If you are struggling to gain more followers or having trouble engaging with your audience, you may not be using a tool to its fullest extent. You need data. And more specifically, you need Instagram Insights. Today’s marketers need to utilize data for successful digital campaigns, especially with social media. Fortunately, platforms are aware of this and have created analytical tools for you to use. You may have heard of these and possibly are using them already. We will discuss how to use Instagram’s analytical tool so that you have all the Instagram insights you need to improve your marketing efforts.
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Why Should I Use Use Instagram Insights?
Before we get into exactly how to use Instagram Insights, let us talk about what it is first and its importance. Instagram Insights is an analytical tool that Instagram business accounts use to view data on their profile and posts. It is worth mentioning that only business account users are able to retrieve this data. Personal accounts do not have access, but we will get into how you can make the switch over in a little bit.
The power of data and insight into your social media strategy is limitless. With this tool at your disposal, you can greatly improve your brand marketing. For example, you will have a way to measure your digital efforts. You will have data on what is working and what is not. Maybe you will learn to target a specific group of your audience. Or even target a completely different audience. More so, you will have granular information so you know what is the optimal time of day to make a post or what the best type of content is.
The amount of insights Instagram can give you can help enhance your content strategy with driven results. However, you should be aware that every brand and business is different and has unique goals. Before you jump in head first, determine what your business goals are. Then you will be able to utilize Instagram insights to its fullest by knowing which metrics matter to you.
How to Use Instagram Insights
Creating an Instagram Business Profile
The first step in how to use Instagram Insights is to create an Instagram business profile. The social media platform restricts Instagram Insights to business accounts only. So do not worry if you are scrolling through the app looking for it and cannot find it. It just means that you have a personal account right now, but that can be easily switched over. There are also many other benefits to an Instagram business profile. You will be able to add in additional contact options for your followers and utilize Instagram Ads to reach your customers. It definitely is worthwhile to have a business profile for Instagram Insights and more.
Facebook bought Instagram a few years ago, so the two social media platforms are intertwined. You may already have a Facebook page for your business which puts you one step ahead. If you do not, you should create one because you will need to connect it with your Instagram account. Once you have that all set, follow the steps below to switch to an Instagram business profile. You can also create one from scratch.
Switching Your Personal Account to a Business Account
- Turn your Instagram profile to Public. A business profile cannot be set to private.
- Navigate to your Instagram profile and tap on the settings icon in the top right corner.
- Tap on “Switch to business account.”
- You will be prompted to connect your account with your Facebook Page. Please note that if you have not already created your page, you can at this step. However, it will be a generic page and may be hard to unlink down the road.
- Confirm your business profile details and click “Done.”
You have now converted your account over to a business account. That was easy! You will have access to many new features and tools such as retrieving Instagram insight for your future postings.
Viewing Instagram Insights
There are a few ways to begin using the Instagram Insights tool. On your profile page and within the settings menu, you can select “Insights.” Additionally, you are able to access Instagram Insights through each of your posts and stories, but we will get into those a little later.
As you are familiarizing yourself with these different ways, going through the profile page will give you the most Instagram insight. Within Insights, the data is broken down into three tabs: Activity, Audience, and Content. Each of these tabs contains its own metrics and knowing the difference between them all is essential in knowing how to use Instagram insights.
Activity Instagram Insight
Under the Activity tab, the two Instagram insights you can retrieve are Interactions and Discovery. Interactions are the total number of actions taken on your Instagram account in the last week. You can view the number of times your profile was visited and how often your contact links were clicked on like your website link, email address, and phone number.
The Discovery set looks at your profile’s overall performance using Reach and Impressions. Reach is the number of unique people that saw your posts, while impressions are the total number of times your post was seen. The same person could have seen your post five times but will only account for one person in your reach. These two metrics are some of the most important in evaluating how well your efforts are paying off.
Audience Instagram Insight
With the Activity tab, you gain Instagram insight on what actions are being taken on your profile. But it is just as important to know who is taking those actions. The Audience tab provides you with a deeper understanding of who your followers are. The four data sets that will matter to you in the Audience tab are gender, age range, top locations, and followers. Knowledge is power and knowing more about your audience will help you refine your social media strategy. Take note of the followers metric because this one will let you know the most active times of your followers. Having a better idea of the time and location of your followers, you will be able to maximize your engagement with them.
How to Get Instagram Post Insights
We did not forget about the Content tab, but thought it was deserving of its own section. The Content tab is the most vital for knowing how to get Instagram post insights and your posts’ performance. Remember that you are able to access Instagram Insights directly from a post by clicking on “View Insights” underneath your post.
Content Instagram Insight
The Content tab contain insight on your photo/video content, stories, and any promotional posts. The Content tab has three subsets that are Feed, Stories, and Promotions. The feed set shows all your content and you can individually click on it to view the metrics of that specific post. At a quick glance, you will retrieve the total interactions, engagements, and discoverability of that Instagram post.
Also within the Content tab, there is the Stories set which includes Instagram insight into how your stories are doing. Find out data about how many people exited your story, replies to it, and the number of taps that users went through your story.
The last subset of the Content tab is Promotions. There you will find data on the promotions or paid ads you have on your account. You can learn a lot about how your advertising campaigns are performing and meeting your business goals.
When it comes to social media, knowing how your content is doing makes a difference in improving your marketing. So among the metrics and datasets offered by Instagram, knowing how to get Instagram post insights will be important to consider when honing your strategy.
Boost Your Instagram
Now that you know where and how to get Instagram Insights on your profile and posts, you got to put it all into action and boost your Instagram. Data and metrics are useless if you do not start doing something with them.
Remember to set your business objectives before diving into Instagram Insights. You want to only consider the metrics that will have an impact on your goals. Also, you do not want to get distracted by data that is meaningless to you or can misguide you.
Once you have your goals aligned, then start evaluating your old and current posts’ performance. Figure out which content format and time of day are best for engaging with your followers. This simple step will greatly boost your Instagram account. But take it one step farther and learn more about your audience. Create a persona of the audience you should be targeting from the information you gained such as gender, location, and age. The data might surprise you but will shed light on who is interested in your business.
Your social media marketing strategy now has data to back it all up. Start creating and tailoring content towards your audience and post at the right time. To boost your Instagram, content is everything. But with Instagram Insights, you now know what the right content is for your customers. At SEO Design Chicago, we know how important social media content is for your business and we offer content creation and strategy to help you improve your brand marketing.
FAQs:
- What is Instagram Insights?
- What types of metrics are in Instagram Insights?
- Where to find Instagram Insights?
- How to create an Instagram business profile?
- How to improve Instagram content?
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