Harness the power of Instagram Analytics: With immediate feedback, say goodbye to waiting weeks to see if your campaign worked.
Instagram Analytics (or Instagram Insights) is a powerful tool for viral growth. Gone are the old days of traditional broadcast (mass communication) media where brands would run an advertising campaign, and then have to wait a few weeks to see if sales increased. The feedback now is immediate.
You don’t even need a third-party program (although those can offer additional insights into tracking metrics). Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok all have built-in insights functions to help you make sense of your account, so you can see how it’s growing…. Or not.
So when you first click on your profile (or the three little lines icon) you will see an overview:
Instagram allows its users to review the engageability of their accounts with the Instagram Insights feature.
You can view trends for the last 7, 14, 30, or 90 days, any of which might be useful depending on your campaign. For example, if you have been running a new type of content for two weeks, it makes sense to compare it to the two weeks that came before it, so the 30-day view might make the most sense.
Follower trends are a relatively straightforward metric that still offers a lot of potential if you master how to use it. Your followers should be going up over time (as in the image below), perhaps with occasional spikes if you have content go viral or if you are just starting.
If you go into the audience analysis and learn greater details about your followers, you will have more information to cater your brand’s personality to them (if you want).
The golden rule of social media is “know thy audience, and the more you know about your audience, the more you can create content that they will find engaging. There are many ways to grow your followers, but you need to understand them to sustain that growth.
For example: I created a new account where we weren’t sure exactly who the audience was going to be. But we had a video go viral pretty quickly, so when the surge of views and new followers calmed down, I went in to investigate further. More than 70% of the new followers were aged 18-24. This told me the account was going to be well-suited to reach college-aged students, so that was the direction we started steering the content. You might make similar judgments based not only on age but geographic location or other factors.
To access the stats page below, click on the three dots in the top right corner of your profile page and tap on insights:
Instagram allows users to monitor their total followers over a span of a few months, seeing how the follower count has fluctuated over time
Here are some more specifics about the information Instagram Insights can give you about your audience:
Meaning of impressions: Impressions are another major metric that any analytics program will calculate for you. Impressions are the total number of times your content was displayed.
Meaning of reach: This differs from reach, which is the number of unique people who saw your content.
So, for example, if 500 people each saw your post three times, the reach would be 500 but you would have 1500 impressions.
In the screenshot below, you can see where my impressions spiked each time I made a new post. To find this, tap on the three dots in the top right corner of your “profile page”, then tap on “Insights” and scroll down.
You can track your Instagram progress using impressions as your metric, and this will show your total views spanning a few months.
Understanding the contrast between impressions and reach holds significance as it provides a valuable understanding of the consumption of your content. In the scenario where you have a lot of impressions yet limited reach, it implies that your content is repeatedly viewed by the same individuals. This aspect can be positive or negative depending on the engagement. Still, it may also imply the necessity to broaden your audience to enhance your reach.
Additional insights about impressions:
Diverse perspectives offer a clearer picture of Instagram Analytics' power. July, a fashion influencer, discovered that 80% of her new followers were in the age range of 18-24. This insight fueled a shift towards content that resonated with this demographic.
On the flip side, Michael, a startup entrepreneur in software development, found their audience engaged more during early morning hours. They began scheduling posts at this time, doubling their interaction rate.
A final metric that all analytics services will provide is content interactions or engagement. Engagement is when consumers take any kind of action with your content. A like, a share, a click, a comment, or a favorite all count as an interaction. So by going into your analytics on Instagram, you will get an image that looks something like the screenshot below:
Instagram allows a user to see when they have peaked in engagements by total interactions received. For example, the user can now focus on what they posted in February and upload similar!
By examining the posts that perform exceptionally well in terms of likes, comments, and shares, you can detect patterns or similarities among them. This could involve posts showcasing:
Posts with user-generated content (UGC) receive approximately 28% higher engagement rates than standard brand-generated posts.
Once these patterns are recognized, you can integrate more of behind-the-scenes content into your overall strategy. Many brands have found creative ways to increase engagement.
Also, here is a rule of thumb with engagement rates, which change as you grow:
Of course, nothing is ever for certain with social media. A metric that increases one week with one strategy might decrease the next week even if you are using the same strategy. You need to be able to constantly reassess and rethink your ongoing content-creating and posting schedule.
Even if you master all the social media analytics tools, you still need to be able to apply any insights gained toward a new creative strategy. All of these metrics are tools in your digital tool belt, but they will not tell you how to build the house.
Never underestimate the effect of simply spending some time browsing social media—specifically searching your product/brand area through hashtags—to help stimulate some mental clarity or generate new thinking.
Instagram Analytics helps in fine-tuning the timing of your posts. Remember how you can look at your follower trends and learn more about your audience? Instagram Analytics will let you see the periods when your followers are most active on the platform.
By aligning your post schedule with these peak activity times, you can enhance the chances of your content being noticed and interacted with. It will also help in optimizing your use of hashtags and crafting compelling captions.
Depending on your audience, “compelling” might mean weird, interesting, surprising, comforting, heart-warming, shocking, or educational. By scrutinizing the performance of your posts with various hashtags, you can identify the ones that effectively increase visibility and engagement. This analysis equips you with insights on how to refine your hashtag selection and compose captivating captions for better results.
To derive maximum value from your Instagram Analytics journey, here are actionable tips:
1.) Do all social media platforms have the same analytics/analysis features?
2.) My posts aren’t generating a lot of engagement. What’s going on?
3.) My followers don’t seem to be growing. What do I do?
