When’s the last time you took a look at your Instagram numbers? Maybe you’re tracking your Instagram likes or have an idea of your month-to-month follower growth. but have you really taken the time to dig deep into the analytics and sift through the data? if you said no, this is the perfect time to do it.
Taking a closer look at your Instagram analytics helps you understand how the platform is operating as a portion of your overall marketing strategy. It will also help you improve your growth with the popular social media platform.
In this guide, we’ll explain why your Instagram analytics matter, and the data that matters most based on your overall objective.
Why You Need to Care About Instagram Analytics
Instagram has more than 25 million business profiles worldwide and more than 200 million Instagrammers visiting the platform at least one of these every day. This town’s us businesses are finding great value in this advertising platform.
But, if you don’t know who’s looking at your profile or seen your ad, how your stories are performing and what value your account is actually driving, then spending your time posting on the platform could be a waste of valuable resources.
If you’re not taking the time to evaluate your Instagram analytics on a regular basis then you could be:
- Posting too much or too little
- Targeting the wrong audience
- Delivering the wrong kind of traffic to your website
- Ignoring mentions that could lead to Future Partnerships
- Missing opportunities for brand engagement
- Posting at the wrong time of day or on the wrong day of the week
And unfortunately for you, this is just a small chunk of the things you could be doing better if you were paying attention to your Instagram analytics data. The insights you get from the information is going to help you improve the way you use Instagram so you get even more value for your organization. This could make Instagram an even more critical part of your online marketing strategy.
Instagram Profile Analytics
Your profile analytics are the ones you access through the “My Profile” page where your posts can be seen.
This page provides you insights for the last 7 days. If you’ve looked at your profile insights before, consider whether you’ve taken time to dig deeper into the metrics. You can access the following information here:
- Impressions: The number of times your posts have been seen during the past 7 days.
- Interactions: The number of actions taken
- Reach: The total number of unique accounts that have seen any of your posts
- Profile visits: The total number of profile views over the last week
- Website clicks: The number of times profile visitors have clicked the link to your website from your profile page
- Call/email clicks: The number of times profile visitors have clicked the call or email button from your profile page
- Mentions: The number of times users have mentioned your accounts handle
Instagram Audience Analytics
Do you know who your target audience is? chances are you have an ideal demographic of followers you’re looking for.
What does that ideal demographic a line with the individuals who are actually seeing and interacting with your Instagram posts? Should you buy targeted Instagram likes to boost your posts during a specific time or not? You can use Instagram audience analytics to find out.
Pay attention to the following:
- Top Locations: This shows you the top five cities and countries where your followers are located.
- Age Range: Instagram breaks down your followers’ ages with the following ranges: 13 to 17, 18 to 24, 25 to 34, 35 to 44, 45 to 54, 55 to 64 and 65 +.
- Gender: distribution of your followers separated by men and women displayed in percentages
- Follower Hours: This shows you the average time of day your followers are on Instagram which gives you an idea of the best times to post.
- Follower Days: This shows you the days of the week that your followers are most active on so you have an idea of the best days to post to capture their attention.
Post Analytics
After you’ve determined that your profile is getting action from the right audience, it’s time to take a look at your individual post analytics to see how your messages are resonating with your audience.
Here’s the data you’ll get for individual posts:
- Interactions: These are actions taken directly from your post whether that’s visiting your profile, a link, or using the call or email button in your post.
- Discovery: The discovery feature allows users to find new content from accounts that they may not be currently following. Your business account is eligible to appear on this page. Instagram informs you of the number of accounts you’ve reached to Discovery who are not following you currently
- Follows: How many new followers you’ve gotten as a result of a post
- Reach: How many unique accounts to post reached
- Impressions: The total number of times your post was viewed. This is also broken down by category to see where on the platform the post was viewed whether it was from the homepage, hashtag, from your profile or somewhere else.
- Saves: The number of unique accounts and saved your post to their personal saved folder
- Comments: The number of comments on your post
Stories Analytics
And last but certainly not least, there is Instagram Stories analytics. If you’re not using the Stories feature, you’re missing out on a substantial opportunity. Though this is a Snapchat like feature, it continues to grow in popularity and gives you yet another chance to get your brand in front of more people and increase the exposure of your current audience.
Once your Instagram story has gained traction, you’ll be able to track the following:
- Impressions: the number of times your story has been viewed
- Reach: the number of unique accounts that have viewed your story
- Exits: the number of times someone exited your story partway through
- Replies: the total number of replies on your story
- People Insights: the accounts that have seen a particular part of their story
The Data You Need to Track
If you’ve made it this far, you know that’s a lot of information about your Instagram account. To help you get rid of those overwhelmed feeling, here are a few tips to help you determine what you should focus on.
Before you start looking over the data, be aware of your overall goal from the platform. Are you trying to drive more website visitors? Are you trying to raise brand awareness among your target audience? Did you create your Instagram profile as a community for your customers to share ideas? Your Instagram presence may include multiple goals.
You may set up some posts to drive awareness, others may be aiming to increase sales. Regardless, you have to know what you’re looking for in order to use your Instagram analytics data to your advantage.
Building Brand Awareness
If you’re a new company looking to build a name for yourself or an established business trying to enter a new market, Instagram could be a good place for you to build brand awareness. Because it’s more than likely that your target audience is on Instagram somewhere this is a wonderful goal for the social media channel.
The metrics you’ll want to focus on include:
- Follower count: A growing follower count corresponds to growing brand awareness. If you see an increase in new accounts following yours, this is a sign your brand is resonating. You can grow your followers by running ads with this objective, partnering with relevant brands on joint campaigns and holding contests where you encourage people to follow your account and like your post to enter.
- Impressions: The more people who see your posts the better. If you’re looking to increase brand awareness, then you should make sure your post, story and account impressions are growing as well
- Reach: This tracks the number of views for your posts, stories, and account. The difference between reach and Impressions is that the reach also refers to the unique accounts, I’m not the same account viewing your Instagram post multiple times. In terms of brand awareness, growing your reach is crucial.
Lead/Sales Generation
Many marketers are working toward this goal. Is there really anyone out there who doesn’t want more sales? when it comes to driving sales through Instagram, there are multiple strategies you can use such as running targeted ads and posting special offers. Use the following metrics to help evaluate their success.
- Website clicks: In your ads, post, and stories, you are likely encouraging viewers to purchase or fill out a contact form on your website. This helps you track how many individuals are actually taking these steps so you can determine whether your efforts are paying off.
- Call/Email Clicks: Emails and phone calls are great indications that conversions are coming. If you see an increase in these touchpoints, you’re heading in the right direction.
- Follower Hours/Days: by paying attention to when your audience is more engaged, you can improve your overall Instagram strategy. You can plan to run your ads when your audience members are most active which helps to increase your engagement
Community Building
If you want to build an interactive community, Instagram is a great place to do it because of all of the fun and Visually engaging content. If this is your main goal, focus on these metrics:
- Engagement: Engagement is a critical part of building a community. Taking time to track engagement of your ads, post, profile, and stories will ensure you’re working toward the goal.
- Story Replies: This metric helps you evaluate how active your community is because stories are a great tool to use if you’re trying to engage to create a community. If story viewers are taking time to reply, this is an indication that your content is resonating with them.
- Comments: Communities talk. An active community will have conversations on your post which gives you the chance to respond and engage with them. As a general rule, you should never ignore comments even if you just like them.
There are many Instagram analytics tools out there and whether you choose to use those or rely solely on the native Instagram insights, knowing what to track and why will give you what you need to expand your business.
