Have you heard about Instagram insights? Instagram is more than just a social media site — with over 1 billion monthly users — it’s a platform for growing your brand.
But how can you tell which Instagram strategies are bringing in results?
Well, that’s where Instagram Insights comes in handy.
This free tool, also known as Instagram Analytics, provides you with a ton of info about your account, followers, and posts.
In this article, we’ll give you a thorough guide on how to use Instagram Insights to assess your performance data and refine your approach.
Ready?
Understanding Key Metrics
Before delving into more details on how to use the Instagram Analytics tool, let’s go over the main metrics you can check and what they actually mean.
So, here are the key metrics available in the Instagram Insights section:
- Reach – a total number of unique accounts that have viewed any of your stories or posts over a certain period. It’s a measure of how far your content is spreading and how many potential eyes it’s catching.
- Impressions – show you the number of times your stories or posts have been seen in a specific time frame. It can help you see how frequently people are finding your content.
- Engagement rate – all user activities on your Instagram posts or stories, including likes, comments, shares, saves, and clicks. This metric defines how much your content resonates with your audience and how much they are interacting with your brand.
- Audience Demographics – the breakdown of your followers by gender, age, region, and hours of activity. It’s like getting a glimpse of who your followers are and when they are online.
Be sure to keep tabs and analyze these Instagram metrics to learn what is effective and what requires some tweaking.
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How To Access Instagram Insights
Now that you’re well-versed in what metrics you should keep an eye out for, it’s time to learn how to access Instagram insights.
Before I delve any deeper, a short disclaimer – to be able to access insights, you need a professional account. I won’t go into how you can do this in this article. I’ve already made a post that teaches how you can switch your private account into a professional one.
With that little tangent out of the way, let’s see how you can access Instagram insights!
How Can I Access My Instagram Insights?
Now that you have your newly minted business account, it’s time to see all that wonderful data about your content and audience.
Accessing insights is pretty simple. First, you have to fire up your Instagram app.
With the IG app up and running, you have to navigate to your profile page. You can do that by simply tapping your profile photo in the lower left corner of the scene:
- Once you’re on your profile page, go ahead and tap on the three lines in the upper right corner to access IG settings.
- A menu will pop up, where you need to tap on the Insights button to access all IG insights.
- And voila, you’ve just accessed your IG insights. Your screen should look something like this:
Now that you know how to get to this wealth of data, let’s break down these insights into minute detail.
What Can I See In Instagram Insights?
In 2021, Meta updated IG insights, adding tons more specifics about the accounts you’ve reached and the type of content that best works on your profile.
Now you can access three metrics that will give you all the info you need about who’s engaging with your posts – whether they’re your follower or not, as well as how many accounts your posts reached.
So, let’s break down these three metrics:
- Accounts engaged – This metric tells you how many accounts you have interacted with your content over a given period of time.
- Engaged audience – This metric is a pretty interesting one. It collects demographic data (cities, countries, age, gender) about users who engage with your profile. This goes both for accounts that follow you and those that don’t.
- Reached audience – This metric is very similar to engaged audience since it also collects demographic data. However, this one just collects this data for accounts you’ve reached over a period of time.
We personally like the location data the most since it helps me figure out when to schedule posts so that when they go up, they have the most impact.
Marketers, these extra bits of data can really boost your Instagram marketing game! These data points give you more power to hit precise goals and tweak your content strategy for better results.
Now, let’s dive into the analytics you already have on this platform and how to make the most of them.
Figuring Out Basic Metrics On IG Insights
When you open the insights menu, you’ll see the following analytics:
Overview – This section is made up of three subsections: reach, interactions, and audience. In other words, these instagram insights show your profile’s reach, how many accounts have engaged with it, how many followers you’ve gained, and what content you’ve shared in the given period.
Content you’ve shared – These are your stats concerning the number of posts, Instagram stories, and reels you’ve shared.
Okay, now let’s go a bit more in-depth about it.
Overview
The overview tab of the Instagram analytics tool is your main tab. From here, you’re able to access metrics from the last week all the way up to the last three months. If you tap on any one of these basic metrics, you’ll get a more detailed breakdown of what’s happening.
Let’s break down what this means:
Accounts reached – this is the number of accounts that have seen your posts, stories, and reels at least once.
- Content interactions – This is the number of unique accounts that interacted with your content in some way. These interactions include likes, comments, saves, replies, and shares. This also includes content you promoted in the given period of time.
- Total followers – this metric is pretty simple. It shows you how many followers and unfollows you got in the given period of time.
I recommend you use these Instagram analytics reports to make smart choices that fuel steady, organic growth. Dig deep into each one to grasp which posts your audience loves most. Then, make more of those to keep the momentum going strong.
Accounts Reached Breakdown
The accounts Reached tab gives you all the info you need about your content’s reach in the past three months. You get to see the number of impressions, how many Instagram accounts visited your profile, link clicks, and CTA button taps.
Let’s dive in a bit more:
- Reach – This shows the number of unique accounts that have seen your content. Of course, this also includes content you promoted. Don’t mix reach with impressions. Impressions tick up whenever someone sees your content, which means one account can see your content multiple times.
- Reached Audience – This one is pretty self-explanatory. This is the number of followers vs non-followers that have seen your content.
- Content Reach – This metric shows you which types of content are reaching your followers and which content is getting seen the most.
- Top Posts – This metric tells you which posts are best performing. This is based on the number of unique accounts that have seen the said content. You can also tap the See All option to see all your posts from the past two years.
- Top Stories – This one shows your best-performing stories. Just like top posts, this metric is based on the number of unique accounts that have seen them. You can also filter them out by time period and audience activity.
- Impressions – This one shows you how many times your content has been on a screen (including promoted content) in a given period of time. In other words, this metric tells you how many times users have seen your content.
- Profile Activity – This nifty metric tells you how many unique accounts engaged with your profile in a given period of time. This includes profile visits, CTA button taps, and website taps.
Accounts Engaged Breakdown
Now let’s go back to the main tab of the Insights and then tp on the accounts engaged metric to see what it has in store for us:
Total accounts engaged – This metric shows how many accounts interacted with your posts, stories, reels, videos, and live streams. Interactions include likes, shares, comments, shares, and replies.
Engaged audience – This is a pretty simple one. It shows you how many followers and non-followers are engaged with your content.
Audience demographics – This metric is going to be your bread and butter if you’re a marketer. It gives you a detailed breakdown of your audience. This includes top cities, countries, a gender breakdown, age ranges, and followers vs. non-followers that engaged with your account.
Content interactions – This metric shows you the number of actions users had when engaging with your content. This includes posts, stories, livestreams, and reels. Interactions include stuff like likes, comments, shares, saves, and replies.
Total Followers Breakdown
The Audience tab gives you lots of info about who follows you. Just keep in mind that it only looks at your own followers. If you’re curious about other accounts – say, your competitors – you might need fancier tools to peek into their data.
With that little tangent out of the way, let’s get back to the followers’ breakdown.
In addition to your follower count, you’ll see how many people followed or unfollowed you in the past week. You’ll also get insights into the age range and gender breakdown of your followers, including separate stats for men and women. And don’t miss the info on when your followers are usually active online.
- Follower count – shows have many accounts follow you.
- Growth – A simple breakdown of how many accounts followed you vs how many users unfollowed you.
- Top locations – Show locations where your followers come from.
- Age – age breakdown of your followers.
- Gender – gender breakdown of your followers.
- Active times – You’ll find out the average times your followers are active on Instagram. This includes the typical times they’re online each day and which days of the week they’re most active.
Content You Shared
This part of IG insights gives you a detailed breakdown of each piece of content you’ve posted.
Let’s break it all down
Posts
Once you click on a post’s thumbnail and select “View Insights,” you can dive deeper into the data. Your aim is to use this information to figure out which types of posts resonate best with your audience. Replicate similar posts and keep an eye on engagement.
Detailed statistics for each post are available for you to analyze.
- Engagement – gives you info on the total number of unique accounts that engaged with particular content.
- Overview – gives you a summary of insights about a particular posts. This includes accounts reached, content interactions, and profile activity.
- Reach – These insights reveal how many eyes catch your content and where they stumble upon it. Impressions, or how often your post pops up on screens, come from different places like the Home screen, hashtags, your profile, and more.
- Content interactions – This set of insights highlights the actions your audience takes when they interact with your content, like giving likes, saving posts, leaving comments, or sharing your content with others.
- Profile activity – displays the actions people take when they interact with your posts, which can include visiting your profile or following you as a result of engaging with that post.
- Promotion – If you promoted this post, this is where you can check out its performance stats.
Stories
In this section, you’ll find insights about your Stories, such as how many times a specific photo or video was viewed, the number of unique accounts that saw it, and how many people replied to it. The Exited metric shows how many times someone left your story, and it also tracks when someone clicks on a link.
Reels
Instagram Reels, a short video format in users’ feeds, took over from IGTV, which became a standalone app for fans of longer content. You can track and filter Reels using engagement data to see how users interact with them.
This includes:
- Comments
- Likes
- Reach
- Plays
- Reels Interactions/Comments
- Likes
- Reach
- Plays
- Reels Interactions
Videos
The Video section is where insights paint a picture of your video content strategy.
You can delve into stats like the percentage of videos watched, likes, comments, shares, views, and other key video metrics, including:
- Average Percentage Watched
- Website Taps
- Call Button Taps
- Comments
- Email Button Taps
- Follows
- Business Address Taps
- Impressions
- Link Clicks
- Likes
- Profile Visits
- Reach
- Saves
- Text Button Taps
- Video Views
- Video Interactions
Live Videos
Live Video analytics became available with the launch of the Reels feature in May 2021, providing the following metrics:
- Comments
- Reach
- Peak concurrent viewers
- Live video interactions
Utilizing Insights for Business and Marketing Strategies
You probably won’t like what I have to say, but it’s the truth, so here it goes. Unfortunately, there is no one-size-fits-all strategy that will grow your Instagram profile.
The metrics you focus on to gauge success differ based on whether you aim to expand your reach, engage your audience, or boost sales.
But once you grasp the relevant metrics, you’ll be better equipped to make informed decisions about your Instagram content and achieve your business objectives.
We recommend you use hashtags to boost your reach. Oh, and don’t forget to include strong CTAs to share your content.
Work To Get More Engagement If You’re Building A Community
If you’re cultivating a dedicated follower base, prioritize reaching your most engaged audience members rather than just aiming for high viewer numbers. An engaged audience is more likely to make purchases, provide valuable feedback, and share your brand with others.
Focus on creating content that drives high levels of engagement, such as shares, likes, saves, and comments. You can track these metrics in the Activity tab within your Instagram Insights page. Encouraging users to leave comments with a strong call to action is always a great strategy in this scenario.
We recommend you utilize Instagram captions to boost engagement. Simple calls to action like this one not only encourage comments but also increase the likelihood of others who don’t follow your account seeing the post.
Work To Get More Reach If You Want To Grow Your Audience
Since Instagram introduced an algorithm tailored to users’ preferences based on their interactions, generating content that fosters engagement has become crucial for creators. The more engagement a post receives, the more likely Instagram is to display it to a wider audience.
If your goal is to reach new users, focus on posts with higher reach. You can find this data in the Content tab or in individual post insights. Aim to create content that appeals to a large percentage of users who don’t already follow you. This increases your chances of gaining more followers.
A much easier way to tackle this issue is to partner up with Flock Social. Our nifty tool will do all the work for you – find an engaging audience and grow your community. Your only job is to think about ground-breaking content.
Work On Off-Site Clicks If You’re Trying To Sell Stuff
Using your Instagram audience to build your email list is a smart move when selling a product.
To achieve this, focus on optimizing your content for user engagement, guided by your metric insights, and encourage link clicks.
Always include a captivating call-to-action at the end of your post, prompting users to click through to your website, sign up for your email list, or download a lead magnet. If you add links in your description or comments, make sure to include UTM parameters to track where those visitors originated.
Conclusion
Instagram Insights gives you a wealth of data you can use to grow your Instagram presence and engage with your audience. Sure, it might look complicated here, but once you start playing around with it, you’ll be able to figure out what content works best for what you’re trying to achieve.
And if you want to get your IG account to the next level, you need to check out our service. Sign up today and get access to thousands of followers who will actually engage with your content!
