Instagram Analytics 101
As a beauty pro, it is important to measure your content’s performance on Instagram. Why? So you can learn which content your audience likes the most and continue to create that type of content. Doing this will make your content creation process more efficient. You can measure your content’s performance using Instagram analytics.
Instagram analytics (also referred to as Instagram Insights) are metrics that allow you to learn more about your account’s followers and performance. Insights can tell you who your followers are, where they are located, and which content of yours they interact with the most. You can use these metrics to help make decisions about what type of content you should or shouldn’t create in the future. There are many ways to check the insights for your page but the most common way is through the Instagram app. To locate your analytics, visit your profile, then click “Insights” near your Instagram highlights.
After opening your Insights, you will see your Insights Overview. The Insights Overview gives an overview of your analytics for a selected date range. It includes your accounts reached, accounts engaged, and total follower growth. Next, I will walk you through each section of the Insights Overview and how to check the analytics for specific posts.
Accounts Reached
This is the number of unique accounts that have seen your content at least once. This includes posts, stories, reels, videos, lives, and ads. This insight will tell your more about the accounts that your content has reached; including their location, whether or not they follow you, and which types of content reached the most accounts.
Accounts Engaged
This is the number of accounts that have interacted with your content. Interactions include actions such as likes, saves, comments, shares, or replies. This insight will tell your more about the accounts that engage with your content. Including their location, whether or not they follow you, and which types of content they interacted with the most.
Total Followers
Use this insight to measure your follower growth over time. This insight will tell you where your followers are located, their age range, their gender, and when they are most active on Instagram.
Next, we’ll dive into how to check the insights for specific posts. When you scroll to the bottom of your Insights Overview, you will see a section titled, “Content You Shared”. This is a summary of the content you shared for the specific date range. To check the insights on the posts you shared, click on posts.
This will open up all of your posts from the past year sorted by reach. Use the buttons at the top of the page to change the sort order or filter. You can change the post type, the metric, and the date range. The posts will automatically be sorted by the best performing (based on the metric you select) to the worst performing. Select the button at the bottom of the screen to sort from newest to oldest. Change the metric filter to quickly see which posts performed the best based on reach, interactions, follows, or more.
To see insights for a specific post, tap on the post. You will then get detailed insights for that post and learn how many accounts it reached, how many accounts engaged with it, and how they interacted with the post.
So which analytics matter?
The analytics that you measure and pay attention to will depend on your goals and they will change over time. For example, if your goal is to increase brand awareness; reach, impressions, and follower growth will be good metrics to track. If your goal is to increase engagement on your page, you’ll want to measure content interactions. If your goal is to drive people to your website to book an appointment, you’ll want to measure website clicks. The metric you track will be determined by the goals of your posts, content, and business.
Tracking your Instagram analytics over time will allow you to measure your content’s performance and help you create content that helps you reach your goals in the future.