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This isn't just a list of tools. It's a guide to Instagram analytics. The what, why, and how. Plus, you can download our Instagram marketing strategy checklist. It'll help you monitor your social campaigns. From the start of your story to building your online community. Brand promotion to performance measurement.
If your business targets Gen Z and Millennials, your brand should hang out on the ‘gram. If your product is Instagrammable - takes a good photo - your brand will already be there...
I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that you have an Instagram account. That the images being shared of your product aren’t only coming from users. Otherwise, seriously...
Talkwalker Instagram analytics - Instagram marketing strategy of 10 leading fashion brands.
There are over 1 BILLION people on Instagram. Scrolling, liking, sharing, BUYING!
80% of Instagram accounts follow a business. 80%!!! If your brand’s there, they will follow. They will spend their money.
Once you’re there. Once you’re winning. You’re going to need Instagram analytics tools.
Don’t believe me?
Read on…
Table of contents
- Why your brand should be on Instagram
- Why tracking Instagram analytics is vital
- What you should track on Instagram
- Talkwalker Instagram analytics tool
- Instagram analytics tools
Why your brand should be on Instagram
Instagram works. There are more than 25 million business profiles on the platform worldwide. You’ll increase visibility of your products, brand awareness, and consumer love. You’ll improve your content strategy. Take a look at seven powerful reasons to be there...
7 reasons to use Instagram...
...one of the most powerful marketing tools on the market.
#1 Over 1 billion monthly active users
More than 500 million are on the platform every day. 71% of US companies are taking advantage of this vast audience, and have jumped on the Instagram marketing bandwagon.
#2 Instagram rocks influencer marketing
Which delivers 11x higher ROI than traditional digital marketing. Want some of that?
Influencers are individuals who influence others’ behavior or opinions. You’ll find mega/celebrity influencers, macro, micro, nano, and virtual. As consumers, we’re no longer taken in by traditional marketing, turning instead to social media and influencers.
I’ve a post that’ll interest you - How to find the best Instagram influencers to promote your brand - take a look!
Virtual influencer - Lil Miquela - doesn’t exist. Yet we follower her. All 1.5M of us.
#3 #ShareACoke
Remember it? Launched in 2011, this user-generated content campaign shows no sign of stopping.
Using hashtags increases your visibility. Coca-Cola used product personalization to make its brand stand out from the crowd, with consumers encouraged to share a photo of their personalized bottles on social media. Increasing consumption by 7% in the first year.
Tracking #ShareACoke. One of the most successful UGC campaigns in marketing history.
#4 Instagram has the highest engagement rate of all social platforms, at roughly 2.7% of all posts
Consumers using app accounts for over 90% of Internet time on smartphones! Taking this into consideration, shouldn’t you be jumping onboard? Smartphone users flock to Instagram. Designed as an app, the UX is superior to other social channels that were designed for computer.
#5 Users’ addiction to Instagram Stories and livestream content
This means your business gets to flaunt its human side and interact with your followers. Go behind the scenes and show your team in action. Q&A sessions, how to videos, team building exercises, customer testimonials, company announcements.
Consumers will feel special, that they’re privy to your story. Over 100 million users are watching or creating live video every day. Give your brand a face - you’ll increase your brand awareness and build trust.
#6 It’s so easy to spend money!
Announced in March 2019, the platform will launch your personal digital mall with Instagram Checkout. Initially only available in the US, brands already onboard include H&M, Prada, Burberry, Nike, etc.
With 72% of Instagram users buying products they saw on the app, this seamless shopping experience will lock consumers in with brands.
Tap to view a product from a brand’s shopping post and you’ll see a “Checkout on Instagram” button.
#7 The ‘gram is free!
Instagram is no longer the new kid on the block. Instagram is king of the social media jungle.
Why tracking Instagram analytics is vital
Instagram analytics reveal the performance of your posts and your account. Not to be confused with Instagram metrics - individual stats - analytics help you understand the stats and find patterns.
- Instagram metric - how many followers you have
- Instagram analytic - how fast your follower list is increasing over time
Monitor your Instagram analytics so you know which campaigns are working, and which are failing. Improve and replicate. Instagram Insights gives you access to analytics for your account and posts. For a deeper dive, you’ll need to use a third-party Instagram analytics tool… like Talkwalker.
Talkwalker Instagram analytics tool - Coca-Cola - sentiment key drivers & share of emotions - one week.
What you should track on Instagram
How do you know if your Instagram marketing strategy is working? If you’re reaching your goals?
Whether you’re looking to improve your strategy, your posts and stories, increase followers, engagement… you need to dig into the metrics. Which metrics, depends on your goals.
Let’s assume you’re a brand with an ecommerce site. Looking to increase sales, metrics to track would include the amount of traffic coming from your Instagram posts to your website, and the resulting conversions.
Instagram metrics you should track...
...including...
Instagram follower demographics
Do you know who they are? If you don’t understand you audience demographics, you won’t be able to create Instagram content that resonates. You won’t know if your followers match your buyer persona.
If you haven’t done this exercise, you can download my buyer persona template and find your ideal Instagram customer - language, gender, age, location, etc.
For instance, you’re in charge of the social media strategy for a US brand selling surfboards, targeting young people. Your followers are mostly living in Europe. And… they’re pensioners. Silver surfers!
You see where I’m heading with this, right? Reconsider your Instagram content strategy and make it work for the people you want to reach.
Instagram follower growth
How many? How fast is your fan base growing?
The speed at which your followers increase is also a clear indication of the health of your Instagram account.
Follower count is considered a vanity metric. But... the more you have the better, if you want to increase the reach of your Instagram posts, want more engagement, more website traffic.
Website traffic from Instagram
Is one of your goals to drive traffic, conversions, sales? If yes, Instagram analytics of site clicks is important.
Back in the day, Instagram was a great channel for building brand awareness and communities. These days, it’s an awesome ecommerce-friendly channel. Product tagging, shoppably update for Instagram Stories, Checkout are turning this platform into a lean, mean, sales channel.
Reach on Instagram
This metric will demonstrate how much buzz you’re generating around your Instagram content strategy. It will reveal how many people have seen your posts.
Reach vs impressions?
- Reach is counted once per unique user - how many individual users accounts have seen your post.
- Impressions are counted every time your content is seen - vanity metric telling you that if a single user scrolls past your post 20 times, you’ve had 20 impressions.
While the number of impressions you’ve won can be impressive, reach has more value. Not only will you find out how many people engaged with your content, you’ll know how long they spent reading it, plus the time of day you posted.
If you see your reach dropping, adjust your posting schedule and content. Are you posting when your followers are online? Does your content target the right demographic? Make sure to check your engagement rate…
Engagement rate
This is what it’s all about. Instagram lives and breathes engagement, with the highest average engagement rate for brands of all the major social media platforms.
Build up your follower base, chat, build communities.
Why do marketers love Instagram so much? Easy… the prize. Instagram’s algorithm loves posts that earn high engagement. In its effort to always give users the best content and a positive UX, the platform prioritizes popular posts... those with the most engagement.
Is engagement the same as engagement rate?
Nope… engagement rate is a more valuable metric. It tells you whether people found your posts interesting. The percentage of people that saw your post and engaged with it. For instance…
- Post A has high reach, 49 engagements
- Post B has low reach, 49 engagements
Look at the engagement rate of Post B - low reach - and you’ll see that it resonated more with people.
If you’re looking to find your engagement rate in Instagram Insights, you’re out of luck. But, you can work it out yourself. Divide the number of engagements by the total reach of your post, then multiply the result by 100 to find the percentage.
Post with 50 engagements + 1000 reach => 50/1000 = 0.05 x 100% = 5% engagement rate.
Talkwalker | Instagram analytics tool
Some might call me biased. Some… would call me honest. I won’t tell what the others call me...
Talkwalker has the most comprehensive Instagram metrics monitoring capabilities in the industry.
End of!
Here’s a breakdown of the metrics you can track using our social listening tool.
Owned Instagram insights
If you can’t tell me how many likes and comments your posts are receiving, how can you possibly know whether your campaigns are working or not? Use Talkwalker to monitor…
- Follower demographics - age, gender, language, location, interests
- Post details - how many, media type, timestamps
- User engagement rate - comments, likes, saves, reach, impressions
- Brand mentions - when your @name is tagged in content
Instagram Stories
Instagram Stories are huge! Launched in 2016, there are now more than 500 million daily active users. Monitoring them is mandatory - reach, impressions, completion rates, replies, exits.
Make data-driven decisions when you monitor key Instagram metrics with one tool.
Tracking key metrics will help you understand what makes your audience engage with your posts, so you target your Instagram content.
Tracking Instagram hashtags
Monitor 30 hashtags at one time, per business token. From business and user accounts. If you get your influencers to include your brand hashtags in posts, you’ll increase your audience. Users just love to follow hashtags.
Monitor your hashtags on Instagram, with Talkwalker Analytics. Here’s a week of Coca-Cola.
Monitor your competition
Take a look at what your competitors are doing on Instagram. Are they targeting markets that you’ve missed? Launching new products and services? Did you miss that awesome new influencer? Woah, will you be able to dodge that oncoming crisis?
Use Talkwalker Analytics to identify the type of media they’re sharing - image, carousel, video. Discover their engagement rates - likes and comments.
Track when your competitors post. What they post. Their engagement rates.
Monitor Instagram influencers
It would be remiss of me to talk about Instagram, and ignore influencers. Instagram and influencers go together like Batman and Robin.
That’s me trying to find a reference that everyone will get…
These guys - influencers, not Batman and Robin - get awesome engagement from their followers. As a brand, exploit it!
Use Analytics to not only find the best influencers for you brand, but to measure how their audience engages with their posts, and their follower growth.
Instagram analytics tools
Check out my favorite tools...
Instagram Insights | Business profile insights
The native Instagram analytics tool provides insights about your followers and how your content is performing with your followers. You’ll see how many accounts you’ve reached in the last week, including how many people per day.
Audience demographics cover gender, age, location. These Instagram insights will help you target your content and fine-tune your Instagram marketing strategy.
If you’re looking for basic analytics about your account, posts, followers, Instagram Insights is great. Unfortunately, it’s only available to business profiles, or accounts that receive a heap of engagement. Of course, you can always create your own business profile.
It comes as part of the package, and it’s free. So that’s a biggie. But… for most metrics you can only compare the current week to the previous. That’s why… you need a third-party Instagram analytics tool.
Iconosquare | Manage multiple accounts
Manage how you post across multiple accounts with Iconosquare. Identify how your posting schedule impacts follower growth and churn.
Actionable insights to optimize your social media strategy.
The ability to manage several accounts, makes this an ideal tool for agencies. Or, businesses where that grant access to their Instagram accounts from several teams - HR, Support, Marketing, Sales.
Features include...
- Target your top followers
- Discover followers' and fans' languages, locations, and the demographics of your followers and fans - only available for Instagram business profiles
- Find out when your followers are online so you know the best time to post
- Identify what your followers like most - their interests - and target your content
- Find hashtags that relate to your content and your followers to increase engagement
- For each post, monitor how many followers you lose or gain - only available for business profiles
- Monitor your posts on a daily basis - tweak to improve
- Track competitors with business profiles - varies based on permissions
Iconosquare has a content library with high resolution images so you can populate your posts. Social media management is made easy in the editorial calendar, where you can schedule posts.
Not forgetting influencers, this Instagram analytics tool allows you to compare influencers based on their followers and engagement.
Check out SMMartbox. It’s a library of 300+ tools for social media marketers.
300+ SMM tools, including video editing/marketing, stock photos/videos, social selling, scheduling, etc.
Phlanx | Influencer engagement calendar
This Instagram analytics tool is a doddle to use.
Audit influencer accounts for real/non-active followers and see if they’re a fit for you brand.
It has an engagement calculator that analyzes the engagement rate of your accounts. You can also use Phlanx to track competitor engagement.
Features include…
- Influencer directory
- Collaboration with other brands and cross-promote
- Influencer auditor
- Engagement calculator
Influencer engagement calculator.
- Facebook/YouTube/Twitter/Twitch engagement calculator
- Marketing contract generator
- Product trials
- Insider tips and newsletter
You can even compare engagement rates…
Instagram analytics tool - Phlanx engagement rate comparison.
The Phlanx website is a mine of information. Explore the Top Lists page and find stats for YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Twitch. Most followed, viewed, like. Engagement… it’s endless.
Keyhole | Accelerate follower growth
Keyhole is another one of the Instagram analytics tools that’s increasing the social networks that it can monitor. It provides historical and real-time metrics for Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook to inspire your social media campaigns and digital marketing strategy.
Track URLs, hashtags, keywords, and @mentions. You can also monitor posts that contain your hashtag choices and keywords.
Campaign/event/brand monitoring, influencer marketing, market research.
You’ll not only find how many times a hashtag has been used, Keyhole also provides data on top posts including your hashtag and most engaging posts.
Set up an email so you receive reports that summarize all your metrics. It’ll include a graphic showing the total number of posts ad engagement rated generated by your hashtags.
Features include…
- Optimize posting tactics
- Accelerate follower growth
- Uncover competitor strategies
- Automate Instagram reporting
There’s more… you’ll be able to identify your most shared tweets, there’s a world map of topic mentions, and a theme cloud.
Social listening, social media analytics, media monitoring, social media account optimization.
Curalate | Track ROI of campaigns
“Everything you need to win on Instagram.”
Curalate is an Instagram analytics tool that curates user-generated content so that brands can sell their products directly from the social media platform.
Curalate - using images and videos created by you, your fans, your influencers.
A trackable Like2Buy link - enabling users to make purchases - means you can track the ROI of your Instagram marketing campaigns. Monitor engagement and sales metrics, along with tags and mentions. This will enable you to easily find UGC. Which you can share on your site.
Features also include…
- Scheduler - prepare and schedule your content, leave posting to Curalate
- Instagram insights - track the impact of your content and prove ROI
- Track mentions and tags - content bringing engagement and UGC to share
- Monitor campaigns, competitors, influencers - key metrics include engagement and impressions
- Shoppable stories - deliver AI-powered virtual storefronts
Source high-quality UGC, launch micro-influencer campaigns...
Locowise | Customizable dashboards
An Instagram analytics tool that enables you to make data-driven decisions about what you should post, when you should post, and how.
Over 300 metrics available, and automation as standard.
Locowise pulls out actionable insights across all the major social media channels, allowing you to measure and analyze campaigns, optimize posts, and produce reports on your social media performance.
All of this data can then be displayed on customizable dashboards with a drag and drop interface. Awesome dashboards that can be shared across your enterprise.
Neat!
Features include:
- Social audits - automated professional reports with comprehensive insights - qualitative and quantitative metrics
- Client reporting - 300+ metrics including organic and paid activities
- Campaign analysis and tracking - evaluate social media content and hashtag campaigns to find what content resonates with your followers
- Competitor benchmarking - compare your performance with your competitors’
Receive notifications about optimal content and how to manage reposting it.
squarelovin | Free Instagram analytics tool
Free Instagram analytics tools are few and far between, but squarelovin is still sharing the love.
This analytics tool gives you access to metrics on your recent posts. Your growth. A monthly analysis. Plus, historical data from your posts - year, month, day, hour.
You’ll be able to learn about your followers’ preferences and interests, and what’s driving engagement.
- Engagement - which posts your followers are engaging with means you can interact and build your account
Increase the engagement of your Instagram account.
- Optimization - find the best time to share images, the best filters, and hashtags to optimize your account
Optimize your account using historical data.
squarelovin also has an awesome blog, offering social media marketing advice, Instagram news, trends, and tips that target individual industries.
All in all, it’s a good ‘un.
Takeaway
See anything you like?
It’s an impressive collection of Instagram analytics tools, and it by no means covers all those on offer.
Here’re your takeaways… enjoy!
- Influencer marketing delivers 11X higher ROI than traditional forms of digital marketing and 94% of marketers who used influencer marketing believe the tactic to be effective. Invesp
Instagram rocks influencer marketing
- UGC images are 5x more likely to convert compared with professional ones.
Instagram is a mine of user-generated content
- Instagram has the highest engagement rate of all social platforms, at roughly 2.7% of all posts.
The ‘gram boasts over 1 billion monthly active users
And now for your free marketing essential...
Free social media templates
In the meantime...
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Find your voice and cut through the noise!
