Social media has made a huge impact on how businesses advertise their products or services. Working in the field, people constantly ask me, “Hannah, how do I start using social media to my business’s advantage?” Honestly, we’re always learning and evolving our strategies, but I do have a few tips to help amplify your social media’s success on Instagram.
Remember the secret sauce from part I of this series: Serve the right content to the right person at the right time.
Let’s talk through how this applies to your Instagram strategy! In order to get started, our first mission is getting you to your Insights page. Thankfully, it’s super easy. Follow along with the GIF below. Remember, you won’t be able to see your insights if your Instagram profile isn’t established as a business page. Don’t have a business account? Make the switch today.
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1. What’s the Right Content?
If you go into the Feed Posts section of your Instagram Insights, you can categorize all of your posts by both content type AND various performance metrics. We want to focus on top-performing posts. So, to do that, we will show all posts over the past year sorted by engagement.
Here, you see that our highest performing posts vary in themes. However, there are a few repeat topics if you look closely. For Stuller’s account in particular, bridal posts are usually a hit, as well as company updates and user-generated content.
Analyze your own insights in an effort to make these kinds of inferences. For example, if your posts about gemstones keep showing up in this section, be sure to include more gemstone posts in your content strategy! Don’t get too crazy, though— it is important to mix it up. Your followers can get bored with too much of the same. Test out different topics and keep a pulse on what’s working and what’s not using this section.
Another thing to consider is which content types resonate with your specific audience. If all of your posts with the highest engagement rate are videos, then what does that tell you? Ding, ding, ding! It suggests you should dedicate your time and resources to videos! (Again, don’t get crazy. There can certainly be too much of a good thing.)
2. Who’s the Right Audience?
Knowing your audience is SO essential to social media marketing. Understanding the demographics of your audience can help create posts and adjust your tone when writing captions or stories. We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: Figure out who you’re talking to. If your audience is primarily older women, you will speak a lot differently than you would if your audience is primarily young men, right?
Let’s take a look at some more insights, so we can break down your audience further.
So, instead of content, we’re looking at the Audience tab of your Instagram Insights. Here, you will be able to see where your audience is from, their age and gender, and even what times they are active on the platform. Now, isn’t that incredibly important information to have? Which brings us to our next question . . .
3. When’s the Right Time?
Using what you’ve learned from analyzing your audience’s data, you’ll know when the biggest group of your followers is online at the same time.
When it comes to the frequency of your Instagram posts, there is no single right answer for everyone. The most important rule is consistency! If you feel like you only have time to post three times a week, do that! Think you can post once a day? Do that! Whatever you do, just be consistent. Instagram will reward you for it. When you decide how often you can commit to posting, use the data to determine which days and times you should post.
As you can see above, this section shows you the day AND time of day you have the most active audience online. If you can make three posts per week, come to this section and choose the top three days and the top three times of those days to publish your posts.
Pro Tip: Instagram says 12PM is your highest concentration of followers online? Post at 11:30! Posting content 30 minutes earlier will allow your post to get through Instagram’s algorithm and start showing up for your active at 12PM audience.
So, how exactly can you get the ball rolling when it comes to social strategy? Stick to the secret sauce: Deliver the right content to the right person at the right time!
Did you enjoy learning about Instagram Insights? Was it, dare I say, insightful? Let me know in the comments down below!
