When it comes to using Instagram for your business, data and insights are your best friend. The data that Instagram provides helps you to understand your audience; how they do things, what they prefer, and who they are. They help you to measure the impact of your marketing efforts to see if you need to do anything differently- should you change your target market? Do you need to post at a certain time of the day? Are you posting the right type of content? In this blog we will outline everything you need to know about Instagram insights: how to access them, what they mean, and how you can use them to improve your Instagram strategy.
How to access insights:
- Firstly, you need to ensure that your profile is set to public. Go to your Instagram profile, tap on the hamburger menu in the top right corner, hit settings, and ensure that under privacy your account is set to public.
- Next, you need to make sure that your account is set as a business account. Go back into the menu, tap account, and select “switch to professional account”. Follow the prompts to set up a business account.
- You can now see your Instagram insights! Go into the same menu on your Instagram profile, and tap insights. Note: you will only be able to see insights on content that was posted after you made the switch to a business profile.
What your insights mean:
Instagram insights are split into three different tabs; activity, content and audience.
Activity- Under the activity tab, you will notice two sets of Instagram insights; interactions and discovery. Interactions refers to actions such as profile visits, website clicks, emails or calls that other Instagram users have made on your profile. You can see which day of the week has the most interactions, as well as compare the interactions from the previous week. Discovery displays the overall performance and influence of your Instagram account. This is shown by two metrics; reach and impressions. Reach refers to the number of accounts that have seen your posts. Impressions refers to the number of times your post has been seen.
Content- Under the content tab, you will be able to see insights relating to individual posts on your profile. The content tab is split into posts, stories and promotions, allowing you to see the individual metrics for all content you have published. This tab gives you a brief overview of the content’s insights, but you can get a more in-depth view by clicking on the post and tapping view insights.
Audience- The final tab in Instagram Insights is audience. Here you can get a better understanding of your audience such as where they live, their gender and their age range. You are also able to see how your follower number varied from the previous week.
How you can use Instagram Insights to improve your marketing strategy:
Instagram insights can tell you exactly what you should be posting, when you should be posting it, and who you should be targeting. The first step to using Instagram insights to improve your marketing strategy is looking at user engagement (likes, comments, saved posts) as this is a really good indicator of what style of content your audience likes to see. Look at what posts have the highest levels of engagement; perhaps posting videos generates more engagement, or maybe your audience wants to see sneak peaks of products? By knowing what your audience likes, you can produce content that is similar in the future. Also look at what posts are causing your audience to contact you or visit your website; are they responding better to bright images featuring promotions, or are they responding to photos of real-life customers with your products?
Once you know what content your audience responds to the best, you need to know when the best time is to post in order to extend your reach. Test out different times of the day or different days of the week to see when your content receives the best results, compare, and decide on a time or day when you should be posting.
Test different calls-to-action on posts to determine which CTA’s result in more user engagement. Try out different types of language or try creating a sense of urgency to see what style your audience responds best to.
The bottom line is there is no Instagram marketing strategy that is perfect. What might work for one business, may not work for you. That is the beauty of Instagram insights; you can get a clear picture of the right type of content you should be posting, as well as the markets you should be targeting and the time you should be posting. Use these insights to outshine your competitors and reach your business goals; data will forever be your best friend!
