7 Important Instagram Analytics You Should Know for Your Business

Before we talk about Instagram Analytics, first let’s talk about why Instagram matters to marketing.

You know what they say, Instagram is a marketing powerhouse. Instagram marketing is believed to be beneficial for business and brands. Just take a look at this info-graph.

Instagram is now the go to platform that every business should be using. If you are not get on it right now.

This social media platform offers some features that you can take advantage to make your business flourish such as Instagram ads, news feed and stories. These tools also help accomplish your marketing goals.

But how beneficial exactly is instagram?

Let’s see what the number say.

Instagram currently has over 1 billion active monthly users. It only trails Facebook (2 billion) and You Tube (1.9 billion) in this category.

Among 1 billion, 110 million people are from the USA.

Pretty amazing right?

Wait there’s more.

Instagram also has over 100 million photos posted each day. Which makes Instagram most powerful tool to grow your business. 80% of all Instagram accounts follow a business profile.

It has also been observed that 200 million people on Instagram visit business profiles on a daily basis.

Numbers like these prove that Instagram can be so much more than just a picture sharing app.

Savvy businesses can utilize this reach to grow their customer base quicker than ever before.

Instagram has also proven that it is able to grow and adapt with growing trends such as instagram stories.

Instagram now allows you to convert your profile very easily to a business profile which allows you to track many of your Instagram analytics through Insight.

Insight is Instagram’s free metric tracker located internally in the Instagram application.

Converting to an instagram Business Account is as easy as 1–2–3

By now it should be evident that Instagram is a very popular and growing platform that reaches a wide global audience.

So let’s jump in and take a look at 7 important Instagram analytics that will help you to master your instagram marketing game.

1. Learning About Your Audience/Customers

Understanding your customers is the key to achieving your goals. Whether it’s creating an engaging content, boosting sales or even building the customer experience, you have to know your audience.

Knowing your customers’ hows and whys will allow you to make a better product and stay ahead of the competition.

Instagram analytics breaks down your customers by their specific demographics, age group, gender, and location. You can use this information to focus your marketing campaign in these areas.

Instagram analytics will also help you understand what your customers are searching the most and their sentiment. You can leverage this information to come up with a keyword or hashtag that will be effective for your customers and brand.

2. Data Driven Content

I know what you are thinking data driven content isn’t a part of Instagram analytics.

Let me explain

By studying your business’s Instagram analytics you will be able to pinpoint what posts are most popular and most effectively engaging with your customers.

You can utilize a number of different metrics over many different time ranges. This will allow you to find out what is working and replicate it with similar posts.

No longer will your posts be a crap shoot. You will have numbers that back up your instincts.

Step 3 is more important…

3. Learn The Best Timing For Your Posts

You have to know when your targeted audience hang out in Instagram to get more engagement.

The good news is you can easily know it.

You can look at your posts over the course of a week or month and learn when you received the most views and engagement from your audience.

Or, you can use instagram analytics tool. But we’ll get to that part later in the blog.

Learning about timing will also help you understand that poor timing may be the cause of lower audience engagement. Your content may be great but without this knowledge your time and effort will be wasted.

4. Engagement Rate

When referring to Instagram metrics, engagement refers to how often other users either like or comment on your post. Engagement means that the viewer had to make an effort to display their feelings about a post.

Most digital marketers will agree that engagement type metrics are some of the most important numbers to track.

High engagement from your audience relates to better success across all of your social media platforms.

Engagement rate breaks down the engagement metric a little further.

Engagement rate compares the likes and comments in relation to the total number of followers your company has.

This helps to give you a percentage that you can track as your followers grow over time.

You will understand if the amount of engagement you received on a post is good or not.

To track the engagement rate there is a fairly simple calculation to find the engagement rate percentage.

You must be thinking the same ugh math right.

Don’t worry You don’t have to be mathematicians to calculate this. The equation is fairly easy.

If you have 1000 followers and received 300 likes and comments you may think this was a very successful post but you are only getting 30% engagement rate (300/1,000) x 100 = 30% Engagement Rate.

Receiving 300 likes and comments while having 1,000 followers it would be viewed as a much more effective post than if you have 10,000 followers.

Use the same formula and check it out:

(300/10,000) x 100 = 3% Engagement Rate

Engagement rate does help you understand the amount of reaction from your audience but it does not always tell you if the reaction was positive aka sentiments.

Sometimes a controversial post could receive a fair amount of negative comments, which could give you the wrong impression. To understand the types of comments received you would need to review a sample of the comments to understand the overall feeling.

Engagement rate is best to be tracked over a period of time. You can track it weekly, monthly, quarterly and yearly. The results you get over a larger time period will help you determine how effective your posts are.

Even if your engagement rate may not be as high as some other business types, you can compare your posts and see which ones are receiving more engagement.

It has also been found that video posts get 38% more engagement than picture posts. This means that putting a little more effort into your posts by shooting a video may pay dividends in the long run.

5. Follower Growth Rate

Follower growth rate is another metric that is very important when trying to understand your Instagram analytics. Follower growth rate is often confused with follower count.

Follower growth rate breaks down how much your follower account has grown over a period of time. This gives you a much better view of if your company’s following is growing or is experiencing a lull.

Similar to engagement rate, follower growth rate can be found with a pretty basic calculation.

For example:

If you have gained 75 new followers over the month of September and you started the month with 1000 followers you can calculate your follower growth by:

(75/1000) x 100 = 7.5% Follower Growth Rate for Sept.

You can then continue to track this metric over time to determine trends in your follower growth rate. Follower growth rate will allow you to better make predictions for the future and make goals for your business account.

Conversely:

If you have a negative follower growth rate (are losing followers) you can hopefully find what types of posts are giving you this negative result.

By tracking when your growth rate decreases you can take steps to make positive changes.

Keep an eye on the steps I’m about to show you.

So let’s talk about what steps can you take to try to increase follower growth rate

• Post consistent content.
• Post quality/informative content.
• Upload videos as well as photos.
• Utilize Instagram Stories.
• Use popular hashtags.
• Collaborate with related business sectors.

Follower growth rate can be very telling to how well your business is expanding. If more people are interested in following your Instagram account it can often translate to more people using your product or service.

1. Hashtag Performance

Hashtag performance is a very important metric, specifically for Instagram. Hashtags (#) are tags added to posts to help people find your post by a specific theme.

People can search specific hashtags through Instagram search to find posts that relate to things they are interested in.

By adding popular hashtags to your posts it will instantly make your posts become more visible to a much larger audience.

You must be wondering why does it seem so familiar?

If you are in digital marketing like me SEO is a buzzing word you always hear.

For non digital marketing readers SEO is search engine optimization. It’s a process to show up at the first page of Google.

Hashtags is SEO for instagram. For SEO purposes we use “focus keywords” and for instagram we use hashtags.

Simply put, hashtag popularity shows you the best type of content to post for more exposure and better engagement.

For example, if you own an auto repair shop you can search the top rated hashtags related to car repair. This will help you to use images or videos that deal with these hashtags.

Tracking hashtag performance can sometimes be tricky because most of the data you are able to review will be historical. With past data it is difficult to participate in the current hashtag trends.

Here’s why:

At Keyhole we offer a number of innovative tracking methods when it comes to Instagram hashtags. We are able to track at the account level as well as campaign usage.

You can also use our service to find secondary hashtags that compliment your primary hashtag.

Some people may think that hashtags are cheesy or a waste of time but when it comes to being visible on Instagram they are vital. Using hashtags, especially while they are trending, will allow you to reach customers that may never have known you existed before.

7. Engagement For Instagram Stories

Instagram Stories is a more recent addition to the Instagram platform and most powerful tool. Instagram Stories allows you to post photos, videos, surveys or links (to outside websites).

Instagram stories allows followers to know that items found in Instagram Stories are always fresh content provided within the past day.

They are a great way to send short snippets of content to your followers. They are popular because you can look through several of them in a very short time span.

Of all Instagram Stories, 1/3 of the most viewed stories come from business profiles

What are the most important metrics to track in Instagram Stories?

• Reach — Shows you how many unique accounts viewed your story.
• Exits — Tell you which slide users were on when they exited your story.

Reach is important because it gives you an idea of how many people have shown an interest in your content by viewing your Stories. This number should increase over time as you produce more quality content.

Exits can show you which slide was the least popular in the line of story posts. If someone exited your Instagram Story through a certain post it shows that it was not well received.

Another metric that relates to exits and can be useful is Taps Forward. Taps Forward shows when a user skips forward to the next slide. Like Exits, it may also show posts that are not received as well as others.

Since all the posts to Instagram Stories disappear within 24 hours they are a little more tricky to track the metrics.

However, the information from them can be very effective and useful to your business. At Keyhole, we specialize in tracking Instagram Stories.

Lets look at some of the Instagram Story metrics we track in real time.

• Reach
• Impressions
• Exits
• Taps Back
• Taps Forward

Instagram Stories is a great example of how Instagram has continued to grow and position itself as one of the premier social media platforms. Instagram Stories have become very popular and provide another way for your business to reach your customers.

Now let’s focus on top 4 Instagram Analytics Platform where you can best compile these metrics we talked about.

Top 4 Instagram Analytics Platforms of 2019

1. Instagram Insights

Instagram Insights is the free analytics software you receive access to when you convert your Instagram account to a business account. One of the key measures it provides is what types of people are interacting with your business profile. Instagram Insights helps you learn about their:

• Gender
• Age Range
• Location

Instagram Insights also lets you see which posts and stories your audience has engaged with the most. This can be helpful when trying to find out what types of posts work best for your company. Instagram Insights can also distinguish between content that you have paid to promote and content that has been posted organically. This can be helpful when trying to decide if it is worth it to pay extra to boost certain posts.

What metrics can I expect?

• Reach
• Accounts Reached
• Impressions
• Impressions By Day

One benefit of using Instagram Insights is that it is located within your Instagram app. This is convenient when you are trying to track information while also having your profile within the same program.

Using Instagram Insights is as easy as…

Instagram Insights is a great free way to get your feet wet with analyzing your Instagram analytics. It offers most of the basic tools to understand your business’ metrics but doesn’t offer some of the more customizable tools to really break down your numbers.

2. Keyhole

Keyhole is a premier Instagram analytics tool that can be used to really help you better understand your Instagram account. Keyhole offers all of the basic analytics offered by Instagram Insights along with a wealth of more advanced metrics and customizable reports.

One key tool that sets Keyhole apart from the competition is their hashtag analytics tool. The best part of this feature is that it gives you information in real time. You do not have to wait until the next day or next week to find out what the hashtag trends are. This allows you to post content with hashtags that are currently trending and then see in real time how your content is performing.

Keyhole’s hashtag tool lets you see the total number of posts using your hashtag, the overall impression, reach and engagement rate. You are then able to download these reports into easily printable PDF or Excel Spreadsheets.

Keyhole’s hashtag tool also tracks Instagram influencers who are using your hashtags. You can reach out to specific influencers in your industry and work with them to promote your brand. Then, through Keyhole, you are able to track how effective the influencer promotion was, in real time.

How is the information sorted?

All of the hashtag tool information is displayed on an easy to read dashboard. On the dashboard you can also view related hashtags that go well with your main hashtag. This helps you increase your overall reach by adding relevant hashtags. The dashboard will also show which geographic areas are most receptive to your hashtag campaign.

Related popular hashtags for #artofvisuals in real time

Another popular feature offered by Keyhole is the ability to track your competitors’ Instagram accounts. You can see how your competitors are performing in certain areas and learn what is working for them. You can track their growth, activity and engagement data. You can then use this data to compare to your own key performance indicators (KPI).

Keyhole also allows you to set up a customizable dashboard with the performance indicators that you use the most for your business. This saves you time when trying to find your most used metrics.

You might be asking what types of metrics can be on your dashboard?

• Follower Growth
• Engagement Rate
• Optimal Posting Times

Overall, Keyhole provides all of the basic Instagram analytics offered by most platforms but sets itself apart with some if its more advanced real time features. Keyhole also offers a free trial so you can see if it works for your company.

3. Hootsuite Analytics

Hootsuite Analytics works as a combination Instagram post scheduler and analytics suite. The Instagram post scheduler helps you to plan out your posts over a period of time. This helps you keep on track with your post timing schedule and post consistent content on your profile.

Hootsuite also offers a full analytics suite that is much more customizable and detailed than the basic offerings from Instagram Insights.

What are the advanced features?

• Past Data
• Comparing Metrics Over Time
• Create Custom Reports
• View Instagram Comments As Positive Or Negative

Another key feature of Hootsuite Analytics is the ability to integrate multiple social media platforms together so that you can analyze them along with your Instagram metrics. This is helpful if your business is active among multiple social media platforms such as: Facebook, Twitter and Snapchat.

Hootsuite Analytics is a great tool to help you combine content posting and analytics. It can really help to keep your posting schedule organized and then let you analyze how effective they were.

4. Sprout Social

Sprout Social is a platform that specializes in content planning/publishing and analytics.

With the content planning and publishing you can track your content themes across all of your social media platforms, including Instagram. Sprout Social’s software can also help you to optimize the best times and days to send your Instagram Posts.

Sprout Social also gives you campaign and conversation management tools. The software provides your business with a unified inbox to better manage your follow up with your audience. This helps to build strong customer relationships.

What else is offered?

Measurement and strategy is also provided through the Sprout Social platform. You can track the engagement on your top performing posts including: comments and likes. You can also view reports on follower growth, and hashtag trends across multiple profiles. These reports are all customizable to coincide with your specific business KPI’s.

Sprout Social is a great combination of content creation, content scheduling and analytic tools. Sprout Social also offers a free trial so you can make sure this is the right platform for your business.

So what does all this mean?

Understanding your Instagram Analytics is vital to growing your business’s following on Instagram. Instagram is such a large forum that you can use for free to reach millions of people. Understanding what metrics to follow and how to combine metrics will help you to increase your followers and post engagement.

Instagram as a part of a well rounded marketing plan can help you reach new customers in areas you may have never tried otherwise.

Hopefully, by now you understand that understanding Instagram analytics is:

#IMPORTANT