Instagram Demographics You Need to Build Your Strategy 2024
When it comes to building your Instagram account, knowing all the metrics and demographics for your Instagram users is going to be hugely important. Here’s how to find out all the details for your account.
Posted 11 months ago
Written by
Mackenzie TaylorPosted 11 months ago
Knowing Instagram demographics is the best way to give marketers a way to get to understand the people behind the numbers on the screen. When it comes to these insights, they should help shape your Instagram marketing strategy, as it will determine who you’re talking to, what you’re talking to them about, and what kind of content they’ll actually engage with.
Because that’s what you want, right? Engagement? (Answer: yes, yes it is). Learning about age, location, gender, and other Instagram demographics will help tailor your content and strategy to the right audience and help up your Instagram game.
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General Instagram Demographics
Since its launch in 2010, Instagram has grown out of control and is the second most popular social media app behind its parent company, Facebook. Brands, creators, small businesses, and more use the platform every single day to sell their products, build a stronger audience, and help increase sales for their business.
With this in mind, we’ve highlighted the overall demographics on Instagram and how each one will improve your content strategy.
- 1 Billion: The number of monthly active Instagram users
- 500 Million: The number of daily active Instagram users
- 500 Million: The number of daily active Instagram users
- 200 Million: The number of businesses on Instagram
- 1.16 Billion: The potential audience reach for advertisers on Instagram
- 90 Million: The number of people who tap on an Instagram product tag each month
- 2.54 Billion: The number of daily active people using one of Facebook’s family of apps.
Instagram Age Demographics
So you want to market to your audience, but who is the audience you’re marketing to? Age demographics is essential to know when it comes to marketing and there are two major age groups on Instagram:
- Gen Z
Keeping track of age demographics can help you find and identify your target audience on Instagram and/or can help you figure out what kind of content to create to target a particular age demographic within the audience you already have.
The younger the Instagram user, the more likely they are to use Instagram multiple times per day. According to a poll from IPSOS, the breakdown of the people who log on to Instagram more than once a day by age are:
- Ages 18-24: 67%
- Ages 25-34: 60%
- Ages 35-44: 49%
- Ages 45-54: 43%
- Ages 55+: 31%
25-34-year-olds are the largest advertising audience on Instagram, closely followed by the 18-24-year old age group.
When it comes to gender, men outnumber women in these age groups, however, women outnumber men among users 35+.
According to a poll by Pew Research Center, 11% of US parents say their 9-11-year-olds use Instagram, even though Instagram requires people to be 13 or older.
If you want to know the specific age range of your current audience, you can find this information either in your Instagram Insights tool, where they give you a general overview of your audience. However, if you want a more detailed report, Flick’s analytics and reports can give you the full breakdown you need. Start a free 7-day trial to see for yourself.
Instagram Location Demographics
According to Pew Research, the United States is the global leader with the highest number of active Instagram users at 116 million.
When growing your brand on Instagram, be sure to keep in mind where the people who follow you are actually from. If they live in the same country as you, amazing! Focus on posting during your normal hours. However, if you live in the UK and most of your audience (and most users as statistics claim) are from the US, you’ll need to create a strategy around a US-based audience.
The top countries with the largest audience on Instagram are the United States (duh), India, Brazil, Indonesia, and Russia. Between 2019 and 2020, India saw a 20% growth in its ad audience size.
Why is this IG stat important? Because it could see India overtaking the US for the top position on Instagram.
United States location demographic highlights:
- 6 in 10 Instagram users use the social network every day.
- 43% of women in the US use Instagram, compared to only 31% of men.
- 37% of adults in the US use Instagram.
- The majority of Instagram users in the US live in urban areas (46%) followed by suburban (35%) and rural (21%).
Fact: Instagram has been blocked in China since 2014.
Instagram Gender Demographics
One of the biggest factors to think about when marketing to your audience is … who the audience actually is. Weird, we know. But, knowing if the majority of your audience is female or male (Note: while Instagram does have the option for “not specified” it does not take this into account with reporting) can be helpful to how you approach and market your audience.
On Instagram, there are currently only three options for genders: Female, Male, and Not Specified.
51% of Instagram’s ad audience identifies as female and 49% as male. Again, Facebook’s tools do not report data for non-binary genders, unfortunately.
Instagram Interests Demographics
One of the biggest reasons people follow a brand, content creator, or small business is because they are interested in what they’re posting. Knowing your target audience’s interest will be a major benefit when working to grow your account.
Recently, Instagram found that 91% of people they polled say they use Instagram to follow an interest.
They found the top interests on Instagram are travel (45%), music (44%), and food and drink (43%). People in India favor technology as their top interest. Argentina, Brazil, Korea, and Turkey have film as their top three.
The top content people in the UK say they follow are:
- Food and Drinks: 39%
- Music: 37%
- Travel: 36%
- Fashion: 34%
- Movies: 32%
- Health and Fitness: 30%
- TV Shows: 26%
- Technology: 25%
- Skincare: 24%
- Sports: 24%
Fun Instagram Demographics
- Instagram is facing fierce competition for younger users. TikTok (29%) recently surpassed Instagram (25%) as US teens’ preferred social platform. However, both of these platforms are still behind Snapchat.
- Instagram is the second-largest network after Facebook.
- 130 million Instagram accounts tap on a shopping post to learn more about products every month.
- 87% of users are outside the US
- 73% of US teens say Instagram is the best way for brands to reach them about new products or promotions
- 25% of US teenagers say Instagram is their preferred social media platform
Why Are Instagram Follower Demographics Important?
So how do these Instagram demographics help you? Well, they are fundamental to your campaign strategy, so you can make sure you’re marketing to the correct people, at the correct time, with something that will appeal to their age group. Knowing your audience and understanding their needs is paramount to growing your account.
Whether you’re looking to gain more followers, make an Instagram ad that targets the exact right people, diving into the demographics on Instagram is a key way to do so.
So, without further ado, let’s go over the tools and techniques you have at your disposal for analyzing the demographics of your Instagram following!
How To Analyze Your Own Follower Demographics on Instagram?
There are two key methods to do this. First, you can research metrics offered by the platform’s native analytics instruments in the Insights section. Second, you can go to a third-party Instagram analytics resource, like Flick and its Open Benchmarks.
Let’s start with Instagram’s native option:
Native Option: Instagram Insights
In case you weren’t aware, Instagram actually has fairly robust analytics and reporting system built into the platform—Instagram Insights. Within this section of your profile, you’ll be treated to a wide variety of metrics, reports, and stats that you can use to optimize your content strategy and grow your account.
All you need to do to get started is upgrade to an Instagram Business account. Don’t worry, the process is free and only takes about a minute!
How To Set Up An Instagram Business Account
If you already have an Instagram Business account, feel free to skip to the next section. If you don’t, here’s a step-by-step guide for upgrading:
Step 1: Open your Instagram app and make sure your profile is set to ‘Public’.
Step 2: Open your Instagram ‘Profile’ and go to ‘Settings’.
Step 3: Scroll down and tap ‘Switch To Business Account’.
Step 4: You should see an option to ‘Connect a Facebook Page’ appear on-screen. This is a requirement for any Instagram Business account and doesn’t actually affect your account in any meaningful way. If you don’t have a business Facebook account, feel free to use a personal one. If you don’t have a Facebook account at all, you’ll need to create one.
Step 5: Double-check to make sure all your details are correct. Once you have, tap ‘Done’.
How To Access Instagram Insights
Once you switch to Instagram Business, accessing Instagram Insights is easy. Here’s how you do it:
Step 1: Open your Instagram app and tap on the circular profile picture located on the right of the bottom navigation bar.
Step 2: Tap the hamburger (three-bar) menu in the upper right-hand corner.
Step 3: Tap ‘Insights’ on the top of the dropdown menu.
Step 4: You should see three tabs, ‘Activity’, ‘Content’, and ‘Audience’. Tapping on one of these tabs will open a set of metrics, reports, and stats. For demographic data, you’ll want to start with the ‘Audience’ tab.
What Can The Audience Tab Tell You About Follow Demographics?
The ‘Audience’ tab displays a bunch of useful (albeit basic) information about follower demographics. It’s a great tool for developing a better understanding of your target audience and formulating a content strategy that will appeal to them.
Here are the metrics you’ll find:
- Gender: Your male to female follower ratio.
- Age Range: The age range breakdown of your followers.
- Top Locations: The top 5 cities and countries your followers come from.
- Usage: The average amount of time your followers spend on the platform per day.
As we mentioned earlier, the main benefit of the ‘Audience’ tab is understanding who the people engaging with your account, business, or brand actually are. If you don’t understand them, it’s pretty hard to create content that they’ll enjoy and connect with.
Key Metric: Age
In the age breakdown, you’ll notice that Instagram segments your data as 13-17, 18-24, 25-34, 35-44, 45-54, 55-64, and 65+. This makes the ‘Age Range’ way to get a quick idea of who the people who follow you are.
In marketing—and in Instagram growth—age is crucially important to consider. Different age groups have varying interests, values, incomes, and purchasing habits. All that’s to say is that you’ll often need to use different content strategies to target one group versus another. Hence, why ‘Age Range’ is such an important metric.
Example: You run a DIY crafts Instagram account that mainly creates tutorials for parents with young children (35-54). However, a glance at your ‘Audience’ tab reveals that a sizable portion of your followers is actually teens and young adults (13-24). Creating more content that’s aimed at this demographic will likely result in page growth and increased engagement.
Key Metric: Top Locations
We’re sure it comes as no surprise that people from different locations engage with your Instagram account in different ways. If you have a big presence in a certain country or city, it might be the case that more of your followers are from there as well.
If you’re a local business, this is invaluable information to have. Knowing where the majority of your followers come from means you’ll gain a better understanding of your city and its residents. These insights could be the key to creating more effective, targeted content that actually resonates with them.
Example: Your ‘Top Locations’ tab reveals that your followers are mostly from big cities like New York and Los Angeles, which makes sense since you target a younger, digital-savvy demographic. This is important data to know because your followers might actually be based in these locations and want to see content related to life in their cities.
Key Metric: Usage
How time your followers spend on Instagram daily is a great measure for uncovering their interests and habits. This information can help you make sense of their behavior and general conceptions of your business, brand, or account.
In addition, it’s important to know how often people engage with your content. If you’re seeing that thousands of people are viewing it but only a handful are liking or commenting, you might want to re-evaluate your strategies for engaging an audience.
Example: You see that most of the Instagram accounts in the 13-24 age range spend around 30 minutes per day browsing the platform. This is an important metric to know because you can now make a well-informed decision about how much time you should dedicate to creating Instagram content and engaging with your audience, as it’s a relationship that requires constant maintenance.
Third-Party Alternative: Flick
Instagram Insights is a great starting point for demographic analysis, but it does lack depth. What we mean by that is that the metrics reported by Instagram’s analytics features are entirely focused on measurement (i.e., what’s happening?).
If you want to move up the ladder of complexity to Instagram data and hashtag evaluation (i.e., is what’s happening good or bad?), you’ll need a third-party program. That’s where Flick comes in!
Flick isn’t just for hashtag analysis—we also offer a whole suite of tools that will help you better understand your followers! To get started, all you need to do is sign up for a Flick account and link the Instagram account you’d like to analyze.
Once you’re all set up, you can easily check out Flick’s advanced demographic metrics by navigating to the ‘Account’ tab from the main header menu.
Here are the metrics you’ll find:
- Reach & Impressions: The number of unique individuals who access your material is known as reach, while the total number of times they are exposed to it is called impressions.
- Follower Growth Rate: This is the rate at which you’re acquiring new followers. It’s incredibly helpful for measuring the success of different types of content.
- Profile Activity: A summation of profile views, website clicks, and email clicks. This statistic seeks to provide you with a deeper understanding of how good your content is at attracting people to your account.
- Conversion Rate: This is the number of new followers you gain divided by the number of Instagram users who visited your profile over a given period. Why is it significant? This will assist you to determine whether your material is reaching your target demographic.
- Audience Activity: This metric tells you when the majority of your followers are most active on Instagram and can be used to schedule posts effectively.
Key Metric: Audience Activity
The time at which you post a piece of content can have huge implications for its success in terms of engagement and reach. You’ll find that Instagram’s algorithm prioritizes new material in the feeds of its users, with some even receiving push notifications when someone they follow has just made a post.
To get the most out of this function, you must understand when your followers are online and ready to view your content.
You can use Flick’s ‘Audience Analytics’ metric to find out what days and times are optimal for posting. Suggestions are tailored to your Instagram account and following, so rest assured you’re maximizing the reach and engagement of your posts.
All you need to do is look for the ‘golden time’ within the ‘Audience Activity’ block. Flick will analyze the data and present you with a number of options (highlighted in gold) that will fit in well with your Instagram strategy.
Know Your IG Stats!
Now that you have all the details you need to move forward with building a strategy for your Instagram, it’s time to dive even deeper and discover the analytics of your Instagram account. Using both demographics and analytics will help you create very detailed and targeted content for your specific audience to help your account grow and grow. Learn more and read our guide on all things Instagram Analytics.
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