How To Use Your 2022 Instagram Insights To Plan Your 2023 Content
Want to hit the ground running on Instagram next year?
Your Instagram insights hold the key to your 2023 content strategy success.
The best way to plan your future content is to look at what worked well for you in the past. By delving into your Instagram insights, you will discover which content your audience liked, what resonated with them and what they saved for later.
When you do dig into your insights, one thing you will probably notice is that the most loved posts are the ones that gave your audience the most VALUE. Your content strategy for 2023 should include as much value as possible.
Ideas for offering value include:
🌟 Solutions to problems - what are your audiences pain points?
🌟 Answers to questions - the new answer a question with a reel feature will be great for this
🌟 Clarity on an area of confusion
🌟 Inspiration
By checking these past posts you can craft a solid new strategy that will continue to inform, help and educate your audience.
So, let’s get cracking!
To access your Instagram insights follow the below instructions:
🌟 From your Instagram bio, click the insights or ‘Professional dashboard’ button (see image above)
🌟 Scroll down to ‘Content you’ve shared’
🌟 Click on ‘See All’
🌟 You can then choose from two drop-down menus. One for the metric you wish to view (posts, reels, stories et) and one for your chosen time frame (7 days, 14 days, 3 months etc)
Choose ‘Last Year’ and every post you created in the past year will show up in order of popularity for different metrics. Choose from a drop-down menu of metrics. The long list of metrics includes follows, likes, post interactions, profile visits, video views, to name a few.
Each of your posts from last year would have had a different goal.
Goals may have included:
🌟 Increase traffic to your website
🌟 Engagement
🌟 Reach
🌟 Shares - sadly this metric is no longer shown in Instagram insights due to new EU regulations.
🌟 Follows
🌟 Shopping
By looking at which posts did well in the last year, you can use this to inform next years plan. Whatever your 2023 goals are, check the stats that will help you tailor a strategic plan to achieve them.
Here are a few insights you might want to look into:
If one of your main goals for 2023 is to increase website traffic, you will want to check your insights to see which posts drove the most traffic to your site. Why were they successful? Did they have a clear Call To Action? What were those posts about? Blog posts, new products or services?
If blog posts were a good traffic driver, including more posts promoting your blogs will be a key part of your content strategy for 2023.
If it was new products and services, make sure you support those launches well in your social media coverage. Use a clear Call To Action on all your posts so your audience knows how they can learn more or buy said products or services.
It’s always a good idea to check which posts achieved the highest reach. Reaching a wider audience should be a continuous goal on social media. You could repurpose these high achieving posts or reels in your future content? For instance, a successful post from last year could be repurposed into a reel for 2023.
It’s important to remember that there are many factors at play with reach. Optimum posting times, shares, engagement, speed of engagement so it’s not one size fits all situation. That said, it’s best practice to regularly check in with what content is reaching furthest as you’ll want to emulate that formula in future posts.
If your 2022 strategy included Instagram reels, they will likely be a key performer for reach. It’s worth checking in with your reels insights here to see how this content format performed for you.
You can also check other metrics such as comments, likes, saves, plays and reels interactions here too.
Reels will continue to be a heavy hitting content format for 2023. Adam Mosseri has made it super clear that Instagram is no longer just a photo-sharing app. There will continue be a strong focus on video content for 2023, with reels at the forefront as Instagram continues to compete with rival TikTok.
Profile visits are another fascinating metric to investigate.
Finding out what type of posts bring visitors to your profile is key to gaining new followers and growing your audience.
You always want users to be interested enough in your posts that they want to find out more about you and your business. It is important to know what type of post drives this action.
Top Tip - head into 2023 with a fresh and updated bio. When a user lands on a profile, it takes 3 seconds to decide if they will follow that profile or not. Your bio needs to be on point at all times.
A clear, concise and visually appealing bio and profile are imperative. Make sure your bio is fully-optimised with up to date offerings and services. In addition, make sure your highlights are current and relevant.
This is an obvious metric to check but it doesn’t always mean it was your most successful post. Audience love is an important part of the know the ‘know, like, trust’ process but it’s worth remembering that likes alone won’t pay the bills.
Include this type of content in your strategy just don’t ONLY use this type of content.
The goal of any business is to make sales/generate leads and increase brand awareness. So mix it up with positioning, problem solving, promotional and entertaining posts to ensure you cover all bases.
For more information on the 3P’s content framework I love click the below image ⬇️
Check your comments.
We know that the Instagram algorithm recognises and values engagement. Any past posts that have created a good rate of engagement you’ll want to emulate for 2023.
Study the content of these posts, the CTA’s and the hashtags to see what elements you can bring back for your 2023 content plan.
Last but not least, saves are an interesting metric to check out too. Lots has been made about saves being one of the most important metrics but this isn’t necessarily true.
Saves are a great indicator of posts that people find useful. If a user saves or bookmarks your post, it shows your post has valuable information in it that they would like to save and revisit later. Whether people do revisit the posts sat in their saved folders is up for debate.
You may, however, find some surprising results here. Perhaps a product that you didn’t think was that popular is your most saved item. It’s always really interesting to find out what it is your audience wants to save for later and refer back to another time.
To Summarise
There are a wide range of metrics you can study in your Instagram insights. Set aside some time before the New Year hits to study what has worked for you in the last year. Use this intel to build this into a killer strategy for 2023.
Plus, if you don't already, make sure you check your insights at the end of each month. and tweak your plan month-on-month for real Instagram lift off 🚀.
get ahead of the curve and start making that solid Insta plan. I look forward to seeing you showing up with the VALUABLE INSTA GOODS 🤩.
So these are the key things to check in order to give your Instagram strategy a New Year facelift.
If you want to give your Instagram profile a ‘full works’ glow-up then I offer a few freebies, services and courses that will help you achieve this:
Freebies:
Instagram Content Prompt Card - 30 days of post, reel and story ideas in a fun bingo card format
Instagram Shop Set Up Guide - Step-by-step PDF guide to setting up your Instagram Shop
Services
1:1 power session - where we can either spend an hour of training on a subject of your choice - ie Reels, content planning & strategy, Facebook and Instagram ads, Instagram Shopping etc.
Courses
Instagram Growth Club - A 3-week video-based course for Instagram beginners or seasoned Instagram users that need help rediscovering their IG mojo. We will show you everything you need to know to use Instagram confidently. You will learn how to build your community, brand awareness and increase those all-important sales.
I hope this has been helpful!
Marielle x
