Post 1 focuses on fitness and uses unique camera angles to show the person working out.
- Post 2 didn’t work because the person’s face wasn’t in the post, and it didn’t have any personality.
- Post 3 is honest and raw, which led to the highest engagement and shows the audience wants to feel a connection with the creator.
Every great creator spends hours experimenting and trying to learn what works and doesn’t work in their niche. If you take an unbiased view of each post and focus on what’s working in your niche now, you’ll learn so much about your audience in just a few hours.
Create Personas for Your Audience
Social media personas are fictitious profiles of your ideal followers. They include key details about your audience, like their:
- Age
- Gender
- Location
- Interests
- Pain points (frustrations)
- Goals
But how do you find all of this information? Your analytics data is a great place to start. Instagram Insights can tell you where your audience is located, their age range, gender, most active times and more.
Other data, like interests and pain points, can be gathered from non-social sources, like your shopping data, Google Analytics or CRM data.
Use Social Listening Tools
To know what your audience wants to see, you have to know them. Audience research is one of the best ways to get to know your audience, and social listening tools can help you carry out that research.
Social listening tools help you understand what your audience is:
- Talking about
- Interested in
Those are valuable insights that you can use to create content they’ll love.
Top 3 Social Listening Tools
If you want to give social listening a try, these three tools are the go-to choices for influencers, brands and marketers.
1. Brandwatch
Brandwatch offers a suite of social media management tools, including social listening. Their Listen tool allows you to discover new trends in real-time, so you can jump on topics and create new content while the fire is still hot.
With Brandwatch, you can track keywords, topics and even brand names. Filters and sentiment analysis let you further refine your data and get in-depth insights into what your audience really cares about.
2. Hootsuite
Hootsuite is a popular social media management tool that also offers social media monitoring. The platform allows you to set up an unlimited number of streams of content based on hashtags, keywords, locations and more.
3. Meltwater
Meltwater’s social listening tool allows you to see which topics your audience is interested in, but you can also monitor your mentions and even your competitors. The platform makes it easy to keep track of this data through a customized dashboard.
Create More Content Your Audience Loves
The best way to boost your organic engagement on Instagram is to create more content that your audience loves – content they want to see. Use our guide to learn more about your audience and leverage those insights to post stories, reels and image posts that naturally attract more likes, comments and shares.
