Deciding on Instagram Analytics Data to Be Tracked for Profiles, Posts, and Stories

With one-billion-plus users and the highest rate of engagement among all social media platforms, Instagram is a happy hunting ground for brands, big and small. According to studies shared by hootsuite.com, 80% of users follow at least one business on Instagram. Even though this is very exciting for you as a business owner, if you do not know who visits your profile or sees your advertisements or how your posts are actually performing, you easily be wasting your time and effort. Some of the top analytics discussed:

Profile Analytics

Numerous metrics can be accessed via the “My Profile” page of your Instagram account, such as the number of impressions, reach, and website traffic. Impressions are essentially the number of times your Instagram post may have been exposed to users in a particular period of time. Reach is the number of unique users who have seen your post while interaction denotes the total number of actions that have taken place on your account, and the number of profile visits. You can also find out the number of times visitors have clicked on your website link in the bio section to visit your website and the number of mentions of your account handle made by users.

Audience Analytics

Even though you may have an idea of who your ideal customer is in terms of demographics, you need to find out if the users who are seeing and engaging with you on Instagram are actually the people you want to target. With Instagram audience analytics, you can find out lots of useful details like the top five cities and countries where your followers reside, how old your followers are — they are classified into seven age groups for convenience as well as their gender. You can also establish the days of the week when your followers are the most active as well as the amount of time they spend averagely on Instagram.

Individual Post Analytics

After having tweaked your content and advertising to attract the right kind of followers, you will also need to find out about the performance of individual posts so that you can establish whether the content posted by you is resonating with your followers.

The top metrics that you should keep track of include the number of interactions, which are the different actions taken directly on your Instagram post like visits to the profile, real Instagram likes, clicking on the URL or the CTA button.

You can also find out the number of accounts who are not your current followers who have reached you through discovery. Other important metrics involved are the number of follows, which refers to the number of users who have followed from a particular post, the reach, which is the number of unique users that have read your posts, as well as impressions, which is the count of the total number of times that your post was viewed. The analytics also reveal the number of times your post was saved by your followers to their personal saved folder and the number of comments that you post has generated.

Instagram Stories Analytics

Instagram Stories, inspired by Snapchat, has been runaway success since its launch, and there is an ever-increasing deluge of stories as more and more brands rush in to take a wonderful opportunity of addressing their followers in an informal and fun way. Using Stories, brands can reach out to a larger audience or increase their exposure to their audience more substantially.

Some of the vital statistics that you can track through analytics are the number of impressions and reach as well as the number of exits, which refers to the number of people who abandoned the story without completing the view and the total number of replies that your story has generated. Using People Insights, you can even find out which users have viewed a particular section of your story.

Deciding on the Data to Be Tracked

The sheer volume of data available through analytics can be overwhelming and it may simply be impossible to track them all. Before you wade into it, you need to revisit the reason why you set up the Instagram profile because then you can have a clearer idea of the relevant metrics that you can track.

Build brand awareness: The metrics that are most important are follower count, impressions, and reach. An increase in the follower count is an indication of the growth in awareness of the brand, which indicates that your profile is resonating well on Instagram. The number of people with the opportunity of seeing your posts as reflected by the number of impressions is crucial to a boost in brand awareness. As far as brand awareness growth is concerned, perhaps the most important metric is reached, which is the actual number of unique accounts that viewed your post.

Generate leads/conversions: The top metrics to be considered are website clicks, call/email clicks, and the time of maximum engagement. Tracking how many Instagram users are clicking on the website link is an indication of how compelling your posts are. If the number of calls and emails increase, it is an indication of the success of conversions. By figuring out when your followers are more engaged, you can schedule your content posting as well as advertisements.

Building a community: If the principal aim of an Instagram presence is community building then you should pay more attention to comments, story replies, and engagement. Having a conversation sparked off by a comment on a post is a great opportunity to engage with followers as are the replies to the Instagram Stories that you post. The engagement level of all your activities on Instagram, including advertisements, is a critical indicator of the interest level of your followers.

Conclusion

Marketing campaigns on Instagram can be made far more productive when you are able to figure out if you are being able to address your target audience in the right way that enables optimum brand awareness building, conversions, and community building. Using Instagram analytics is the most effective way of finding out what your account performance is so that you can adjust it for better results.

Originally published at https://www.appypie.com on May 1, 2019.