Good news: you don’t need any new tech or new tricks to understand Instagram analytics. You just need to know where to look.

Keeping your eyes on what’s working (and what isn’t) will help you create a smarter and stronger strategy – with the added fringe benefit of making the algorithm work for you.

What Do We Mean By Instagram Analytics?

When we talk about analytics, we’re going beyond the basics of your follower count, for example, or the number of “likes” on a post. Analytics uses those basic metrics to illustrate and understand patterns, and gives you insights on what content contributed to a gain (or loss) in followers.

On The Subject of Insights

Instagram offers Insights, a free tool that allows you to get a basic look at your analytics. This feature comes standard with Business and Creator accounts.

To access Insights, open the Instagram app on your phone and head to your profile. You should find an Insights button right there on your profile, or head up to the three bars in the upper right hand corner and click through from there.

The default view will show you an account overview for the last seven days. You can switch the view to analyze the last 14 days, 30 days, and the previous calendar month.

Okay, So What Are We Analyzing Here?

You can glean quite a lot of information about the overall health of your Instagram account from these basic insights. Here’s a quick rundown of what each of these key metrics and insights mean:

1. Accounts Reached – This indicates how many users saw your content, with a breakdown of how many are your current followers versus how many users aren’t already following you. If you’re interested in having a new audience interact with your content, this is incredibly useful information!

2. Content Interactions – This one says what it does right on the tin: how many interactions your posts have received in the given period, broken down by likes, comments, and shares. You’ll see these insights for all the content you share: posts, stories, reels, IG TV videos, and live videos.

3. Total Followers – This is another relatively clear metric, with a further analysis of how your account has grown or shrunk over the given time period. This insight also breaks down your followers based on locations, age range, and gender (please note: at this time Instagram only offers a binary look at gender). The real gem here? Insights will show you when your followers are most active. You can use this information to better plan when to schedule content for maximum engagement. (Another note here: since Instagram is based in California, the active times shown are in the Pacific time zone, even if you’re located elsewhere.)

4. Content You Shared – Now the party starts! Here, you’ll see a detailed breakdown of all the types of content you’ve shared, with the option to dig even deeper. Want to know how your carousel posts performed versus single images? You can do that! Want to see which posts got folks to click through the link in your bio? You can do that! Which posts did folks save most? You can look for that, too! Insights also gives you the ability to look for similar metrics with your stories and reels.

Make Analytics Work For You

You want to make the mystical algorithm work in your favor? Start with understanding why you want to use Instagram for your business. Increased brand awareness will require a different strategy than driving followers to sign up for a newsletter, for example. Be clear about why you’re showing up on the app, then share content with that intention in mind.

Take time on a regular interval (monthly, or quarterly at least) to dig into your Instagram Insights, and make adjustments accordingly.

Most of all: be kind to yourself, be patient with your strategy, and give yourself permission to have some fun!

Want to dig even deeper into your analytics and insights? Schedule a social media strategy session, and let’s make magic happen together!

So what gives?

You may be making some common, key mistakes. As a social media manager, there are major issues I see all the time in the world of small business social media marketing. Here’s how to avoid them:

YOUR POSTS ARE TOO LONG

Facebook’s character limit for a single post is 55,000, but from a marketing perspective, your posts should never, ever approach this limit. Except in rare circumstances, you should even avoid having the “See more…” button appear on your posts.

One guiding philosophy I use across all online marketing is minimize clicks. People have short attention spans online. If your potential customer has to click “See more…” just to finish your post, it is way more likely they’ll lose interest before they get to the content you really want them to see. Make your clicks count! The ideal post both avoids the dreaded “See more…” button, and links directly to your shop/website/article/where you want your customers to go.

You’ll have to experiment with each post to find how just how long you can make it. There is no official character count before “See more…” appears. It depends on a number of variables (how you attach your photo, the title of your link, size of your screen, etc…) To find out, write your posts in Facebook’s publishing tools, and save it as a draft. From there, you can view the post as it will appear in someone’s feed.

YOUR PROFILE IS CONFUSING

I can’t overstate the importance of having an optimized profile on each of your active platforms. Your profile is the place people go once they’ve already been hooked– either by a post they saw, or looking you up by name– and they want more information about you. This is your opportunity to show your best side, while also directing people towards your end goal.

Yet, all too often, I see incomplete profiles, too-long descriptions in the “About” section, and incomprehensible profile pictures.

On Facebook, the “About” section is best used as a space for a very short description of what you do–I’m talking one, maybe two sentences. These sentences should be both engaging and immediately answer the question, “so what exactly do they do?” A longer description can be put into the “Our Story” section.

Make sure you fill in all the relevant details for your business, too: phone number, business hours, address, and founded date, link to your homepage, etc. This is the kind of information people are looking for.

Instagram is a little different, because profiles have a lot less information. In order to optimize that limited space, the profile description should be even more engaging and descriptive. Feel free to use emojis and hashtags, if you can identify some that work well for your business. The space to link to your website is prized real-estate on Instagram. It’s the only opportunity to point folks in a direction, outside of Instagram’s “Story” feature. Linking to your homepage is fine, but you should consider changing it periodically, to match what you are posting about. Advertising a specific item in your online shop? Change your link to go directly to that item’s page! Now, when you post about it, you can caption the photo with “Link in bio.”

YOU FOLLOW TOO MANY PEOPLE

On platforms like Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest, it’s so important to maintain a low follower to following ratio. These platforms use this ratio, in part, to determine “who to follow” recommendations. These suggestions are a key method of growing an audience.

And really, it comes down to a matter of trust and optics. As a potential customer, would you put more trust in a business that has 560 followers but was following 1100 people, or one that has 495 followers and following 460 people? It simply looks better to

have a lower ratio. It shows people that people are, in general, more interested in you.

One easy tactic to keep this ratio low is to only follow people that are already following you. Most social listening tools have automated this strategy, and allow you to toggle it on or off. But it’s not too difficult to do manually, especially in the early stages or if your overall audience is less than 1000 people.

It’s easy to make mistakes and oversights when first starting out in social media marketing. Even if you’ve made all of the mistakes I outlined above, I hope I’ve equipped you with the knowledge to fix them, so your numbers can improve. Rest assured, you’re still doing the right thing by getting serious about social media in the first place. After all, the first step to a successful online presence is an active one!

There are a host of further issues to explore. Social media marketing is an ever-evolving landscape, and it’s difficult to stay on top of things. We can help with that. With Upswept Creative, we’ll work closely with you as a partner in social media marketing. Together, we’ll build a presence that works. Reach out to us today!