How do you know your marketing strategy on Instagram is working? What kind of content works best for your audience? What audience types are interested in your business?
When you use Instagram as a marketing channel, you get a ton of valuable data about your audience and their behaviors. With Instagram Insights you can understand important aspects like – who is your audience, what content works for them, which product is a hit, etc., to know how well your business is performing on Instagram. Here’s a ready reckoner of all the different ways that you can leverage Instagram insights for your brand.
1. How to View Insights on Instagram?
You’ll find your Instagram Insights by tapping on the menu icon in the top right corner of your Instagram profile. Click on the “Insights” tab, which will show you the overall analytics for your business profile.
If you have recently switched to a business account, it will only show you the analytics for posts and stories you published after the switch. Once you open your Instagram Insights, you’ll have access to a ton of metrics and analytics for your posts, stories, and audience demographics.
2. Basic Metrics on Instagram Insights
We’re going to break down Instagram insights into two parts – first, the basic metric that you can find in your analytics, and second, calculated metrics to help you study the data.
Let’s start with the basics:
A. Profile insights
(i) Follower count
It tells you the number of people who are currently following you on Instagram
(ii) Impressions
The impressions metric on your profile insights tell you the number of times all of your posts have been seen.
(iii) Reach
This metric tells you the number of unique accounts that saw any of your posts.
(iv) Profile views
Your profile views let you know the number of times your profile was viewed.
(v) Website clicks
This metric tells you the number of times visitors clicked the link in your bio – whether it took them to your website or an online storefront.
(vi) Call/Email clicks
It tells you the total number of clicks on your email and call details.
(vii) Posts
This insight keeps a count of the number of posts published on your profile.
(viii) Mentions
Keep a count on the number of Instagram accounts that have mentioned your profile with this metric.
(ix) Branded hashtags
Branded hashtags let you keep a count of the number of accounts who have used your branded hashtag.
B. Instagram Audience Insights
(i) Gender
This metric tells you the gender distribution of your followers – men or women.
(ii) Age
You can also know the age distribution of your followers and they are usually categorized by 13-17, 18-24, 25-34- 35-44, 45-54, 55-64, 65+.
(iii) Top locations
You can also find out the top 5 cities and countries where your followers are from. Knowing this metric lets you identify the time zones of your audiences so you can post accordingly. It also lets you know the general understanding of your audience – whether or not English is their first language, what kind of environment are they currently living in (weather-wise, politically, etc.) that will help you curate your content better.
(iv) Followers – Hours
Know the average time (in hours) your followers are on Instagram on each day of the week – this will help you understand what time they are most active, on a particular day.
(v) Followers – Days
You can also identify the best days to post your content by studying this metric that tells you the days of the week when your followers are most active on Instagram.
The audience data lets you know who you’re talking to daily and when are they most active on Instagram to have these conversations with you. For example, if you are catering to a younger audience, you should post more often since they are mostly active on Instagram throughout the day. Also, you may see better engagement on weekends, giving you the perfect space to schedule your best content when your audience has more time to engage with it.
C. Instagram Posts Insights
(i) Impressions
Let’s start by knowing the number of times your post has been seen. Whether your audience saw your post while scrolling through their feed or clicked through your business’ profile to view a photo or even if they received it from a friend on their Instagram Direct – it counts for an impression.
(ii) Reach
Reach tells you the number of times unique accounts saw your post.
(iii) Likes
How many unique accounts liked your post?
(iv) Comments
How many users commented on your post (these also include your comments posted as replies)?
(v) Saved
This is the hottest new metric to track and tells you how many people saved your post on Instagram.
(vi) Engagements
The engagement metric tells you the number of people who liked, shared, commented or saved a post. It is important to know that this metric does not take into count multiple comments from the same user – which may happen in case of competition or giveaway.
(vii) Views
This metric is specifically for video posts, reels and IGTV. It tells you the number of views you got on your video. It is important to note that a view is counted only when someone watches your video for a minimum of 3 seconds.
(viii) Audience Retention (IGTV only)
The audience retention metric tells you how long your video could keep your audience’s attention. As a marketer, you have to strive to make your videos have a greater retention value. This metric is also a great tool to let you know what the ideal length of your videos should be.
D. Instagram Stories Insights
(i) Impressions
The impressions are the number of times a particular photo or video has been seen in your story.
(ii) Reach
The reach tells you the number of unique accounts that saw a particular photo or video on your stories.
(iii) Exits
The exit metric tells you the number of times someone exited your story. While a user doesn’t necessarily have to skip your story to get recorded in this metric, it also takes into account when someone clicks on a link in your story.
(iv) Replies
How many people replied to a particular photo or video on your story?
(v) Peoples insight
This is a list of all the accounts that have seen a particular photo or video in your story. You can also check out their Instagram accounts by simply clicking on their handle on the list.
E. Instagram Live Insights
(i) Live viewers
You can see the number of people who are currently watching your live video on the top right corner of your screen and you can also see who they are.
(ii) Viewers
Once you end the live stream, you can see the total number of people who saw any part of your Instagram Live.
3. Calculated Metrics for Instagram Insights
While all of these metrics are important and give you a lot of information about your audience and what’s working for them – it is important to collectively view the data to get a more holistic understanding of how your business is performing.
These calculated metrics let you go one level deeper than the Instagram insights explained above, by using those metrics to calculate more powerful and performance-driven metrics.
Let’s take a look at the 4 most commonly used calculated Instagram insights:
A. Growth
As a marketer, you want to pay attention to how much your metrics are growing month after month, so you can track the progress.
This simple calculative metric allows you to see the change in any metric you choose. You could use this metric to track your growth in followers, impressions, reach, replies, clicks, engagement, etc.
You have to choose a time frame to track the growth – like comparing growth in months. For example, your engagement in January as compared to December.
For example, if you wanted to calculate the growth in engagement for February, your formula would look like,
B. Rate
The rate metrics like the name sounds gives you a percentage figure to help you understand a particular metric relative to another metric. As a marketer, especially when you are also budgeting for creating content, it is important to calculate the rate of engagement, clicks, and completion to understand your return on investment or organic content).
The follower count is the default and common denominator used for this calculated metric.
For example, if you wanted to calculate the completion rate to calculate the percentage of people who viewed all of the photos and videos in your stories on Instagram, the formula would look like this,
C. Average
If you want an overall, general look at your Instagram insights, use this metric to calculate it. This is usually used by marketers to get a benchmark of the performance of posts in a particular time period (especially if you were running a campaign or discount).
You could calculate the average likes, comments, engagement, saves on Instagram posts in a particular month. You can also use this metric to figure out the best days of the week to go live. Simply calculate the average number of viewers for your live videos on different days of the week to determine the best day.
D. Top Performing
It is important for you to identify your top-performing posts to know what is working for your audience. By ranking your posts based on engagement, impressions, reach, engagement, saves, and views, you can shortlist your top-performing posts on Instagram. Instagram lets you identify your top-ranking posts based on their impressions, engagement, comments, reach, likes, and views.
Try to find patterns and similarities that will help you understand what made those posts such a hit (was it the content, visual, or a discount coupon) so that you can attempt to repeat the success.
That was everything you could possibly want to know about Instagram Insights. As a marketer, it is also important to understand Instagram’s algorithm to ensure that your content gets the most attention. Here’s our ultimate guide to understanding how to crack Instagram’s algorithm.
If you are new to the Instagram business and need help to optimize your profile, identify your objectives, and create a successful content strategy, we have the only guide you will ever need.
With social media always upgrading to something new, here’s space for you to find answers to all your questions and of course, inspiration. You’d love what we have built at the InVideo community – a place for you to connect and learn from 15,000+ other marketers, business owners, and creators like yourself.
