Recently, I explored why social media stats are important for marketing your small business. You can grab a quick recap here: hazelbrowncreative.com/why-social-media-stats-are-important-for-marketing-your-small-business
Today I’m going to drill down into your Instagram Insights and explain what you’ll find when you hit that Insights button.
To access your stats you will need to have an Instagram business profile. I really do recommend this if you want to target customers and sell your product or service via Instagram. This will really help you to get the best out of the platform and your content.
I’ve decided to drill down into the insights within the app itself to start with. You can also analyse your stats for both Instagram and Facebook in the Facebook Business Suite, but I’ll explore this in a separate article about Facebook stats.
I’ve outlined all the available stats below. It might seem like there is A LOT of information, but don’t be overwhelmed. It doesn’t need to be complicated.
Insights can be looked at across 7 or 30 days and some of the insights on the content can go back even further across 3 months, 6 months, 1 year and 2 years.
When you hit that Insights button you’ll reach the initial overview page which summarises your overall stats in terms of your reach, content interactions, your audience, content you shared and promotions.
Your reach is how many accounts on Instagram may have seen your content. Content interactions is how many interactions your content has received including likes, comments and saves. Your audience breaks down some specific details or demographics of your followers. Content you shared shows any posts, stories or IGTV videos you’ve posted over a specific time period. Promotions is where you’ll be able to find the stats on any paid promotions or ads you’ve run on the platform.
At the moment, I analyse how my Instagram account is doing every 30 days, but you may want to do this more often if you post on a daily basis or have a very large following. I pull out key information that I feel is most relevant to me and my goals for the platform. If you are yet to set your goals, check out day 1 of my 30 day Instagram challenge which you can find in my story highlights @hazelbrowncreative.
The main areas I currently look at are my reach, my top performing posts (posts can be broken down into type – photos, video, carousel) and stories based on interactions (likes, comments, saves), my audience in terms of how many followers I’ve gained or lost, their age group or gender and their most active times. I also look at content to see if it has resulted in people visiting my profile or my website. This helps me to figure out where I should focus my time in terms of the type of content I create, whether I’m reaching the right people and what is having the most impact.
The best way to figure out what’s working for you is to have a play with the platform, check your insights regularly and see if you notice a difference based on your activities on Instagram. You can also click on the ⓘ icon for Instagram’s explanation of what each of the stats mean.
Overview
Accounts Reached
Reach
– breakdown across specific days
– impressions (how many times your content was on screen)
Account Actitvity
– profile visits
– email button taps (or whatever your button is set as)
Top posts (based on reach)
Top stories (based on reach)
Top IGTV videos (based on reach)
Content interactions
Post interactions
Likes
Comments
Saves
Story interactions
IGTV Video interactions
Likes
Comments
Top posts (based on interactions)
Top stories (based on interactions)
Top IGTV videos (based on interactions)
Your Audience
Total Followers
Follower Breakdown
Growth – overall, follows, unfollows (graph)
Top Locations – cities, countries
Age Range – All, Men, Women (split into categories)
Gender – Women, Men (pie chart)
Most Active Times – hours, days
Content you shared
X posts
Posts
– Select post type – Any, Photos, Videos, Carousel posts
– Select metric – Reach, call button taps, comments, email button taps, follows, get directions taps, impressions, likes, post interactions, profile visits, saves, text button taps, video views, website taps
– Select time period – last 7 days, last 30 days, last 3 months, last 6 months, last year, last 2 years
X stories
Stories
-Select metric – back, call button taps, email button taps, exited, follows, next story, get directions taps, impressions, link clicks, forward, profile visits, reach, text button taps, website taps
– Select time period – yesterday, last 7 days, last 14 days, last 30 days
X IGTV videos
IGTV Videos
– Select metric – average percentage watched, comments, likes, reach, saves, video views, IGTV Video Interactions
– Select time period – last 7 days, last 30 days, last 3 months, last 6 months, last year, last 2 years
Promotions (option to create a promotion) This is the paid ad option which I’ll explore at a later date.
In case you were wondering about REELs (or what you could call attention grabbers!), full insights are not yet available. For now, you need to go into your REELS section to see how many plays they’ve had (a watch of more than 3 seconds counts), likes and comments.
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