Unlock a Goldmine of Insights: 3 Proven Strategies to Collect Valuable Customer Feedback on Instagram
As a marketer in 2024, you know the importance of truly understanding your customers. Their needs, challenges, preferences and behaviors should guide every aspect of your strategy, from product development to customer service to marketing and sales.
But gaining those insights is easier said than done. While traditional feedback methods like surveys and reviews still have their place, response rates are declining and consumers are increasingly selective about the brands they choose to engage with.
That‘s where Instagram comes in. With over 1.5 billion monthly active users and some of the highest engagement rates of any social platform, Instagram has emerged as a treasure trove of customer insights.
Consider these stats:
- 90% of Instagram users follow at least one business account
- 50% of users have visited a website to buy a product/service as a result of seeing it on Instagram
- 1 in 2 people have used Instagram to discover new brands, products or services
Sources: https://www.hootsuite.com/resources/digital-trends
In short, your customers are on Instagram, they‘re engaging with businesses, and they‘re using it to inform purchasing decisions. By strategically collecting feedback on the platform, you can tap into a wealth of valuable insights to drive your business forward.
But how do you actually do it? Read on for three proven strategies (with real-world examples) to effectively gather and leverage customer feedback on Instagram in 2024 and beyond.
Strategy 1: Actively Encourage Customers to Share Feedback
The first step to collecting useful feedback on Instagram is simple: you have to ask for it! Don‘t wait around for customers to share their thoughts unprompted. Proactively encourage them to voice their opinions with these tactics:
Respond to Comments and DMs
When customers comment on your posts or send you direct messages, they‘re opening the door to a conversation. Walk through it! Responding to as many comments and messages as possible shows you value customer input and makes people feel heard.
Skincare brand Glossier built a cult-like following largely through conversational Instagram interactions, like this comment exchange:
[Screenshots of Glossier comment conversation]Ask Engaging, Open-Ended Questions
Explicitly inviting feedback in your posts is one of the easiest ways to gather insights. Rather than simply publishing promotional content, weave in thought-provoking questions to spark discussion.
Some engagement-driving question ideas:
- What‘s one feature you wish [product] had?
- How can we improve [service/experience]?
- What‘s your biggest challenge with [problem]?
- What would you like to see more of on this account?
- If you could change one thing about [product category], what would it be?
Tech accessory brand Anker asked followers for gift ideas and got a flood of responses revealing purchasing preferences:
[Screenshot of Anker "gift ideas" post]Run a Contest or Giveaway
People love free stuff! Running an Instagram contest that requires feedback to enter is a great way to gather a high volume of focused insights quickly.
For example, to enter you could ask followers to:
- Share their favorite way to use your product
- Explain how they first discovered your brand
- Give feedback on a recent customer service experience
- Vote on a new product idea or branding concept
Sustainable shoe brand Rothy‘s incentivized followers to share feedback by offering a giveaway entry in exchange for answering the question "where would you wear these shoes?":
[Screenshot of Rothy‘s giveaway post]Host Q&As and Takeovers
Few things make customers feel more valued than when they get to interact with your brand directly. Hosting a live Q&A or handing over your Instagram account to a customer for a "takeover" provides a unique opportunity to gather candid feedback and engage your audience.
Beauty brand Sephora uses Instagram takeovers with influencers and experts to educate followers and spark discussion in the comments:
[Screenshot of Sephora IG takeover announcement]Whether it‘s with a simple comment reply or an all-day account takeover, proactively engaging customers in two-way conversations is essential for encouraging actionable feedback.
Strategy 2: Continuously Listen and Monitor for Feedback
Of course, not all customer feedback on Instagram will come through direct interactions with your brand. People will often share their thoughts and experiences in their own posts and Stories without tagging or mentioning you.
That‘s why the second pillar of collecting Instagram feedback is proactive listening and monitoring. Here are a few ways to do it:
Track Mentions and Tags
Obviously, you should keep a close eye on notifications of posts that tag or mention your Instagram handle directly. But go a step further by also monitoring common misspellings, abbreviations, and hashtags associated with your brand.
Skincare brand Drunk Elephant regularly reposts and responds to Instagram Stories that mention them (with permission), making customers feel appreciated:
[Screenshot of Drunk Elephant UGC Story]Use Social Listening Tools
With the volume of content on Instagram, manually monitoring every post relevant to your brand is near impossible. That‘s where social listening tools like Sprout Social, Mention and Audiense come in.
They allow you to track conversations around key terms and phrases, even if your account isn‘t tagged. This helps you keep a pulse on what customers are saying and identify trends over time.
Here‘s an example of social listening tool Awario‘s Instagram monitoring dashboard:
[Screenshot of Awario Instagram listening dashboard]Analyze DM Conversations
Direct messages are quickly becoming customers‘ preferred way to interact with brands on Instagram. 150 million people have conversations with businesses via DM every month!
While DMs can be tricky to manage at scale, they offer a goldmine of candid customer feedback. Using a tool like MobileMonkey or Hootsuite Inbox to analyze your DM conversations can reveal valuable insights about customer sentiment, needs and pain points.
See how MobileMonkey visualizes data from Instagram DM interactions:
[Screenshot of MobileMonkey IG DM analytics]The key to this strategy is to look beyond notifications and proactively seek out the (many) conversations happening about your brand. Finding them is half the battle.
Strategy 3: Leverage Interactive Instagram Stories Features
500 million people use Instagram Stories every day, and a third of the most viewed Stories are from businesses. Clearly, this is where customers are engaged and primed to interact with brands.
Stories also offer a variety of features tailor-made for gathering quick feedback and insights. Here are a few of the most effective ways to use them:
Quiz and Poll Stickers
Quiz and poll stickers are a fun, low-effort way for audiences to share their thoughts. Use quizzes to test knowledge of your products or industry, and polls to gather preferences between two options.
Travel brand Away used a series of poll stickers to crowdsource feedback on potential new products and features, making their audience feel involved:
[Screenshot of Away IG Story poll]Question Stickers
For open-ended feedback, you can‘t beat the question sticker. It invites viewers to submit questions or thoughts in a dedicated Story frame.
Clothing brand Everlane uses question stickers to source ideas for new products and improvements:
[Screenshot of Everlane IG Story question]"Swipe Up" to Surveys or Forms
If you have over 10,000 followers, add a "swipe up" link to an external feedback survey or form right within your Story. This is an easy way to gather more in-depth insights without friction.
For example, business newsletter The Hustle includes a swipe-up CTA to a reader feedback survey in their Stories:
[Screenshot of The Hustle IG Story survey CTA]Share User-Generated Content
Finally, reposting user-generated content (UGC) to your Story is a great way to show appreciation and encourage customers to post about you more often. The more people post about your brand, the more feedback you‘ll have to draw from!
When Lululemon shares customer UGC to their Stories, it incentivizes people to post and tag them for a chance to be featured:
[Screenshot of Lululemon UGC Story]Stories don‘t last forever, but they‘re an unbeatable channel for gathering heat-of-the-moment feedback and making customers feel involved with your brand. Use them often!
Bonus: Best Practices for Acting on Instagram Feedback
Collecting customer feedback on Instagram is a great start, but it‘s what you do with those insights that really matters. To make your efforts worthwhile, you need a plan for acting on the feedback you receive.
Here are a few best practices:
Make it Easy to Give Feedback
The easier you make it for customers to share their thoughts, the more likely they are to do it. Use clear calls-to-action, interactive features, and as few steps as possible.
Close the Loop
Collecting feedback is only meaningful if you act on it. Update customers on how you‘re using their input to make improvements. This could be as simple as a Stories post or as robust as a dedicated "You Asked, We Listened" highlight.
Share Insights with Your Whole Team
Customer feedback isn‘t just valuable to marketing – it can inform everything from product development to sales to customer service. Make sure insights are accessible to your entire organization.
Use it to Optimize Your Instagram Presence
Obviously, you should use Instagram feedback to improve your overall business. But don‘t forget to apply learnings to optimize your Instagram strategy too! Refine your content pillars, posting cadence, creative, and more based on what your audience responds to.
Here‘s a recap of how to get the most out of customer feedback on Instagram:
| Do This | Not This |
|---|---|
| Make giving feedback quick and easy | Require too many steps or too much info to share feedback |
| Actively ask for opinions with clear CTAs | Passively wait for feedback to come to you |
| Respond to and act on feedback | Collect feedback then do nothing with it |
| Share insights across departments | Keep learnings siloed within marketing |
| Use feedback to optimize Instagram strategy | Set Instagram strategy without considering feedback |
By putting a system in place to consistently gather, analyze and act on the insights you collect, you can harness Instagram as a powerful source of customer feedback to drive your business forward.
Putting It All Together
In today‘s customer-centric world, feedback is a essential for staying relevant and competitive. And there‘s no better place to collect it than where your audience is already active and engaged: Instagram.
By applying the three strategies we covered here, you can tap into a wealth of valuable insights to inform every aspect of your business:
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Actively encourage customers to share feedback by responding to comments and DMs, asking engaging questions, running contests, and hosting Q&As.
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Continuously monitor for feedback by tracking tags and mentions, using social listening tools, analyzing DMs, and paying attention to relevant hashtags.
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Leverage interactive Stories features like polls, questions, links to surveys, and UGC to make sharing feedback fun and easy.
Of course, gathering feedback is just the first step. To see results, it‘s crucial to analyze and act on the insights you collect. Close the loop with customers, share learnings across your organization, and use feedback to continuously improve.
Ready to unlock a goldmine of customer insights on Instagram? Start implementing these proven strategies today. Trust me – your audience (and bottom line) will thank you.
I‘d love to hear how you‘re using Instagram to collect customer feedback. Drop a comment and let me know!
