Optimizing your content

Hi, my name is Kali and I'm a beauty creator here on Instagram. I will be talking to you about how you can optimize your content. I have been switching up my content style a lot and recently I figured out that the most important thing to ask yourself before creating is, why? So finding out what content you wanna create, what your audience likes and what your fellow creators are doing is the first vital step.

Understanding your niche

Let's start with you. What do you like to create? What specific content would you like to focus on first? Choosing a niche and experimenting with it can help you figure out what you like to do. So look up a general hashtag and see what else is on the recommended list. If you look through my feed, you can see me trying out all kinds of styles, formats, ideas because I'm constantly reevaluating what I like to do and what works.

Learning from your audience

So next up is your audience. What do they enjoy? The simplest way to finding out is just asking. So you can use your caption, your comments, your DMs and even your Story. Bonus tip, You can see expired Stories in your archive, that means also votes and polls and questions you've asked previously. You can see all the answers.

Check your insights

So after a while of creating you can finally check your insights. You can see what time is best for you to post, based on how many followers are active, their age group, and also their location. And yes, you can see how many followers you are gaining but most importantly Insights are there to help you analyze and plan your content better.

The more time and tools you use to build up your feed the more information will be available. You can review your top posts, Stories and Reels and find out what engaged people the most over different periods of time. It's also going to tell you what the people that might not be following you yet like to see.

Insights has helped me answer questions like what are my top performing posts and content types? What do I need to make more of? For example, my longtime followers have always connected with my images, but in order to grow effectively I had to venture into video content. So for me over the years I learned that short but informative tutorials and colorful, easy to recreate makeup looks work the best in my niche. That really made me understand that my audience likes to find inspiration and try out looks for themselves.

But please do not get discouraged by the numbers in your Insights. All the information is based on previous content and performance. So that means even if you have a slow week if you compare that to everything that happened in the last 90 days you can really see how much you're growing.

Analyzing other creators

Okay, so let's talk about other creators. Since this platform is so big, you can find a lot of creators who are using their creativity and passion to make awesome stuff. So my question is, who are your favorite creators? What niche are they in? What content do they typically post? Ask yourself, why you enjoy their content and what you would do if you had to put your spin on it? This is not meant to compare yourself to them or copy their ideas. It is to help you understand what you like to see on this platform.

And now back to the beginning question, why? For me, the content meaning is more important than the content itself. Why am I posting this? Why would somebody want to see that? What can that person gain from my post? The intention of posting needs to come from your desire to create something meaningful for you and your understanding of what your audience likes to see. So that being said, let's wrap it up.

Key takeaways

Here are my key takeaways.

1/ First experiment, for example, trying out a new format like Reels or a new content style like making tutorials.

2/ Second, evaluate. You can learn from your Insights. You can see what works and what doesn't and you can shift your focus based on that.

3/ And third, keep a record of all your ideas, inspiration, things you wanna get done, new skills you wanna learn, ultimately, that is gonna help you achieve any goal you set.

And with that being said, I wish you all the best in finding what you love to do and how you can grow from it. Go out, experiment, learn and try anything that excites you.