Instagram Insights are an invaluable resource that are often forgotten and overlooked. The data available takes the guessing work out of what is working (and what isn’t!) with your audience allowing you to create content that will really resonate with them. Whether you're a seasoned social media manager or just starting your journey, mastering Instagram Insights can really elevate your brand's performance on social media. In this blog post, we'll dive deep into the latest features and updates of Instagram Insights and show you how to leverage your insights to achieve your social media marketing goals.
What exactly ARE Instagram Insights?
Instagram’s Insights is a dashboard within your Instagram account which allows you to view and monitor various metrics and data about your audience and their interactions with your content. Put another way, it collates information on your audience and helps you understand where they are within your marketing funnel.
Instagram Insights is available to those with Business or Creator accounts only, and can only be viewed on the mobile app (not the desktop version).
Why should I be using Instagram Insights?
As we know, the “social” aspect of social media is all-important. There’s no point in creating content if it’s not being seen or interacted with by your intended audience. This little corner of your Instagram account is packed with data that can help you find out if your content has the reach and impact you intend. It also lets you compare how different posts are performing to enable you to generate content you know will be well-received.
How to navigate your Instagram Insights
On your Business or Creator profile, tap “Professional dashboard”. You’ll be presented with several different options, starting with an overview of your account’s performance over the last 30 days in terms of:
- Accounts reached – this shows the number of individual users who’ve viewed your content in this time period.
- Accounts engaged – this shows the number of individual users who have not only viewed, but also interacted in some way with your content in this time period.
- Total followers – quite self-explanatory, but also worth noting the percentage that appears below your number of total followers, as this indicates how your following has grown over this time period.
- Content you’ve shared – this will tell you how many pieces of content you’ve posted (including static and carousel posts, Reels and Stories) within this time period.
You can expand each of these (by tapping the arrow to the right of them) to view different timeframes and more detail.
Back on your dashboard, you’ll also have a ‘Your tools’ section.
If you tap “Inspiration”, you can see content that’s popular with your followers. This can be a fabulous insight into trends that are specific to your particular audience - remember that not all trends are universally appealing!
Your ads-related insights are also located in this part of the dashboard so, if you have any paid ads, you can monitor them at the same time as you’re monitoring your other insights.
How do I interpret my Instagram Insights?
Your Instagram Insights shouldn’t just be something you check occasionally out of idle curiosity—you should be regularly using them to drive and re-align your Instagram strategy. By this we mean that your Insights are a window into the effectiveness of your content. To understand why, let’s break down each of the four main Insights categories and examine each one more closely:
1. Accounts reached
When you expand this section, you’ll get the opportunity to view the data for different timeframes, from the last seven days up to the last 90 days. This page shows you how many individual users have viewed your content within the selected timeframe, and one of the metrics is the percentages of followers versus non-followers viewing your content. This is valuable information, because if, for instance, the percentage of non-followers was low, you may want to think about your strategy for reaching new accounts and growing your following.
You’ll also be able to see how your reach metrics compare with the previous time period – so if your reach was significantly better for the month of May compared to the month of April, for instance, you would want to think about what your strategy was in May, and how you can replicate that approach.
2. Accounts engaged
This is arguably more important than the “Accounts reached” Insight because, whilst we of course want as many eyes as possible on our content, we especially want to leverage the interactive nature of social media to develop a deeper relationship with our audience.
Once again, you’ll be able to specify what timeframe you’d like to analyse in terms of recent engagement, and you’ll be able to see your follower versus non-follower engagements. If you’re noticing a lot of non-followers are taking the time to like, save, share or comment on your content, think about how you could take that a step further to convert them to followers; a call-to-action such as “follow us to be the first to hear about our special offers” might be just the gentle encouragement needed to get them to hit the “Follow” button!
3. Followers
This part of your Insights dashboard is absolute gold. Your target audience are your single most important consideration when you’re creating content, so you want to be as familiar with them as you can be. Your Followers page displays the number of follows and unfollows you’ve had in the time period you’ve selected, but – more importantly – it tells you about who they are. You can look at the top towns/ cities and countries your followers are based in, their age range, gender and also what times and days they’re most active on Instagram.
Not only does this give you valuable insight to enable you to do demographic and geographic profiling on your target audience, but it also tells you when to post in order to have the best chance of your content popping up in their feed when they’re online!
4. Content you’ve shared
You’ll be able to choose a timeframe of up to two years for this section of Insights, which can be an incredibly helpful bird’s-eye view of your journey. This section will let you view all types of content sorted either chronologically or according to performance, and based on either reach or engagement.
You can also tap individual posts to drill down and get even more detail. In particular, it’s worth looking at profile activity, near the bottom of the page, because this shows how many users have visited your profile and followed you as a result of viewing that particular piece of content. High levels of profile activity mean that your piece of content is working hard to drive more people to your bio. Result!
This is super helpful when you want to look back and see what types of posts have performed well in the past, so you can produce more similar content; on the flip side, it also helps identify content that wasn’t particularly well received, so you also know what not to do again.
Now what?
So now you know how to plan your content creation process by using your Instagram Insights…but content creation itself and gathering the data is still a huge job, right? What if you could combine creating content with client & team collaboration AND content scheduling all in one tool? Using a scheduling or social media management tool to streamline your content creation process and save precious time is essential whether you’re a social media manager juggling multiple clients or an entrepreneur striving to maintain a consistent posting schedule. Rapidely just might be the answer to your prayers! It allows you to create, plan, schedule, and view all your analytics in one place! Say goodbye to switching between platforms to get your social stats and hello to having everything in one convenient place. Rapidely lets you view your stats for linked accounts, manage comments, and even identify and track your biggest fans. Come & try it out for yourself here (free trial available).
