5 Key statistics to track on insta and why

Working out which key statistics you should be tracking on instagram can be stressful. It can be time consuming and very confusing. So let’s take a look at these 6 Key Statistics to track on instagram and why!

Instagram has over 1 billion monthly users. You read that right 1 BILLION monthly users. (Where facebook has 2.24 Billion) Think about that for a second. It growing rapidly, so using it to your advantage is critical! So determining which stats top track is crucial. We got hold of some professionals, and asked them what they thought their best tricks where and which stats were the most important. Tracking your statistics gives you a good idea where to place your marketing efforts, and where to change strategy, or customers you should focus on. An overarching change in marketing has been from moving from a large following to a large engagement score, and measuring your engagement can be extremely insightful.

If you have 1 million followers but are only getting 1,000 likes/comments on your photos, something is wrong. The key to running a successful Instagram account is having a loyal, engaged audience that you “know” and that want to see and engage with you. Engagement beats the number of followers any day.

Lets get started:

1. Understanding your Instagram Insights

Reach and Impressions

Reach indicates how many individual users have seen your posts while impressions indicates the total number of times your posts have been seen including repeat viewers. These two metrics are valuable because they showcase how far your influence reaches on Instagram. Reach is best for highlighting the size of your audience and potential for audience growth while impressions is best for understanding how often your audience is viewing content and what content is evergreen. 

Profile Visits

Profile visits are important because it indicates how many people are checking out your profile and are interested in learning more about what you offer. This metric is located at the top of your business profile page so you’ll inevitably see it whenever you navigate there!

Per Post Engagement

Steve Dolson, Founder of BenchMRK Digital Agency says to keep an eye on the following;

There are a few Instagram statistics that can help grow your following, see how effective your content is and know if people are engaged with your postings.

Firstly, it’s important to know where your audience is coming from. If you click to View Insights on your post and head to the post interactions (as a business profile) and swipe up to see the Discovery section, you will see a breakdown of Impressions (From home, hashtags, profile, or other). This gives you a opportunity to see how people are finding your content and from where.

It will also showcase a percentage stat about how many people found your content who weren’t following you. Secondly, number of engagements on a post is probably one of the most valuable metrics because it means that not only have your audience’s attention, but you also have your audience actioning towards one of your posts.

Thirdly, under the Activity tab of your Insights section, if you are tracking traffic driven to your website, the Website Clicks metric will showcase that.

Lastly, under the Audience tab in your Insights section of your Instagram profile, you have a section that focuses on demographics of your audience. Knowing your audience’s age, gender and location, can help you form relevant content to your target audience and showcases who you are attracting to your profile.

By knowing where people are coming from, seeing if they are engaging with your content, seeing if your profile is driving website traffic and knowing your audience demographics are all important to make sure your marketing messages are being delivered and communicated properly to your target audiences.

2. Engagement Rate on Instagram

Engagement as a Key Metric

Engagement refers to any time a user likes or comments on a post. While likes are crucial and lend credibility to your brand, comments are an even stronger indicator of an engaged audience. Comments show that followers care enough about your post to take the time and write a message or tag their friends.

It can be so hard to measure this, as this changes based on number of posts, followers etc. If you want to have a quick look into what your engagement rate might be, head over to Influencer Marketing Hub and pop your name into the calculator. It gives you a rough idea of your last 10 posts engagement.

Keep in mind that the smaller your following – the larger the engagement, because statistically you should be engaging all your followers. Engagement rate allows you to track/measure the level of interaction you get on your content (likes, saves, comments). This helps you to determine if your content is right and having a positive effect on your audience.

So let’s look more into your engagement score and how to calculate it:

Shelby Rogers, Content Marketing Manager at DigitalUs says that it’s a bit of mental gymnastics;

When it comes to Instagram, it’s not just one standard metric that matters. It’s a combination of a few smaller metrics that culminate into one critical metric: your engagement percentage. Engagement percentage shows just how many people engage with your content and gives you an idea of how powerful your content is when it comes across your followers’ screens.

Calculating engagement percentage just requires some basic mental math.

1. Start by picking out four Instagram photos. Ideally, these posts should be representative of typical posts and not your best-performing posts.
2. Calculate the average number of likes on those posts by totalling the likes on those four and dividing by the number of posts. This gives you an idea of the average number of likes on a typical photo.
3. Then divide that number by your total number of followers. This gives you the percentage of your total followers that see your content and engage with it by liking it.

Engagement percentage can be improved rather quickly by culling out accounts that might be spam accounts. Think of these accounts like links you’d want to disavow to improve your SEO; spam accounts drag your engagement percentage down and provide no benefit. Businesses can use free apps like Cleaner for Instagram to block and clean out your account from these spam accounts

If you frequently post to your IG account, keep tabs on your engagement percentage once a week. A higher engagement percentage means more people are responding to your messaging, and that’s the whole point of social media marketing to begin with! During any algorithm change announced by Instagram, be extra careful to track shifts in your engagement, as it could be the first indicator you might need to shift your strategy on the platform.

Engaged Hash Tags

Tahnee Elliott, Founder & CEO,  T.C. Elli’s says we should focus on high engagement hashtags;

One key statistic you should always keep an eye on in Instagram is the Most Engaged Hashtags. You can find this report under Outbound Hashtag Performance. Start by making a list of which hashtags get the most likes and comments. That way, you know which to use in future posts if you want to ensure your content is highly engaging. Knowing which hashtags get the most comments/likes will also help you determine what kind of content your followers want to see. If one hashtag significantly out-performs the others in terms of engagement, it’s clear that your followers feel more strongly about that particular topic.

Fake followers will Damage your engagement:

Chaz Van de Motter, Elite Marketing Studios: VP of Sales & Marketing says to look our for fake followers too;

Due to various Instagram hacks statistics such as followers, impressions and reach have become vanity metrics. In the changing landscape of social media and especially Instagram, engagement is the driving force behind an account’s progress and value.

We as an agency know that most people on Instagram are weary of fake followers. This is why we report to our clients metrics such as average daily followers, average likes per post and average comments per post. By tracking these metrics we can convey to our client that their engaged audience is growing.

3. Posting when your audience will see it?

Posting on your feed

Morgane Pelletier, Head of Influencer Marketing at Upfluence talks about analysing your Insights for best posting times, and says;

Since Instagram feeds are not chronological anymore, the moment your content goes live is crucial. To increase overall visibility and engagement rates, post during the hours in which your audience is at peak activity.

Instagram Insights will show the hours your followers are most active but demographic insights such as age and geo-location can also help you determine when to post. Consider the lifestyle of your followers, when are they checking their phones and why: is it during a commute? on break? in class? You get the idea. Be in sync with their schedule!

Jolene Rheault, Marketing Manager, The Bid Lab also agrees with this

I’d say one of the best statistics to watch is what time and what days are your followers online the most (you check this through minter.io). Why? If you know when they’ll be online, you can schedule your posts to hit right before that sweet spot so that you show up first in their feed!

Kim Smith, Content Manager, Good Firms also supports looking out for when your audience is online!

If you are running your business page on Instagram with a certain number of followers, there must be a day on which your post gets multiple views! Now as a marketer, your job is to identify the best day and the best time on which your visitor’s engagements are highest. How often is it to be done? Initially, this process will require a number of permutation and combinations, but slowly when you identify the in and outs of your visitors, you can come up with the clock striking the correct time for your Instagram posts. You can repeat the process for a few weeks and slowly you can find the best day for shooting up your Instagram posts.

Note: Posting the content on a regular basis is must, otherwise you won’t be able to analyze the best suited day for your posts. What is the value of tracking those statistics and why should you track it? The value completely depends on the number of reach and the conversions you get clubbed with various other factors like the quality of your post, number of followers, comments etc. But when you follow this Instagram statistics, the benefits which you can avail are:

Click rates will possibly shoot up

A Boost in number of your page followers

You will get a better idea about what your visitors are looking out from you!

Posting in your Stories:

There are all kinds of good metrics to gather from your daily story. Everything from unique viewership to direct interaction. These kinds of metrics are vital to you as you get better at producing content. Every time you get an interaction, or more viewers on a story you’re doing something right. Having a story is doing something right, work on it until you get good at it.

Daniel Parish, Digital Media Team Lead, Growella says to think outside the box and look at the new technologies Instagram is releasing.

Your IGTV viewers. With such a new platform, Instagram is sure to start pushing it soon and putting more and more energy behind it the same way they did with Stories. Knowing WHO is watching your content every day can be more important than how many people are seeing it.

4. Return on Investment (ROI)

Chris Hall, head of technology for Hype Well talks about using return on investment as an alternative approach for those os us that like numbers!

Hype Well takes a unique approach to social media success metrics – with a significant focus on ROI. In fact, the agency has developed a proprietary algorithm (The Hype Well Score) that calculates an estimate of how much revenue social media channels are bringing to clients. The algorithm uses data from more than 1K clients and has been tested, used and trusted by many. Hype Well also believes in monitoring content on an ongoing basis, to see how it’s performing and make changes to optimize if needed to increase results.

Top stats they track include:
Follower increases
Engagement numbers with content overall and increases in engagement
Average daily transactions
Reach and impressions
Website action and cost per action
Conversions, including cost per purchase and purchase conversion value
And average ticket value

5. What should Instagram Influencers Track?

Influencers on Instagram are a completely different kettle of fish. Shelby Rogers, Content Marketing Manager at DigitalUs says If you’re a company looking to invest in an influencer, tabulating their engagement percentage is one of the most effective ways to sniff out if they’ve accrued their following through good content and personal branding, or if they’ve invested in fake followers and pay for these fake accounts to pad their numbers. If you want to know more about influencers and if Influencers are really worth it check out our post that works through these questions.

 

Amy Baker –  a digital marketer and creator of Content Career – (a resource for influencers looking to create a career out of their passion.) talks about which Instagram statistics are important to Influencers, and says to look at what their goals are

Unfortunately, this means there is no simple, single, metric to focus on.

Brand Campaigns

When running a campaign for a brand, the most important statistics are going to revolve around the brand’s objectives. If this objective is brand-awareness, then the influencer will want to concentrate on post’s reach. Whereas a sales driven campaign may require the influencer to create and optimise measurable links.

Community Building

Influencers looking to build a community on the platform will want to pay attention to their engagement. How many comments they get and the general sentiment of their audience will be important to measure for these influencers.

Attracting Brands

Creators who want to open-up opportunities with brands will want to focus on follower growth and engagement. The key metric here would be their engagement rate (the percentage of people who comment and like their posts). This communicates a level of interest from their followers that a simplistic follower count ignores.

It’s important that influencers take stock of their goals and understand what success looks like from a statistical standpoint. It will help them to understand empirically whether they have reached their goals and make a measurable plan to get there.