How to Decide Which Instagram Posts to Promote (No, Your Instagram Insights Can’t Answer This) - Unboxsocial (2024)

Have you ever come across a situation wherein you felt you created good quality content on your Instagram handle, but it didn’t generate much engagement?

Was it because of the time at which you posted your content?

Is it the content format or type?

Or is it something else altogether? Do you feel that you should’ve focused on boosting a more engaging post?

Given the popularity of Instagram and the presence of a huge user base on the platform, it is just the place where your brand needs to be.

The Instagram algorithm can be a very tricky one to crack. Relying on organic reach alone, may not be enough. Especially if you are just starting out on the platform and want to generate traction at a faster pace. It takes a while for your content to pick up on engagement.

Even if you have been using Instagram for a while, including promoted content as a part of your Instagram strategy can be helpful. You are putting in all the time, money, and efforts into creating Instagram posts and stories. But, all your efforts go in vain when your content doesn’t even get seen by your target audience. You can capitalize on your content that is doing well. Promote your best-performing content to achieve your social media goals.

But, how do you know which Instagram posts and stories are apt for promotions? Here’s a very important thing to remember- your Instagram insights will not give you the answer. Since you will be investing money here, you need to have optimum clarity before taking the plunge.

In this blog we will tell you how you can select Instagram posts that you should promote.But, before we get into that, here’s a quick overview of the benefits of promoting your Instagram posts.

Why You Need to Promote Your Instagram Posts?

Instagram has more than 1 billion users. What does this mean for your brand?

It definitely offers enough scope for you to reach out to larger segments of the audience. But here’s the catch. There are a huge number of brands and businesses on the platform trying to grab audience attention. Your content could get lost amongst these posts and never even reach the audiences you wanted to target. Instagram post promotions can turn out to be helpful, here.

To put things into perspective, you can avail these benefits by promoting your Instagram posts:

You can Reach your Target Audience Effectively

You can promote your existing posts to reach out to your target audience. You are likely struggling with reaching your target audience. Even if you aren’t, boosting your Instagram posts can give your brand the extra push.

Promoted posts and stories on Instagram help you reach out to a customized audience segment. Now, you can opt to create a customized audience based on audience demographics you want to focus on, or location, for instance. Alternatively, you can let Instagram do the work for you, by creating a lookalike audience. In this case, the audience is selected on the basis of your existing followers.

Leverage your Most Engaging Posts

You can ride on the success of your existing posts by promoting them. If some of your posts helped you draw good traction, it’s time to leverage these for more reach and engagement.

This is one of the best things about promoted posts. When you know that certain posts were doing well on Instagram, the chances of generating more traction around these posts is high. To put it in other words, these are tried and tested content pieces you can put out in front of your target audience. The results are likely to be in your favor.

To Showcase UGC

Peer-to-peer reviews can move audiences to a great extent. If you have run UGC campaigns in the past, you can promote these posts on Instagram to leave a positive impression on your audience.

UGC campaigns help establish your authenticity to your target audience. Instagram promotions are a great way to showcase how different people are using your products. In the process, it provokes audiences to trust your brand.

To Include CTAs

Another benefit of promoting your Instagram promotions is that it allows you to add relevant calls to action. Apart from your bio, Instagram does not allow you to add CTAs anywhere else in your Instagram profile.

With Instagram promoted posts and stories, you can add relevant calls to action. For instance, you want your audience to check out your website. Instead of taking them to the’ link in your bio’, you can simply add a CTA with your promoted post that leads them to your website. In this way, you can cut down on the time for your audience to take the desired action.

Now, you know why it is a good idea to promote your posts. But are you relying on native Instagram insights to identify which posts are doing well? If you are, you may want to rethink your strategy. Let’s quickly take a look at all that the native Instagram insights helps you measure.

What Your Native Instagram Insights Offers

Instagram Insights are a quick way to keep an eye on how your content is performing. At present, we get the following metrics from Instagram:

A) CONTENT
1) Overview 2) Posts 3)Stories 4)Promotions

B) ACTIVITY
1) Discovery – Reach & Impressions 2)Interactions 3)Profile Visits

C)AUDIENCE
1) Growth 2) Top locations 3) Age Range 4) Gender 5) Followers

You can see for yourself and know that there is no way Instagram Insights can tell us in an instant, which posts should we promote.

While these insights are helpful to an extent, analyzing which posts are worth investing on, is very difficult. You need to weigh along different metrics and make a decision along. All in all, it can be a very complex process, and in the end, you may not be certain as to which post is going to bring a bang for the buck.

Learn more about

1) Instagram Stories Insights
2) Top Instagram Analytics Tools

In the next section, we will quickly take you through our guide on how to pick which posts to promote and help you grow your business.

Use Instagram Analytics By Unbox Social

There are times when you feel some of your posts have not performed well. And then there are times when you didn’t expect your content to perform well, but numbers show a different picture altogether. On what basis do you select the posts to promote on your social handles?

The content you promote should ideally depend on how it is performing. If a content post is not getting any traction from the audience, then there is no point investing your money into promoting it.

Ideally, you should focus on those content posts which received good engagement and reach.

Usually, it is recommended to wait for a while before promoting your post such that you have an idea as to how the post is doing organically. So, if you are considering promoting a post, it is recommended that you, wait for a period of say, 24 to 36 hours to see how it’s performing.

Let’s take this post by Adidas Originals’ Instagram handle, for instance. The post received a good number of likes and comments. But when you compare it to the other content pieces on the handle, there may be various recent posts that received a similar level of traction.

If you are looking at the number of likes and comments on the handle, as a decisive factor, then you may want to rethink your strategy. You need to dig deeper and jump into more intricate insights about your handle.

Your Instagram activity is not only about how many likes and comments you receive. It is also about who all are looking at your content? How are they reacting to your content? What do you know about their gender, age and location composition?

There are various different factors that you need to take into account when selecting a content piece for promotion. Going beyond the likes and comments that you see on your handle, you have to look into the deeper insights.

Many factors come into play when you are selecting which Instagram posts to promote.

For this, you need a smart Instagram Analytics tool. Unbox Social offers Instagram Analytics to help you find out how your audience responds to your content. The tool comes with an easy to navigate dashboard, using which you can explore overall page insights as well as post-wise analytics for your brand.

You can rely on this tool to make a well thought out decision as to which Instagram posts you would want to promote on your handle.

And you know what’s the best part?

This Instagram Analytics tool makes your job easier by straightway providing you with the posts that are ideal for promoting on Instagram. Based on a smart algorithm, this Instagram analytics tool generates a set of Instagram posts and stories you can promote.

Here’s how you’ll know what posts to promote with Unbox Social

Once you’ve logged in the tool, you can check out the insights on Instagram Analytics.

There are various metrics you really need to know and deep dive into, to understand the performance of your profile on the platform.Your likes and follower growth are not the only important factors when it comes to selecting the posts to promote. These are vanity metrics and tell only half the story about audience engagement.

Our AI-powered Instagram Analytics tool thoroughly analyzes your posts and then recommends a certain number of posts for each type of content to promote by looking at the bigger picture. These recommendations are based on how your Instagram posts have performed.

Unbox Social uses smart algorithms to automatically generate a list of posts to promote.

The engagement rate is calculated based on the number of likes, comments, and views received on your video as against the total number of followers. While in the case of static posts, likes and comments are taken into consideration.

Here’s a snapshot of how Unbox Social will help you know what posts to promote.

Jump Into In-depth Analytics

Once you know which posts you can promote with Unbox Social’s Social Media Analytics, you need to jump into all the analytics behind your content and track the important metrics. Have these posts engaged your audience enough? And what has led to the engagement? There could be different reasons for this – design, content type, time at which you posted it, or other factors. Use the insights provided by this tool to build your content creation strategy. Take cues from these insights to understand what’s working for your brand and what isn’t.

In order to truly leverage the power of your content, you need to keep tracking the performance of your content and know your audience better.

With this data, you can also create, strategize and manage your social media campaigns and postings.

Summing it up

Analyzing your content on social media will help you reflect on the real picture of your brand on social media. Also, social media analytics tools like Unbox Social recommends you to promote certain posts that will help your brand grow further.

Here’s a quick recap of knowing what posts to promote:

• Sign up with Unbox Social
• Connect your Instagram Account with the tool.
• Move to the Instagram Analytics Page.
• Scroll down through the insights and there you have your “Recommended Posts to Promote”
• Head to Instagram or Facebook Business Manager and promote the posts.