Introduction
Instagram is growing significantly not only for social media marketing but also for building virtual communities and maintaining consistent client interaction. Instagram should be considered by all social media professionals as one of the most essential channels available right now. How can you tell if you're using Instagram correctly and precisely, though? How can you tell whether your social media strategy is working or if your quarterly goals are being met? This is why you should pay closer attention to Instagram analytics.
Analyzing your Instagram analytics can help you not only understand how well it is doing as part of your entire marketing strategy, but it will also help you improve and grow your brand by leveraging this dynamic, heavily populated social platform.
In this article, I'll discuss why Instagram analytics is so crucial and how they can help you navigate all of the many analytics options available. I'll highlight some of the data which will prove to be essential in your business goals, so you can realize where to put your attention, and then let's have a quick rundown of our preferred Instagram analytics tool.
What Is Instagram Analytics?
The performance of your timeline including posts in your account as a whole is tracked by Instagram analytics. It means Instagram analytics makes you understand the performance and functioning of your account. Instagram metrics are individual numbers, meanwhile Instagram analytics assist you in interpreting such stats and identifying patterns. For instance, follower count (the number of people who follow you) is a metric, whereas follower growth rate (the pace at which your follower count grows over time) is analytic.
One of the easiest methods to detect failures and achievements on your Instagram account is to check your metrics. You can acquire important input to help you enhance your social media strategy by thoroughly reviewing them.
Why Are Instagram Analytics So Important?
It might be difficult to interpret Instagram analytics and translate the terminology into actionable insights. However, we guarantee that anyone can accomplish it! Forget about complex formulas and technical language. What you should be looking at with your Instagram statistics are the things you can tweak, adapt, and embrace to increase your engagement and growth.
Understanding Instagram analytics or what this analytical data means for your accounts can help you not just with the work you're already doing, but also come up with new ideas for your approach and enhance what you've already started.
Instagram analytics go far beyond counting how many likes and comments a post receives. They take a far larger view of your account's general health and can assist you in analysing the demographics, activities, and activities of your audience. It's the most effective technique that makes educated content strategy decisions and modifications.
If you're not regularly reviewing your Instagram metrics, you might be:
You are going after the wrong audiences.
Posting far too often or not posting at all.
Getting visitors on your website or account who aren't interested in what you have to convey to them.
Ignoring references that may lead to future collaborations.
In your comments or articles, you're missing out on opportunities for brand engagement.
Let's dig up on Instagram analytics for better understanding.
Instagram Analytics
Instagram Analytics: Profile
Your profile analytics may be seen straight from the “my profile” tab, which is where all the posts are stored. This page usually displays information for a week. Maybe, you might have looked at your account’s insights before, but you’ve not looked at your analytics. Let’s have a quick look at what you can do here:
Impressions – How often your posts are viewed over a given period.
Interactions – How often actions have been taken on your account.
Reach – The number of new accounts that have seen any of your posts.
Profile Visits – The number of times your profile has been viewed over a week.
Website Clicks – How often users of Instagram have gone through your account and clicked on the link to your website.
Email Clicks – How often users have visited your account and used the call/ email button.
Mentions/Tags – How often your account has been mentioned by other users.
Instagram Analytics: Audiences
Your Instagram analytics includes a section which is telling you about your audiences. The following are the most important points to be kept in mind
Top locations – You can have a look at the top five towns, cities, or countries where your followers are situated with this data.
Age range – What is the average age of your followers? This is the simple approach to figure it out. Instagram divides it into the following categories; 13-17 years old, 18-24, 25-34, up to 65 years old.
Gender - The percentage of males and women among your followers.
Active hours – A useful metric to determine when your followers are most active on Instagram.
Active days – This area also reveals which days of the week your followers are most active.
Instagram Analytics: Posts And Stories
You’ve to go into individual post statistics and see how a specific message is engaging with your audience once you’ve verified your profile is generating action from the proper audience. This is a good technique to assess if your material is resonating with your targeted audience.
Likewise, you’re missing out on a huge opportunity if you’re not using Instagram stories. This Instagram feature, which is similar to other social media platforms like Snapchat, is growing in popularity, and it provides you with another option to get your business in front of new people or expand the reach of your present audience.
Following are important categories in an Instagram post:
Followers – The number of new followers you’ve gained as a result of a post
Saves – The number of different accounts that have saved your posts to their own personal saves folder.
Comments – The number of users who have commented on your posts.
Following are the important consideration in Instagram for stories:
Impressions – The number of times your stories have been seen per day.
Reach – The number of different accounts that have gone through your stories.
Exits – The number of times someone has left or skipped your story in the middle of it.
Replies/Forwards – The number of comments or forwards on a video or image on your story.
Users Insights – This section will identify the accounts that have seen a certain aspect of your stories.
Metrics You Should Focus On Instagram Analytics
Instagram analytics are not made equal. Some provide a lot of information on your finest post, while others may not offer much at all. I’ve mentioned some of the important Instagram metrics to keep an eye on to figure out what’s working and how to enhance your social media account.
Follower Growth
Your Instagram follower count is a basic indicator; however, it’s also a critical one. The quantity of followers you have has a range of effects on the overall functionality of your Instagram account.
Follower growth, in particular, is an excellent approach to assess the quality of your Instagram account. Not only should you keep track of how many followers you’ve gained over the last few weeks, and months, but also how quickly they are increasing. Understanding these matrices about the rate of follower overall growth is more essential than simply seeing how many followers you’ve right now.
You’re continuously losing followers if your rate of growth is negative. Unsurprisingly, Instagram insights do not indicate how many followers you’ve acquired or lost in the preceding week, but it doesn’t provide follower growth data.
Audience Demographics
While knowing how quickly you’re gaining followers is useful, you also need to know who your followers are. Identifying your audience is essential for an effective Instagram strategy, and if you want to increase engagement with your photos, drive online traffic, or make any sales. You’ll be able to fine-tune your posts and contents and ensure that your followers reflect your ideal persona if you have a deep understanding of your audience's demographics.
Instagram insights provide some useful data on audience demographics. You may examine your follower’s gender and age distribution, and also the five major cities and countries in order of follower count.
Website Click
Instagram website clicks are the indicator for how many people visited your website after clicking the link for your profile bio. For some accounts on Instagram, this measure is critical, while for others, it is rather inconsequential. If you’re receiving a lot of website clicks, it’s usually because you have a lot of people looking at your Instagram account and you have a great CTA in your bio. In case you are not receiving any clicks, switch up the CTA and link in your bio frequently. You can however direct your followers to your chosen URL by hyping up the page it connects in your post or current story, then ending with “link in bio.”
Reach
Reach is a helpful matric since it indicates which of your posts are being seen by the most people. Many factors influence Instagram reach, including how many users have engaged with your content after viewing it, and how long they have spent looking at it, and when you posted it. As a result, the reach can inform you how popular, timely, and interactive your postings are in general.
If a significant proportion of your followers see your posts, they’re likely spending more time looking at them as well as engaging with the content. It could also indicate that your posting plan is effective. Analysing your user engagement will assist you in determining this. If your post reach is decreasing, check to see whether your engagement levels are dropping.
Engagements
On Instagram, engagement reigns supreme. It’s an excellent platform for communicating with fans and followers, initiating discussion, and forming communities. Compared to all the other social media platforms, Instagram has the best engagement rates for brands. Engagement is the ideal place to start for any social media managers or marketers trying to gauge the success of their posts on Instagram. The amount of engagement certain posts receive and how quickly people engage with them after they are initially uploaded determine which posts appear at the beginning in the user's timeline.
The overall number of likes, comments, saves, and shares on your content are what describes engagement. By modifying your filters in insight tabs, you can have a look at the overall engagement of all of your posts.
Best Instagram Analytics Tools
Instagram Insights
If you are a content creator or have a business account on Instagram then you have total access to this Instagram insights application. This Instagram app's inbuilt analytics tool gives information on your account's performances, like reach, interaction, followers, and Instagram advertisements. Although Insights is an excellent free Instagram analytics tool, this may not be the finest Instagram analytics app for professional social media marketers. You'll need to look into other Instagram analytics tools if you want more robust, extended tracking, or if you want to export your data for a social media report.
Hootsuite Analytics
Instagram analytics can be tracked in greater depth with Hootsuite Analytics than with Instagram Insights. The Hootsuite Analytics dashboard can perform a few things that Instagram can't:
Show you statistics from a long time ago.
To acquire a historical perspective, compare measurements over specific periods.
Based on previous engagement, reach, and click-through data, this will show you the optimum time to post.
Create custom reports that can be downloaded.
Using your preferred metrics, examine specific post-performance.
In customer support chats, keep an eye on your account's response time.
Sort Instagram comments based on how they make you feel.
Creator Studio
Creator studio, on the other hand, works better on desktop rather than being integrated into the Instagram mobile app. Most of the analytics available in Instagram Insights are available in Creator Studio, but only for seven days. The calendar view in Creator Studio is a useful analytics feature that lets you know exactly when you uploaded to Instagram at a glance.
Iconosquare
Starting with an Instagram audit for company accounts from Iconosquare. This free Instagram analytics tool gives you information and keeps track of your reach, engagement, impression, likes, saves, and many other things. It also shows how your Instagram numbers compare to the platform's standard rate. A free trial of Iconosquare's pro dashboard is also available. You'll get all of the normal information, including engagement rates, follower statistics, and data from Stories, among other things.
Keyhole
Along with all of the normal Instagram metrics, Keyhole specializes in Instagram hashtag analytics and keyword analysis. It's great for keeping track of real-time promos, branded hashtags, and contests. When working with influencers, it's also a handy tool for tracking Instagram stats.
Phlanx
Phlanx offers a free, simple-to-use Instagram engagement calculator. It's convenient because you can use it to verify your personal or somebody else's Instagram account. As a result, you may utilize it to pre-screen prospective brand ambassadors and marketers. You can examine total followers, engagement rate likes, and comments on every post by just typing in any Instagram account.
