It's pretty simple, the first account understands what their audience wants. The latter needs to understand what's working for them and what's not.
Here's a little secret: If you want to grow on Instagram, start caring about what your audience wants to see instead of what you want to show them.
You can also interpret your audience more effectively if you put your Instagram insights in use. That's exactly what you'll learn in this article going forward.
An in-depth guide to Instagram insights and some tools that can help you grow and accelerate your business on Instagram.
So, let's get to it.
First things first, If you own a personal account; you won't get access to Instagram insights.
Here's how you can change your personal account to a business account:
Go to settings > account > switch to professional account.
Image source: https://napoleoncat.com/blog/understand-instagram-analytics
Once you switch to a professional account you'll then be asked for the kind of account you would like to go ahead with, i.e a creator's account or a business account.
Be sure to select 'business account' if you're providing services to people or want to sell your products.
In case you're an influencer, you can create a 'creator's account' for yourself.
Now that you have decided to go ahead with a business account, connect it with your Facebook business page (if you have one).
If you don't have a Facebook business page for your business, Instagram will automatically create one for you. Once your pages are interlinked, you're all good to go!
To get access to your Instagram data analytics and to understand them better, go to your profile, and tap on 'Insights'. Here you get access to your Instagram analytics for the last 7 days.
Image source: https://napoleoncat.com/blog/understand-instagram-analytics
To summarise it all, here's what these analytics mean:
Below, you will also find an overview of the content you have shared in the last 7 days.
To learn more about the kind of content that's working for you, Let's dig in deeper!
To measure your reach, tap on 'accounts reached'.
Image source: https://napoleoncat.com/blog/understand-instagram-analytics
Here's a brief explanation about these analytics shown above:
In order to grow on Instagram, we recommend keeping an eye on Impressions from ‘hashtags’. Account activity helps you keep track of the number of people visiting your account.
If you scroll down you'll see some categories such as top posts, top stories, and top IGTV videos which simply mean that the posts, stories, and videos mentioned here have been seen by a lot of Instagram accounts and have a higher reach than others.
Pro tip: The more people interact with your content, the more your impressions are likely to increase. The more number of Impressions you have, the more you become visible on Instagram.
As the word suggests, content interactions are the number of times people have engaged with your content.
Your content Interactions also depend on your followers and the way you interact with other businesses on Instagram.
It is always advisable to engage a lot while you're just starting out on Instagram.
The top posts, top stories, and the sections of the top videos are based on the highest number of engagements they have received from your audience in the last 7 days.
Here's a pro tip: Instagram growth = more interaction from your audience = more business.
It's no lie that having a lot of followers on Instagram is quite impressive and also the need of the hour, especially because your customers rely on "vanity metrics" and you're always being compared to your competitors.
But as a business, it is really important for you to understand that your followers should be genuine. Here's how you can understand your followers better based on your Instagram analytics:
You can keep track of your follower growth on a weekly basis.
The number of people that have followed you and unfollowed you in the past 7 days is recorded here.
Below, is a graph that allows you to get a better understanding of your followers, based on the specific days of the week.
You can also analyze some particular days when your follower growth is much higher and schedule your content accordingly.
- The top locations graph allows you to see the top five cities and countries where your followers are located.
- The age range gives you a fair understanding of how old your followers are.
- Your followers are also categorized based on their gender.
And lastly, here's a boon for us all: Instagram analytics decide the best time for you to post based on certain hours and days of the week.
It is really advisable to post during these particular hours/ days to increase your reach and visibility on the platform.
Here are some additional 'post analytics' for you to understand: Once you have uploaded a post on Instagram,
tap on 'view Insights' which will take you here:
Image source: https://www.reddit.com/r/Instagram/comments/bcnulc/a_lot_of_people_seeing_my_post_from_other
The pin comment feature is trending at the moment since you can just pin some of your favorite things people have to say about your post and attract quite a lot of eyeballs for your content.
Pro tip: Also, did you know that the more saves your post gets, the more likely the Instagram algorithm will position your post higher in people feeds, or even on the Instagram explore page!? Well, that's a tried and tested trick. So make sure your content is useful, something that people can't help but save for later!
Instagram stories seem to have changed a lot since the past couple of years, they're more than just a story sharing feature.
Pro tip: For businesses, it is necessary that they keep on updating their stories on an hourly basis. Using stickers and polls is always a good idea.
Here's a quick glance at what your Instagram story insights actually mean:
Image source: https://later.com/blog/instagram-stories-analytics
You get access to two sets of data analytics: viewers and Interactions.
Now that you've understood how Instagram insights work here are some really cool apps that can help you strategize your content based on your metrics and make things easier for you.
If you're a social media manager with a lot of clients to handle at a single time, then this app lets you do it efficiently. Scheduling, uploading, and managing content on this one is a piece of cake.
It also offers online webinars and conferences to provide education on how to better optimize their tools and resources.
However, the mobile app doesn't provide any sort of analytics given the fact that the app is quite on the expensive side.
An advantage of using Hootsuite is the interface, which is organized by tabs, allowing users to divide engagement activity into social networks and streams.
They also happen to provide you some customizable templates that help you track, analyze, and monitor your performance with each social media network.
Though, they have a lot of information to offer to their users; their app can get a little tricky sometimes because of a lot of data provided in a single tab.
Later has a lot of advantages over providing you insights and scheduling your posts.
Once you have subscribed to their daily emails, you also recieve some really cool tips and tricks that work like a charm!
They also happen to suggest hashtags for your everyday content uploads, which is a great feature.
Though everything is pretty great about their app, they lag behind when it comes to good customer support and solving a problem.
Also, it's a little expensive when compared to others.
Iconosquare provides some really insightful story analytics which is quite beneficial if stories are a part of your marketing strategy.
The tool also provides helpful breakdowns of your audience demographic details, including gender split, age-ranges, and locations.
The tool includes a content calendar to plan and schedule your Instagram content, including the opportunity to tag other accounts and add locations for more engagement.
Although when it comes to posting images that are larger in size, you might have to resize them for Iconosquare. They also happen to send some frequent emails, which might be a little too much for some people out there!
This app comes with a competitor's insights section which lets you understand the kind of reach, impressions and visibility your competitors are gaining on Instagram.
While you can keep track of your competitors, this app also helps you with the hashtags that are working for them. This app comes with free email reports delivered to your email directly.
The analytics charts, even though quite informative come with unremovable watermarks which can be a bit of hassle while Inserting them in your presentations.
The free account only shows insights up to 7 days (which is quite less detailed than the Instagram app itself)
Now that you're aware of how your Instagram Insights work, be sure to make good use of them.
These analytics, while quite a common data metric for almost all the businesses out there can completely make or break it!
Have a good day!
It's pretty simple, the first account understands what their audience wants. The latter needs to understand what's working for them and what's not.
Here's a little secret: If you want to grow on Instagram, start caring about what your audience wants to see instead of what you want to show them.
You can also interpret your audience more effectively if you put your Instagram insights in use. That's exactly what you'll learn in this article going forward.
An in-depth guide to Instagram insights and some tools that can help you grow and accelerate your business on Instagram.
So, let's get to it.
First things first, If you own a personal account; you won't get access to Instagram insights.
Here's how you can change your personal account to a business account:
Go to settings > account > switch to professional account.
Image source: https://napoleoncat.com/blog/understand-instagram-analytics
Once you switch to a professional account you'll then be asked for the kind of account you would like to go ahead with, i.e a creator's account or a business account.
Be sure to select 'business account' if you're providing services to people or want to sell your products.
In case you're an influencer, you can create a 'creator's account' for yourself.
Now that you have decided to go ahead with a business account, connect it with your Facebook business page (if you have one).
If you don't have a Facebook business page for your business, Instagram will automatically create one for you. Once your pages are interlinked, you're all good to go!
To get access to your Instagram data analytics and to understand them better, go to your profile, and tap on 'Insights'. Here you get access to your Instagram analytics for the last 7 days.
Image source: https://napoleoncat.com/blog/understand-instagram-analytics
To summarise it all, here's what these analytics mean:
Below, you will also find an overview of the content you have shared in the last 7 days.
To learn more about the kind of content that's working for you, Let's dig in deeper!
To measure your reach, tap on 'accounts reached'.
Image source: https://napoleoncat.com/blog/understand-instagram-analytics
Here's a brief explanation about these analytics shown above:
In order to grow on Instagram, we recommend keeping an eye on Impressions from ‘hashtags’. Account activity helps you keep track of the number of people visiting your account.
If you scroll down you'll see some categories such as top posts, top stories, and top IGTV videos which simply mean that the posts, stories, and videos mentioned here have been seen by a lot of Instagram accounts and have a higher reach than others.
Pro tip: The more people interact with your content, the more your impressions are likely to increase. The more number of Impressions you have, the more you become visible on Instagram.
As the word suggests, content interactions are the number of times people have engaged with your content.
Your content Interactions also depend on your followers and the way you interact with other businesses on Instagram.
It is always advisable to engage a lot while you're just starting out on Instagram.
The top posts, top stories, and the sections of the top videos are based on the highest number of engagements they have received from your audience in the last 7 days.
Here's a pro tip: Instagram growth = more interaction from your audience = more business.
It's no lie that having a lot of followers on Instagram is quite impressive and also the need of the hour, especially because your customers rely on "vanity metrics" and you're always being compared to your competitors.
But as a business, it is really important for you to understand that your followers should be genuine. Here's how you can understand your followers better based on your Instagram analytics:
You can keep track of your follower growth on a weekly basis.
The number of people that have followed you and unfollowed you in the past 7 days is recorded here.
Below, is a graph that allows you to get a better understanding of your followers, based on the specific days of the week.
You can also analyze some particular days when your follower growth is much higher and schedule your content accordingly.
- The top locations graph allows you to see the top five cities and countries where your followers are located.
- The age range gives you a fair understanding of how old your followers are.
- Your followers are also categorized based on their gender.
And lastly, here's a boon for us all: Instagram analytics decide the best time for you to post based on certain hours and days of the week.
It is really advisable to post during these particular hours/ days to increase your reach and visibility on the platform.
Here are some additional 'post analytics' for you to understand: Once you have uploaded a post on Instagram,
tap on 'view Insights' which will take you here:
Image source: https://www.reddit.com/r/Instagram/comments/bcnulc/a_lot_of_people_seeing_my_post_from_other
The pin comment feature is trending at the moment since you can just pin some of your favorite things people have to say about your post and attract quite a lot of eyeballs for your content.
Pro tip: Also, did you know that the more saves your post gets, the more likely the Instagram algorithm will position your post higher in people feeds, or even on the Instagram explore page!? Well, that's a tried and tested trick. So make sure your content is useful, something that people can't help but save for later!
Instagram stories seem to have changed a lot since the past couple of years, they're more than just a story sharing feature.
Pro tip: For businesses, it is necessary that they keep on updating their stories on an hourly basis. Using stickers and polls is always a good idea.
Here's a quick glance at what your Instagram story insights actually mean:
Image source: https://later.com/blog/instagram-stories-analytics
You get access to two sets of data analytics: viewers and Interactions.
Now that you've understood how Instagram insights work here are some really cool apps that can help you strategize your content based on your metrics and make things easier for you.
If you're a social media manager with a lot of clients to handle at a single time, then this app lets you do it efficiently. Scheduling, uploading, and managing content on this one is a piece of cake.
It also offers online webinars and conferences to provide education on how to better optimize their tools and resources.
However, the mobile app doesn't provide any sort of analytics given the fact that the app is quite on the expensive side.
An advantage of using Hootsuite is the interface, which is organized by tabs, allowing users to divide engagement activity into social networks and streams.
They also happen to provide you some customizable templates that help you track, analyze, and monitor your performance with each social media network.
Though, they have a lot of information to offer to their users; their app can get a little tricky sometimes because of a lot of data provided in a single tab.
Later has a lot of advantages over providing you insights and scheduling your posts.
Once you have subscribed to their daily emails, you also recieve some really cool tips and tricks that work like a charm!
They also happen to suggest hashtags for your everyday content uploads, which is a great feature.
Though everything is pretty great about their app, they lag behind when it comes to good customer support and solving a problem.
Also, it's a little expensive when compared to others.
Iconosquare provides some really insightful story analytics which is quite beneficial if stories are a part of your marketing strategy.
The tool also provides helpful breakdowns of your audience demographic details, including gender split, age-ranges, and locations.
The tool includes a content calendar to plan and schedule your Instagram content, including the opportunity to tag other accounts and add locations for more engagement.
Although when it comes to posting images that are larger in size, you might have to resize them for Iconosquare. They also happen to send some frequent emails, which might be a little too much for some people out there!
This app comes with a competitor's insights section which lets you understand the kind of reach, impressions and visibility your competitors are gaining on Instagram.
While you can keep track of your competitors, this app also helps you with the hashtags that are working for them. This app comes with free email reports delivered to your email directly.
The analytics charts, even though quite informative come with unremovable watermarks which can be a bit of hassle while Inserting them in your presentations.
The free account only shows insights up to 7 days (which is quite less detailed than the Instagram app itself)
Now that you're aware of how your Instagram Insights work, be sure to make good use of them.
These analytics, while quite a common data metric for almost all the businesses out there can completely make or break it!
Have a good day!
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