At Buffer, we’re big fans of using data and research to guide our social media strategy. So when it came to finding the best Instagram strategy, I turned to social media studies.

I read through more than 20 studies on Instagram marketing from companies like Facebook, Simply Measured and News Whip. Some analyzed the top Instagram accounts while some even studied tens to hundreds of thousands of Instagram posts.

Related: 10 Free Tools to Help You Understand Your Social Media Audience

Here’s what I learned from my look at the research.

8 Actionable Instagram marketing tips, backed by 20+ studies

The use of big data in social media can be a game changer if you have the ability to design consumer preferences that will attract clients and lead to sales. There are several ways you can apply big data in social media to achieve success.

Vision Recognition

When you use big data in social media to recognize images in the pictures, it can give assistance with generating custom classifiers. After uploading a photo, the application returns terms that represent the things it has found in the photo such as events or objects. You can train your app on specific image sets like logos for recognizing customized images in real-time. This method will help you as a marketer to detect customers that are posting on your social pages and prompt you to engage.

Personality Insights

Using big data in social media can help analyze personality attributes from posts like emails and social posts so that you can obtain the right insights about people. The users will uncover a deeper understanding of the people’s needs, characteristics, personalities, and values that drive personalization. Big data outputs can provide a profile with three personalities in the dimension of needs, values, and the five big traits that describe the way an individual engages with the world.

The Impact of Big Data on Social Media Marketing Strategies

Personality insights will help you as a marketer to capture a holistic understanding of the audience with the available demographic information and social media data. When you understand your customers, you have the ability to personalize interaction and then improve conversion.