Understanding Instagram Insights
Understanding Instagram Insights is important for anyone who wants to effectively analyze their Instagram account's performance!
Our entire goal on social media is to connect with our audience, and that all starts with a deep understanding of them. We would probably sound like a broken record if you tallied how many times you've heard us stress, "you need to define your audience," "you need to find out what they like to see and be where they are." With Instagram Insights, you can gather all kinds of conclusions about your followers, content, engagement, and how your strategy is working.
In order to do so, we need to be able to read Instagram insights, know what they mean, and know how to leverage them.
First, let's define the most common insight metrics:
Impressions: The total number of times your content has been seen by users.
Reach: The number of unique accounts that have seen your content.
Profile views: The number of times your profile has been viewed.
Website clicks: The number of times users have clicked on the link in your bio.
Follower demographics: Insights into the age range, gender, and location of your followers.
Top posts: The posts that have received the highest engagement, such as likes, comments, and saves.
Engagement:
What can these insights tell us about our content?
Impressions: How many times it is show up on someone's screen
Reach: How many people are seeing my content
Profile Visits: How many people were interested in learning more
Website Click: How many people followed your CTA
Follower Demographics: How is following us and if they match our target market
Top Posts: What topics and post types stuck out to your audience the most
Engagement: How interesting, valuable, and/or engaging your content is
What Instagram insights are the most important to track out of these? All insights are important to consider when looking at the bigger picture. But, ultimately, it all depends on the social media and business goals, so refer to your strategy for this one! We also want to be conscious of vanity metrics on social media. Just because metrics look great, doesn't mean they have benefits for our business. For example, you might have 10k followers, but if you only have 2 loyal customers, you might be focusing to much on vanity over value.
When looking at insights, we want to be sure to also consider the timeframe. Instagram allows you to view for specific time periods, such as the past 7 days or the past month, and beyond. This feature enables you to track changes in your account's performance over time and compare different periods. We want to dive into this to see how audience preference, audience demographics, and overall content performance are changing over time.
In conclusion, Instagram Insights can help you optimize your Instagram strategy. By tracking your insights, and adapting your content accordingly, you can achieve greater success and engagement on Instagram. By analyzing these metrics, you can gain valuable insights into your audience's behavior and adapt your strategy around those preferences.
Learn more about Instagram insights and strategy in our Building a Social Savvy Brand course.
