The world of social media and the most popular social media platforms is constantly changing. New platforms, features, trends, and more all contribute to an evolving landscape that can be hard to navigate.
Despite these often moving targets, many things in social media do end up passing the test of time. Facebook is now more than two decades old. X, formerly known as Twitter, was founded in 2006. YouTube in 2005. So while plenty of things in the world of social media do constantly change, some things have changed much less.
This brings us to Instagram. Originally founded in 2010, Instagram was purchased by Facebook (now Meta) two years later in 2012. Since then it has exponentially grown its user base, from roughly 110 million in 2013 to an estimated 2.4 billion users today. This remarkable growth shows the social media platform’s ability to not just stand the test of time, but turn itself into one of the most powerful social media platforms in the world.
So, while the world of social media changes all the time, these factors have allowed Instagram to stand out as a strong place for brands and users to connect. But to really use Instagram to its full extent, you need to know how to manage, understand, and utilize Instagram analytics.
What are Instagram analytics and why do I need them?
Instagram analytics are insights that help you figure out how well your content is performing. They can also reveal information about your audience that guides your Instagram content strategy.
This guide will walk you through the most important Instagram analytics and data insights to explain what they mean and how you can use them to maximize performance.
Instagram analytics provide detailed information about which types of content work best for your brand based on how people are interacting with it. Detailed Instagram analytics for photos, videos, Stories, Reels, and even your account profile as a whole are available for brands and publishers. These Instagram analytics connect brands and publishers with their audience closer than was previously possible.
Instagram analytics and statistics are important to understand and use if you want to maximize growth. You can improve your Instagram reach, engagement, and general effectiveness by measuring and analyzing these metrics on a regular basis and making changes to your social media content strategy based on what you find.
How do I use Instagram analytics to improve performance?
Instagram analytics act as a guide for social media managers. By understanding the individual metrics, what they mean, how they are calculated, and what they are telling you about your content and audience is how you use them.
For example, social media managers use Instagram engagements to find out which kinds of posts resonate the most with their followers. They might use Instagram impressions to understand how favorable the content was in the eyes of the Instagram algorithm. Instagram comments can provide direct audience feedback into a piece of content or post.
The way to use Instagram analytics is to understand what the metrics are telling you and to take that information into account to improve your Instagram content strategy.
What are the different types of Instagram posts?
In order to understand Instagram analytics it’s also critical to know how they vary based on the type of post you’re measuring. Not all types of content share the same metrics.
For example, Photos do not track Watch Time but Video Posts do. Stories will have Forward taps and Back taps but not Comments.
This does change over time, as Instagram occasionally adds new post formats, styles, and types, but the current types of Instagram posts are;
Photo Posts: Instagram Photos are single images that are shared in posts
Carousel Posts: Instagram Carousels are multiple images or videos shared side by side within a single post
Video Posts: Instagram Videos are a type of content that includes a video clip ranging in length from a few seconds to several minutes
Live Videos: Another type of Video Post recorded and broadcast to your audience in real-time
Stories Posts: Instagram Stories are short, temporary posts that appear at the top of your social media timeline and disappear after 24 hours
Reels Posts: Instagram Reels are short-form video posts typically limited to 60 seconds
What are the different types of Instagram analytics?
There are several types of Instagram analytics that social media managers focus on. For managers working at big brands, publishers, and agencies, or any social media manager measuring both paid and organic data, they’ll often focus on all three.
Owned : Owned content refers to content and digital assets that your brand or organization creates, controls, and distributes
Earned: Earned content is any material written about a brand or business not paid for or created by the brand itself
Paid: Paid content refers to content that brands or businesses pay to distribute to wider audiences
What are the most important Instagram analytics?
Oftentimes you’ll hear social media managers referring to account-level metrics or post-level metrics. These refer to what specifically is being measured, an entire account or an individual post.
For example, measuring Impressions at the account-level will give you a much larger number than the same metric at the post-level because they are measuring two totally different things.
There are also platform-level metrics, but since we’re just talking about Instagram analytics today we don’t need to get into those.
Here are the account-level metrics and post-level metrics available for Instagram.
Account-level metrics
Followers: Instagram Followers is the total number of users who follow the account
Follower growth: Instagram Follower growth is the net number of followers gained less the number of followers lost
Profile views: Instagram Profile views are the number of times the account has been seen
Impressions: Instagram Impressions are the total number of times your content has been displayed, including multiple views by the same person
Views: Instagram Views are the total number of times a video has been seen
Watch time: Instagram Watch time is the total amount of time viewers have spent watching a video
Engagements: Instagram Engagements is the total number of interactions that users have had with your content
Engagement rate: Instagram Engagement rate is the total number of engagements per impression
Audience demographics: Instagram audience demographics are characteristics of an account’s followers that include Age, Gender, Country, and U.S. city
Post-level metrics
Impressions: Instagram Impressions are the total number of times a post or story received when it was displayed on feed
Reach: Instagram Reach is the number of unique accounts that have seen this post or story at least once and different from impressions, which can include multiple views by the same account
Views: Instagram Views are the number of times a video has been seen
Watch time: Instagram Watch time is the total amount of time that viewers have spent watching a video
Engagements: Instagram Engagement is the total number of times people have interacted with a specific post
Engagement rate: Instagram Engagement rate is the number of engagements per impression
Forward taps: Instagram forward taps are the total number of times someone tapped forward to the next story
Back taps: Instagram back taps are the number of times someone tapped back to the previous story
Story replies: Instagram Story replies are the total number of messages sent in response to a story
Story swipes up: Story swipes up are the number of times someone swiped up to reply to the story
Next story swipes: Instagram next story swipes are the number of times someone swiped to the next story in their feed
Exit story taps: Instagram exit story taps are the number of times someone exited a story
Story completion rate: Instagram story completion rate is the percentage of impressions that watch the whole story
Shares: Instagram shares are the number of shares a post or story received
Audience demographics: Instagram audience demographics at the post-level include Post Followers, Profile Visits, Total Interactions, and Profile activity
What else can I do with Instagram analytics?
Depending on the social media analytics tool that you’re using, sometimes you can get even more out of your Instagram analytics.
Measure Studio helps social media managers get more from their Instagram analytics by empowering them to create custom metrics. These custom social media analytics that are only available in Measure Studio help social media managers get more in-depth Instagram insights than the platform alone provides.
Social media managers for brands, agencies, publishers, and managing multiple accounts can use Measure Studio to calculate Total Impressions or Total Views across multiple Instagram accounts. It also reveals which brands and accounts are top performing, which can guide future social media content strategy creation.
Do I need an Instagram analytics tool?
Beyond available metrics and insights are other benefits from using social media analytics tools to manage your Instagram data.
Social media analytics tools like Measure Studio let social media managers analyze all their accounts from one dashboard, without having to log in and out of different accounts.
Measure Studio also makes like easier for social media teams to manage their content library with tags, filters, and searchable data that’s easy to navigate and doesn’t require scrolling through months of content to find a single post.
How do I maximize my Instagram performance using analytics?
Using Instagram analytics effectively is crucial to maximizing your growth and performance. By understanding these insights clearly and how they connect to your content you’ll be able to harness them to set clear goals, establish successful content strategies, and grow your influence.
The best way to do this is with a high-powered social media analytics tool like Measure Studio.
How do I use Measure Studio?
It’s easy! You can schedule a demo with one of our experts here, or you can simply sign up for a free 14-day trial and try it out yourself.
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