Three Ways to Find Beauty Consumer Insights With Social Listening Data

The beauty space moves fast. One week, you're watching your favorite content creators get ready for the day, and the next, it's male makeup normalization. Behind every shift is a flood of social posts, influencer content, and consumer chatter that's hard to keep up with, let alone interpret.

That's where social listening comes in. With Infegy Starscape, you get more than trendlines. You get real-time insight into what's emerging, why it matters, and who drives the conversation.

Over the past few months, we've used Starscape to explore topics like the global rise of K-Beauty, the cultural impact of celebrity haircare launches, and the growing demand for natural skincare. As we close out our beauty series, we're handing the tools over to you.

In this post, we'll show you three ways to uncover beauty consumer insights using Infegy Starscape:

1. Trend-Based Analysis: Spot what's gaining or losing momentum.
2. Narrative Clustering: Understand the stories behind the trends.
3. Persona Insights: Identify the people shaping the conversation.

Whether you're launching a campaign or refining a product, these methods help turn fragmented conversations into focused strategy. Let’s dig into how social listening can bring clarity to the beauty conversation.

Trend-Based Analysis: Spot What’s Rising (or Fading)

Identifying what's trending is one of the most effective ways to uncover beauty consumer insights. However, the key is knowing whether a trend has lasting momentum or is already declining. A good social listening tool like Infegy Starscape makes all the difference. It doesn't just track what people are saying. It shows how conversations evolve, sentiment shifts, and trends connect across broader beauty and wellness movements.

Take the rise of year-round SPF use. At first, it may seem like a seasonal behavior. However, when we analyzed mentions in Starscape, we found consistent growth throughout the year, even in winter. Daily sunscreen is no longer a niche habit; it's now a core part of skincare routines. This insight, combined with overwhelmingly positive sentiment and ties to subtrends like "glass skin" and "medical skincare," suggests deep consumer commitment and long-term relevance. We cover this shift in more detail in our Health & Beauty Trends eBook, where we break down the SPF trend and the personas driving it.

Figure 1: Post Volume Pertaining to Year-Round SPF Usage (January 2020 through February 28, 2025); Infegy Social Dataset.

Compare that to GRWM videos. These exploded in early 2023, gaining traction across platforms like TikTok and Instagram. But as the content drifted from beauty tutorials to lifestyle storytelling, engagement faded, and post volume dropped. Infegy Starscape helped us spot the tipping point, letting us track a popular format's rise and fall before wasting time or budget on it. You can explore the full analysis in our GRWM trend breakdown, where we map its growth, peak, and decline across platforms.

Figure 2: Declining GRWM post volume (February 2020 through January 2025): Infegy Social Dataset.

By visualizing momentum and identifying which trends resonate, you can focus on what matters and stay ahead of the curve.

Narratives and Conversational Clustering

Once you’ve identified a growing trend, the next step is understanding what’s fueling it. That’s where Infegy Starscape’s generative AI tools and the underlying narratives that power them become essential. Instead of just tracking volume or sentiment, clustering analysis and summarization, derived from unsupervised learning algorithms, help you decode the why by automatically clustering millions of social posts into distinct themes, stories, and perspectives.

This context is critical for beauty consumer insights. We analyzed nearly 4.85 million posts and articles about daily SPF use from 2020 through 2025. The conversation wasn’t just growing but overwhelmingly positive (95%) and layered with nuance. Using Starscape’s AI Summary, we quickly surfaced dominant themes, while Narratives broke the dataset into distinct clusters that revealed why SPF matters to consumers and how they talk about it.

Figure 3: Conversational Summary About Everyday SPF (January 2020 through April 2025); Infegy Social Dataset.

One of the most significant narrative clusters focused on integrated skincare routines, where SPF is treated as the final step in a well-established process. These posts often follow a complete regimen (cleanser, toner, serum, moisturizer, sunscreen), emphasizing results like a healthy glow or smooth finish under makeup. The tone is enthusiastic, often educational, and filled with specific product preferences.

Other clusters discuss technical attributes like SPF 50 and broad-spectrum protection or cosmetic qualities such as “lightweight,” “no white cast,” and “non-greasy.” There’s even a cluster devoted to SPF’s role in makeup layering, where users recommend sunscreen-primer hybrids and tinted formulas.

Figure 4: Underlying Narrative Clusters About Everyday SPF (January 2020 through April 2025); Infegy Social Dataset.

This kind of conversational clustering makes the trend actionable. You’re not just seeing that sunscreen is popular. Instead, you’re learning that consumers want high-protection products that feel invisible on the skin, complement their makeup routine, and reflect broader wellness goals.

Understanding Personas To Tailor Specific Content

Once you’ve mapped out the trends and uncovered their stories, the final step is understanding who is driving the conversation. That’s where Infegy Starscape’s AI Personas tool becomes essential: it transforms broad audience insights into defined groups into which you can build campaigns, content, and products.

For beauty consumer insights, personas offer clarity in a crowded market. The skincare conversation alone includes from dermatologists to estheticians and ingredient-conscious shoppers to makeup lovers. Treating them as a single audience misses the nuance. With Starscape, you can automatically surface personas based on tone, interest, and behavior, not just keywords or basic demographics.

Figure 5: Key Personas About Everyday SPF (January 1, 2020 through April 21, 2025); Infegy Social Dataset.

For example, within the broader trend around daily SPF use, we identified these distinct personas:

• Beauty & Lifestyle Influencers: Highly visual and aspirational.
• Skincare Enthusiasts - Trusted by peers for authentic feedback.
• Medical & Skincare Professionals - Dermatologists and estheticians offering expert advice.

Each group communicates differently, uses different terminology, and has different motivations. And that means your content and product positioning should reflect those differences. A how-to post written for a skincare beginner isn’t going to resonate with a derm-backed influencer or an ingredient-conscious buyer. Personas help you avoid one-size-fits-all messaging and create content that connects.

Takeaways For Your Social Listening Practice

In a beauty landscape defined by constant change, social listening gives you the clarity to act with confidence. With Infegy Starscape, you can go beyond surface-level trends to understand the narratives shaping consumer behavior and the personas driving demand.

Whether you’re planning a campaign, testing product-market fit, or refining your brand voice, these three methods (trend analysis, narrative clustering, and persona identification) equip you to make smarter, faster decisions. Beauty consumer insights aren’t just about what’s popular. They’re about understanding why it matters, who’s talking, and how you can meet them where they are.

Ready to start? These tools are built for curious marketers, strategists, and creators who want to turn online chatter into meaningful action. Schedule a demo with us to learn more about how Infegy Starscape can boost your insight game.