You can measure your Instagram page’s success with likes and comments if you manage it for yourself. But to the owners of business accounts, it is unforgivable to use the same methods. It is necessary to publish and track the dynamics. If you buy Instagram followers (you can check out HowSociable), you need to know which post caused a resonance, and after which one Instagram user got more active.
There can be no successful social media marketing strategy without proper analytics. It helps you understand how successful your campaign is, measures performance, provides a lot of useful information and answers important questions.
In this guide, we will look at what metrics and features are on Instagram Analytics and explain how you can use them to improve your Instagram marketing performance.
Main statistics indicators
Instagram has a lot of metrics to help you understand campaign performance and page maintenance strategies. These metrics can be obtained from Instagram Insights and other analytics tools.
Most of the available metrics can be considered as basic metrics like comments, likes, stories and video views, and followers. Later, we will tell you how to calculate more complex indicators: growth, average, coefficients.
Instagram profile analytics metrics: Number of followers, impressions (the total number of views of all posts), profile views, reach (the number of unique users), clicks on call and email, clicks on links, branded hashtags (the number of posts using your hashtag), mentions, posts.
Audience analytics metrics: gender, age (13-17, 18-24, 25-34, 35-44, 45-54, 55-64, 65+ years), geography, and follower activity by day and hour.
Posts analytics metrics: impressions (the total number of views), likes, comments, reach (the number of Instagram users who saw the post), video views, engagement: The sum of unique users who liked the post, saved it, and commented.
Stories analytics metrics: impressions, reach, replies, exits.
Live analytics: viewers at a time, total viewers (those who saw at least part of a live stream).
Now there is no built-in tool for analyzing live videos – you need to record it manually or take screenshots.
Calculation of more complex indicators
Growth
Growth metrics help to understand the change in the dynamics of a certain indicator. For example, you can find out how the number of followers grows over time.
(Indicator at time 1) minus (Indicator at time 2) divide by (Indicator at time 1)
Examples of metrics: subscriber growth, impression growth, engagement growth, clicks growth, story response growth.
Rates
Relative metrics help you evaluate a metric comparable to another. The engagement rate is the percentage of profile followers who interacted with a specific Instagram post.
(Indicator) divide by (Number of subscribers at the time of posting)
The common denominator for this formula is the number of subscribers. The result is a relative rate per subscriber.
Examples of metrics include impression rate, reach rate, view rate, click-through rate, exit rate, completion rate.
View Rate helps you calculate the percentage of users who have fully viewed all Instagram Stories. It is calculated by dividing the number of views of the last story by the first.
Average
Averages provide a benchmark for assessing the overall performance of Instagram posts. For example, the average number of likes for a post helps understand how much subscribers like the posts.
The sum of indicators over some time (for example, all likes for posts in January) divide by number of posts over a period of time
The common denominator for these metrics on Instagram is the number of posts over a given period. For example, you can calculate the average number of viewers for Instagram videos on different days of the week to determine which day is best for live streaming.
Examples: average comment rate, average reach, average reach for Stories, average viewers of live streams.
Top
These are not metrics per se, but they are still valuable to a marketer and analyst. Based on the best posts in terms of viewability, comments, likes, reach, engagement, you can understand what posts subscribers like and make new posts based on the data received.
Examples: the best posts, the best videos, the most commented, and liked posts.
photo credit: HubSpot blog
Free analytics tools
Instagram Insights
Instagram shows almost all the metrics that we talked about above in its own analytics tool – Instagram Insights.
To access Instagram analytics, you need to switch your profile from regular to business, if you have not already. Then find the button to the right of the settings icon and click on it. Important: Instagram Insights is only available on mobile apps.
Top posts
In this section, Insights shows the top six posts from the last week, sorted by impressions. To view statistics for all records, click “See More”.
Three indicators can filter statistics: post type (all, photos, videos), metrics type (impressions, reach, engagement, comments, views (for videos), a time interval (week, 30 days, three months, six months, a year, two years).
Stories analytics
The main screen displays active Stories that have been posted in the last 24 hours. To view the analytics of all publications, you need to click “See more.”
There you can see the statistics of stories by two filters: metric type (impressions, reach, exits, “forward” touches, “back” touches and responses), and time interval (24 hours, 7 days, and 14 days).
Followers
This section shows what hours and days of the week your Instagram audience is most active. Detailed statistics include indicators of the subscribers’ number (and growth over the last week) and distribution by gender, age, city, and country.
Promotions
Here you can see statistics for Instagram ads. Since Instagram uses the Facebook advertising system, you can also measure the ad performance in Facebook Ads Manager.
In conclusion
Statistics can be grouped by post type, metrics, and timeframe. We have given all the existing points by which you can detail the effectiveness to understand your profile’s strengths and weaknesses.
Instagram Insights is an internal Instagram service and is also free, so you don’t need to search, download, pay extra – everything is already there. Use analytics to help you achieve your goals more productively.
