I've been posting consistently for six months. Last week I counted my followers: 77. Six months of showing up, for a number that fits in a group text.
So I stopped guessing. I had AI read 768 posts from 17 accounts in my niche, pull the view counts, and tell me exactly what my market responds to. Then I sat with what came back and tore down two full weeks of content I had already drafted, because the data said it would not land.
AI read more of my market in one night than I had in six months.
The AI Move
Your dream clients are in your competitors' comment sections right now, saying exactly what they need in their own words. Reading it all by hand would take a week you don't have. AI can read it overnight.
Here's the move. Connect Claude to Apify, the tool that does the reading. The free tier covers a run this size. Pick the 5 accounts your dream clients already follow, then hand AI one prompt that pulls their last 30 posts with view counts, reads the comments underneath, and comes back with the topics winning right now, the exact words their audiences use, and a month of post ideas built from both.
The topics are proven because the view counts say so. The hooks are written in your customers' own language, because marketing in their words lands harder than anything a brainstorm produces. And the month of ideas means the blank caption box stops being a Tuesday night problem.
I ran this on my own business last week. It cost a few dollars of scraping credits and it rewrote my entire content plan.
Run it once a month and you'll never open a blank caption box wondering what your market wants. It already told you.
This week's prompt
Paste this into Claude with Apify connected. It will hand you a month of post ideas backed by real numbers.
Research my top 5 competitors on Instagram: [names]. My business in one line: [what you do and who you serve]. Step 1: Pull each account's last 30 posts with view counts, plus the comments on each account's top 10 posts. Step 2: From that data give me three things. First, the topics winning right now, ranked by views, with why each one works. Second, the exact recurring phrases their audiences use in the comments, word for word. Third, a month of content for my business: 12 post ideas, each with the topic, a hook written in those exact audience phrases, and the format you recommend (talking video, carousel, or short reel).