Most content strategies are built on assumptions.

"Reels are what the algorithm pushes right now." "Carousels get more saves." "Educational content performs better than entertainment." "Behind-the-scenes is what audiences want to see."

Some of these things are true some of the time, for some audiences, in some niches. None of them are true for every account in every niche — and building your content strategy on generalisations is one of the most common reasons strategies underperform.

Here's how to find out what actually works in your specific industry.

The Only Data That Actually Matters

The only data that matters for your content strategy is data from your specific audience — or audiences very close to yours.

General platform statistics about average engagement rates or what content formats perform best tell you about Instagram as a whole. They don't tell you what works in sustainable fashion, or B2B SaaS, or children's education, or any other specific niche with its own preferences and expectations.

The most relevant data is the content that's already performing well with your exact target audience. And the fastest way to find that data is to look at accounts in your space that are already succeeding.

How to Run This Research

Pick five to eight accounts in your industry. They don't have to be direct competitors — they can be adjacent businesses, creators in the same space, or accounts that target the same audience even if they sell something different.

Run each username through Viral Finder. The tool ranks up to 50 posts from each account by viral score — factoring in likes, comments, and video plays — so you can immediately see which content genuinely performed rather than just got posted recently.

Look across all the results and start categorising:

• Format: How many top posts are Reels vs carousels vs single images?
• Topic: Are there subject areas that appear repeatedly in high-performing posts?
• Style: Educational? Entertaining? Personal? Promotional?
• Length: Short form or long form captions? Quick Reels or longer ones?

Do this across five accounts and patterns will emerge clearly. Do it across eight and you'll have a confident picture of what your industry's audience actually responds to.

What to Do Once You Know

Once you can see what's working, you have a foundation for your content strategy that's based on evidence rather than assumption.

This doesn't mean you abandon creativity or just replicate what everyone else is doing. It means you're making informed creative decisions. You know the format your audience prefers, so you use it. You know the topics they engage with, so you cover them from your angle. You know the style that resonates, so you apply it to your voice.

The creative layer goes on top of the research, not instead of it.

The Bottom Line

The best content strategy for your industry isn't written in a blog post about Instagram best practices. It's visible in the engagement data of the accounts already succeeding with your target audience.

Viral Finder lets you access that data with 3 free searches. Start with the most successful accounts in your space and let the data tell you what to create.

Ready to find viral content?

Stop guessing what works. Start discovering top-performing content instantly.

Try Free — 3 Searches