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Instagram Insights Best Use In 2022: A guide to finding your target audience

Understanding your Instagram target audience is pivotal to developing your marketing strategy and making your business succeed.
Introduction

Best techniques for researching target audience on Instagram

instagram follower breakdown analytics

Although other social media management platforms exist, the power behind the Instagram Insights function on your profile provides the essentials towards narrowing down the best target audience.

With over 1 billion monthly users on Instagram, the sea of potential consumers for your business remains vast and uncertain. The content posted due to your current marketing strategy may be ineffective without the correct data.

As a result, it is critical to understand your target audience and interpret the data from Instagram as a means to develop the most potent tactics to breach their interests. Through this post, we will help you extend your reach by utilizing the Instagram Insights option step-by-step.

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What is a target audience?

Building a target audience profile is vital in developing your marketing strategy. It will provide direction and confirm the consistency behind the content posted on your Instagram feed.

The goal of posting targeted content is to strengthen the relationship with the customers looking for your specific good/service. Keeping them engaged through Instagram allows them to stay educated and aware of what you can provide for them.

What makes Instagram Insights so great?

Instagram Insights is a feature on Instagram Professional or Business accounts that acts as a visual display of analytics related to the content posted on a profile. This feature is necessary for improving marketing strategies in the social media sphere because it is an accessible way to identify what your targeted audience engages with the most on your profile. The more clicks and interactions a post generates, the wider the reach is for your business.

Why use Instagram Insights?

As a free feature of your account, Instagram Insights helps your business build a target audience profile and develop a deeper understanding of your customers. From the analytics given, it is easy to answer the 4 W questions, such as who your customers are, how they do things, and what they prefer. Instagram insights also help quantify your social media marketing pursuits, acting as a direct measure of the impact made by your account.

How to access Instagram Insights

  1. Open profile
  2. Find Settings page
  3. Find Account tab
  4. Choose Switch to professional account
  5. Choose the category of business and select done

Optional 1: switch professional account to business account

  1. More suitable for businesses, organizations, or brands

Optional 2: connect w/Facebook page by logging in

  1. Instagram Insights Overview

Sitting woman staring at her laptop outside

When you first visit the Insights homepage, there is data immediately displayed.

The homepage is separated into 4 parts:

  • Accounts reached
  • Accounts engaged
  • Total followers
  • Content you shared

Accounts Reached

Instagram analytics - interaction & discovery

Under the accounts reached tab, there are 4 components of the data.

The first is Reached Audience, which shows each unique user and their demographics, such as follower/unfollower status, gender, age, country accessed, and the city reached. Usually, these users are attracted by ads and promotions on Instagram.

The next subsection is Content Reach, which presents which types of posts have reached the greatest number of users. Looking into how these top-performing posts garnered more attention can create a precedent for future posts and set criteria to match the high engagement levels.

After the content reach section is the Impressions section, the number of times each post on your profile has been viewed by users. You can glean the unique users who have repeatedly viewed posts from this tab, so you can try to target their engagement in future posts.

Lastly, the Profile Activity section displays users' actions after visiting your profile page. By linking the actions before and after a user visits your page, you can cater your content based on fulfilling those actions on one Instagram profile–yours!

Accounts Engaged

With the accounts engaged tab, you can track users who have interacted with your content beyond watching or scrolling. These users are categorized as Users Reached. The more engaged your audience is, the more they have interacted with your content.

Actions that fall under the engaged umbrella include:

  • Likes
  • Saves
  • Comments
  • Shares
  • Replies
  • Direct Messages

Content interactions are the total count of times a user has remained engaged on your profile by using one of the 6 actions expressed above. Within Instagram Insights, this data is broken down on a per-cost basis.

Total Followers

On the total followers tab, all data regarding your account’s followers are visible. Specifically, the following characteristics displayed on this page are listed below:

  • Follower count
  • Unfollows
  • Top locations of followers
  • Age range
  • Gender

A useful tool on this tab is the Most Active Times feature, which tracks the most viable times to post on your account based on the hours and days your followers are most often logged into Instagram. From there, you can determine the best time to post to ensure increased engagement with the greatest amount of your followers.

Content You Shared

The last section is a direct overview of the content you have posted onto your Instagram feed, regardless of the channel. The different types of posts are broken down into:

  • Feed posts & count
  • Instagram stories
  • Reels
  • Videos
  • Live Videos
  • Promotions

From the overall number of posts provided, you can analyze which posts raised the most attention with your followers. From there, you direct your efforts to what works well with your product/service as well as what is received the best by your followers. The more popular your posted content is, the more engaged your followers will feel with your product/service.

We also encourage you to check out our blog article on the full-funnel marketing strategy which can help you better understand the content needed at each stage.

Discover your Instagram target audience

Man staring at his mobile phone

The Starting Point: The Biggest Consumer Identity

Building your ideal consumer profile around the most defined buyers is a productive first step. Using this same data can further define the best target Instagram audience.

Dive deeper into the headspace of a customer by asking yourself how your product/service benefits their lives? What is your audience looking for? How can your product/service bridge that gap?

For example, Stiddle is a management platform that provides marketing strategies for small businesses and presents them on a professional stage on social media.

stiddle product screen hero

So their target audience would be:

  1. Small business owners
  2. Light social media presence
  3. Increase reach on social media

If you already know your target audience and are already interested in setting up your Instagram ads, check out this blog article where we discuss how to set up your ads on Instagram and Facebook.

Analyze competitive insight

Collecting data from the heart of your competitor is a great way to build upon your Instagram target audience. Since business profiles are public, they are easily accessible to consumers and competitors alike. From this source, you can see what type of consumer they attract, giving you an upper hand in unlocking their engagement on your profile.

Navigating the demographics data tab

Instagram breaks down the data collected from your content through the Analytics function of your profile. Built into the app, this well of information is always available and can tell you who you are attracting to your feed.

You can access this tab under Insights by selecting the Audience option, where key statistics involving your existing followers are displayed. Characteristics such as location, gender, and age range can be viewed here.

The demographics data from Instagram Insights and your competitors' data establish more facets of your target audience.

analytics screens

Instagram Polls

As a function of Instagram stories, the polls feature allows you to go directly to your followers to analyze their tastes and preferences. Catering to what your target audience wants to consume makes studying their shopping behavior more accurate. Furthermore, you can use these responses to help create relevant content based on your customers’ interests.

Reach & Engage your Instagram Target audience

Woman taking a selfie

The Best Hashtag

Hashtags are a feature on social media platforms that act as a “filter” for finding specific content. When finding the most suitable hashtag for your post, the most helpful point is to research the top industry hashtags for your product/service.

The relevancy of your page increases with the addition of hashtags, which can guide specific users to your page. By having the right hashtags, you increase your business’ visibility on Instagram, extending your profile’s reach beyond your usual followers.

Instagram reach metric - 96%

Location Tagging

Another way Instagram filters content is through location tagging. Adding a location to your post allows Instagram to sort your post into other relevant searches using the same geolocation. If you have a physical store, location tagging is a great way to encourage people to visit your store.

Like hashtags, location tagging enhances your post’s visibility and the chance of your post being engaged by users outside your current follower count. These tags are located at the top of every Instagram post, under the username.  

Influencers

With the rise of social media came the career of being an “influencer.” Influencers are social media users who have developed specific niches for themselves directly from their careers on platforms. Usually, they gain mass followers because their interests align with each other.

If you decide an Influencer is a necessary step in marketing your product/service, here are some ways to find the best fit:

  1. Using Influencer Discovery platforms
  2. Buzzsumo
  3. Influence.co
  4. Hashtag search
  5. Partnership
  6. Review
  7. Share content
  8. Giveaway contest
  9. Social media takeover

Conclusion

Understanding your Instagram target audience is pivotal to developing your marketing strategy and making your business succeed. Now that you understand Instagram Insights and a couple of tips, you’re ready to convert them into buyers!

We hope that you find this article helpful. Please follow us at Stiddle.com for more marketing blogs like these!

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