Without the right tools, building your brand on Instagram can seem like a guessing game. Luckily, we have Instagram Insights to guide our growth strategy. Tracking social media metrics with Instagram Insights is a surefire way to create targeted content that will resonate with (and grow) your audience. With this guide, you’ll walk away knowing how to look into your insights, which metrics to monitor closely, and how to use those learnings to inform your future Instagram content. 

Understanding Instagram Insights 

Instagram Insights is Instagram’s native analytics tool. Instagram Insights gives you the inside scoop on your followers’ demographics, actions, engagement, and content performance. 

Instagram Insights help you understand who your audience is and what they’re interested in from your account. You can use the data to inform your content creation strategy, measure the success of your marketing campaigns, and refine your content to reach your target audience. 

To use Instagram Insights, you’ll need an Instagram business account. Making the switch from a personal or creator account is free and easy to do! 

Related: How to View and Change Your Instagram Profile Type 

Once you’ve got your business account set up, you can get to your Instagram Insights by doing the following: 

• Your Instagram Account: Tap the three lines in the upper-right hand corner and then on “Insights”

• Individual Instagram Posts: Tap on an individual post and then on ‘View Insights’ to see individual post analytics 

• Instagram Stories: Swipe up on your open Story to view Story analytics

The Importance of Setting Instagram Benchmarks 

Establishing benchmarks for success is a vital step in the Instagram marketing process. When you create benchmarks, you have an outline of what you need to do to achieve your Instagram goals, as well as a picture of what success looks like. You can benchmark your success by tracking key performance indicators (KPIs). 

KPIs place Instagram metrics in the context of a goal. They let you know how well individual elements of your campaign are performing. A KPI for a brand might be to reach an average engagement rate of 4.5% for weekly posts to ensure they’re reaching new audiences. An influencer might have a KPI of 300 swipe-ups on their Instagram Stories that include affiliate links to ensure they are driving sales. While metrics simply track your Instagram performance, KPIs judge your success on specific Instagram marketing objectives.

Creating Benchmarks for Success

So how do you identify KPIs for your account? Start by identifying your goals. What do you want out of your Instagram account? Your goals could be an engaged community, more website traffic, more sales, etc. 

Once you identify your goal, it’s time to find the appropriate KPIs. For example, if your goal is to grow your follower count, you’ll need to consider reviewing your overall weekly reach. Reach gauges how many people see your post. The more people your content reaches, the better chance you have for increasing your follower growth. 

When you set your goals, make them SMART. Here’s an example of establishing a SMART plan. 

1. Specific: “I want to increase engagement by aiming for 10 reshares or comments on my Instagram in-feed posts.”
2. Measurable: “Weekly, I will keep track of the number of reshares and comments on each post.”
3. Achievable: “To increase engagement from my followers, I will modify my captions to encourage more discussions and make my content more shareable.”
4. Relevant: “My in-feed content should be educational and entertaining based on what’s worked well in the past with my followers.” 
5. Timely: “By the end of the next month, I hope to increase my average engagement rate.”

Instagram Metrics to Track

Here are six Instagram metrics you can track to help you reach your Instagram marketing goals:

• Impressions –  How many times has your post been seen. 

• Trending Hashtags – Popular hashtags with the most followers that are relevant to your target audience. Using these can boost your impressions and engagement rate.

• Referrals – You can track how many times people click the link in your bio, as well as how many website visitors come from Instagram (this second metric will be in your website analytics).

• Story Engagement – You can track your Story’s unique views, completion rate (how many people view your Story in total), and the number of people who sent you a DM from your story.

• Reach – How many people see your post.

• Engagement Rate – Interactions such as likes, shares, comments, and saves added together, divided by the number of followers, and multiplied by 100 will give you your engagement rate. It shows how many of your followers are interacting with your content.

Related: Instagram Engagement Rates: Do More Followers Lead to Better Engagement?

How Your Metrics Should Inform Your Content Strategy

Using Instagram Insights, you can create a content strategy tailored to your target audience. The first step here is to analyze your follower demographics. This gives you a good understanding of who you’re speaking to when you create content. 

Next, look at the posts that performed the best. Compare them to other posts to decipher what elements made them more effective. While this might take some trial and error, it will ultimately give you a set of guidelines for creating high-performing posts. 

If this process seems a little overwhelming, you’re in luck. PLANOLY’s analyze feature on the web dashboard includes advanced analytics that shows your audience insights and metrics for your grid posts and Stories. It helps you see what content works best with your audience, and it’s all in one place. Using the analyze feature, you can easily track:

• Detailed Follower Data: How your audience has grown in a specific date range, plus the number of followers you’ve gained or lost. 

• Post Engagement Overview: the number of posts within a specified date range, along with the number of likes and comments that post received. 

• Content Performance Totals: Helps you compare likes and comments between certain data ranges.

Note: Free PLANOLY users have access to basic analytics like the number of followers, likes, and comments. With a paid PLANOLY plan, you have access to in-depth metrics like content performance averages, a view of top posts and stories, and engagement metrics for any given time frame!

PLANOLY Pro-Tip: You can even use analyze to repurpose or reshare high-performing content, maximizing its value to your strategy. 

How to Use Analyze on PLANOLY’s Web Dashboard

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You’re all set! Watch the tutorial above on our analyze feature (web dashboard) to create a killer strategy on Instagram. We can’t wait to see the content you create!