What is Instagram analytics?
You could post random stuff on your brand’s Instagram page. Eventually, you’ll hit on something that’ll resonate with your target audience. With a little skill, and a lot of luck, you could be the next world record-breaking egg.
With over 60 million likes, the world record egg has cracked social media.
Instead, you could use Instagram analytics tools and learn about your followers. Measure your performance, track likes, comments, and hashtags. You can:
- Optimize social media marketing,
- Build brand awareness,
- Increase your follower numbers,
- Get those followers to perform an action,
Instagram analytics will help you understand who’s following you and what works for them.
Why use Instagram analytics?
In June 2018, Instagram hit 1 billion active users. Do you think can analyze that amount of data? Native analytics in the platform are good, but not always practical.
Understanding the data related to your Instagram channel is essential for knowing what kind of content engages your audience. You can’t simply cross your fingers and wish on a star.
That’s why Talkwalker worked so hard, to ensure we can provide the best possible social media analytics. Check out the breakdown below to understand what metrics you can discover using our social listening tool.
1. Owned Instagram insights
The first thing you want to understand, is how your own business is doing. Say you’re a frequent Instagram poster. You could have hundreds, or thousands of posts, each collecting likes and comments, and no real way to understand them.
What Talkwalker does, is provide you with all the key Instagram metrics related to your business account in one place. The list is pretty comprehensive. You can monitor:-
- Post performance - Number, media type, URLs, and timestamps.
- User engagement rate - Number of likes, comments, saves. Post reach and impressions.
- Brand mentions - Mentions of your @handle in other people’s posts, comments, or tagged in a picture.
- Audience demographics - To help you understand the age, gender, and location of your followers.
- And stories...
Instagram Stories
Instagram Stories are big, with experts calling them one of the 5 biggest Instagram trends. That’s why we’ve ensured you can monitor all the relevant metrics related to your stories too.
That includes, reach, impressions, replies, completion rates, and exits. That’s the most comprehensive understanding of how people are engaging with your story content.
With all your key metrics in one place, you can monitor your Instagram channel effectively and efficiently.
What that means to your content strategy
Think of it this way. When creating new content, you can go off gut feeling. Or you can make data-driven decisions.
It’s like fishing. You can either keep creating loads of content, casting your net wide, and hauling in whatever audience you can get.
Or you can strategize your content. Understanding what makes your audience engage with your posts, is how you will hook them in.
Understanding your own Instagram account insights will make every single post work harder for the same cost and effort.
2. Competitor Instagram monitoring
But it’s a big ocean. And you’re not alone.
Monitoring what your audience is doing will help you maximize your content impact. But you could be missing a trick or two. Your competitors may even have found a new potential market that you’ve completely missed.
That’s why you need to monitor their Instagram posts too.
For monitoring competitor accounts, the new Instagram API does have a few limitations, although there are still key metrics to track.
When monitoring your competitors, you’re looking at content ideation and inspiration. For each individual post, you get the type of media posted (image, video, or carousel). Plus, how people engaged with that post (likes or comments). You can also monitor the follower numbers on their accounts, to see how they compare to your own.
By monitoring your competitors, you can see what they post, when they post it, and how their audience engages.
What that means to your social strategy
This gives you a better understanding of what other businesses post, how often they post, and what they post about. This will help you plan your strategy more effectively.
Think about the big things.
- Do your competitors post more or less frequently, and does that affect their engagement?
- Are there topics that competitors cover that you don’t?
- Are there some amazing content trends that you could be jumping on to improve engagement?
Knowing all this will boost your social engagement.
3. Influencer Instagram monitoring
We can’t cover Instagram without looking at influencers. These are the Instagram personalities that are driving great engagement from their audience, that brands can work with. (There’s more about the ins and outs of influencers in our influencer marketing guide).
For influencers, you have the opportunity to measure very similar metrics to those of brand pages. These include how their audience engaged with their posts, and how their audience is growing.
What that means to your influencer campaigns
If you’ve not started an influencer marketing strategy yet, you need to start now. Consumers engage with people better than they do brands. With 92% of online users willing to trust recommendations from individuals. That’s a lot of trust - that you can buy into.
With accurate monitoring, you can find the right influencers for your brand. And that doesn't mean the people with the biggest audiences. It means the ones who are regularly posting relevant copy about brands like yours, and getting great engagement from that content.
4. Instagram hashtag analytics and tracking
Now here’s the big one. Hashtags.
Yes, you can still monitor how your hashtags perform on Instagram. Although not all social listening tools have that capability, Talkwalker does.
You can track upto 30 different hashtags at any one time per business token (a restriction set by Instagram). This will find posts from both business and user accounts. For these, you can see the type of content that people are sharing, and the engagement levels for that content.
By tracking a hashtag, you can find hashtag engagement peaks, and what is driving that extra engagement.
What that means to your campaign monitoring
Hashtag tracking is an amazing hack for your content. Users now have the ability to follow specific hashtags. So by using hashtags in your campaign, you automatically share it with that audience.
They’re also a great way of monitoring campaign success. By encouraging users to share a hashtag, you can track it. Then see how well your campaign messaging is distributing throughout your marketplace.
Top tip: Struggling to decide which 30 hashtags to use? You can use Quick Search to find the trending hashtags your audience shares based on data from other social channels. Although the type of content varies between channels like Twitter and Instagram, people still use the same hashtags across them both. And this helps you find the best (and worst) ones to use.
What are the biggest use cases for Instagram analytics?
Instagram analytics offer a variety of use cases for businesses looking to maximize their presence and engagement on the platform. Here are a few key use cases:
Performance Tracking
Instagram analytics allow businesses to track and measure the performance of your Instagram account. You can monitor metrics such as follower growth, engagement rate, reach, and impressions. This helps you understand how your content is resonating with your audience and make data-driven decisions to optimize your strategy.
Content Optimization
By analyzing the performance of individual posts, you can identify the type of content that resonates most with your audience. You can track metrics such as likes, comments, shares, and saves to determine the effectiveness of your content. This insight enables you to refine your content strategy and create more engaging posts.
Audience Insights
Instagram analytics provide valuable data on the demographics and behavior of followers. You can gain insights into your audience's age, gender, location, and interests. This information helps you tailor your content and messaging to better engage your target audience and build stronger connections.
Influencer Marketing
Instagram analytics can identify and analyze influencers' performance on the platform. You can track metrics such as follower count, engagement rate, and audience demographics. This data helps you make informed decisions when selecting influencers to collaborate with. This ensures you reach your target audience effectively and maximize the impact of your influencer marketing efforts.
Competitive Analysis
Instagram analytics allow you to benchmark your performance against competitors. By analyzing competitors' Instagram accounts, you can gain insights into their strategies, content performance, and audience engagement. This information can identify gaps in your strategy, uncover new opportunities, and stay ahead of the competition.
Campaign Measurement
Instagram analytics enable you to measure the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns on the platform. You can track metrics such as campaign reach, engagement, and conversions. This data helps evaluate the success of campaigns and make data-driven adjustments to optimize your marketing efforts.
It’s time to post to Instagram (and measure the results)
To learn more about what you can do with Instagram analytics, check out our full social media analytics guide. To discover the full capabilities of social listening, and how it can improve your Instagram strategy.
If you’d like a free demo of industry-leading Instagram analytics from Talkwalker, just hit the button below.
