Social Media Analytics for Instargram: 5 Insightful Metrics to Measure

We have already faced the fact that marketing on Instagram and Instagram analytics are not a trend anymore. We’ve already got used to managing social media accounts on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, etc., etc. and tracking social media metrics. Now Instagram is just a marketing channel with proven effectiveness in promoting brands, which can develop their influence with the help of visual components. For instance, a social media marketing strategy on Instagram following the era of Facebook and Twitter for business is one of the most discussable topics starting from marketing blogs and ending with digital marketing conferences (as well as the topic of Instagram analytics).

Nowadays there’s an idea that the audience of social media networks slowly moves to messengers, but it seems that regarding the seamless popularity of Instagram this social media network is just on its way up. With the help of Facebook, Instagram strives not only to improve their user experience implementing Edge Rank but also makes steps to encourage business to be more active and invest time and money in promotion.

But when we’re talking about investment in marketing (not only money we pay to improve our organic reach on Facebook, ads on Instagram, or whatever but time we spend on activities and content), we want to know how we can be more efficient in our strategies and improve the performance. Here’s why Instagram analytics tools appear on the horizon.

Why should you spend more if you can spend less? The key to finding your weak sides and making most of the strongest ones is in analyzing your activities on Instagram or on any other social media network with analytics tools and making decisions based on the data you get.

Social media tracking

We have recently added Instagram analytics to our social media management tools and analytics app KUKU.io so that you could successfully analyze your results and have the statistics you need at your fingertips. We have already discussed in our article about social media metrics that analyzing your activities on social media, you will most likely face so-called “success theater” which means that sometimes having remarkable engagements doesn’t guarantee that you will reach your final aims. In the case of Facebook and Twitter, likes and shares could be the elements of this theater. What about Instagram? Why do we need social media tracking? And what should we analyze to be sure statistics really matter?

Growth of social media followers

The number of followers vs. the followers growth rate.

The number of followers itself can tell you pretty much nothing, but the followers growth rate in Instagram analytics is a strong indicator of interest in your brand. Tracking it with the Instagram analytics tool, you can learn something new every time it rises (what instruments perform best) or falls (what content or elements in your strategy were irrelevant).

Just like in any other social media network, the key element that influences the followers growth rate and the engagement rate is the consistency and relevance of your posts. But what differs Instagram elements you should pay attention to from other social media networks is a quality of visual content and even the filters you choose.

Social Media Marketing tips

Social media strategy tips for Instagram can cover different spheres, and one of the most important is content you post. The images with higher exposure, warm temperature, higher contrast and higher amount of background space people find more attractive and worth following, linking and commenting than those ones without.

There are several methods to increase the number of followers on Instagram:

• follow and like similar accounts,
• use hashtags,
• “tag a friend” instrument,
• cross-promotion,
• photo contests, etc.

To be sure, which instruments worked best for you and make most of them, test no more than one at a time, and track the changes in the number of your followers in your Instagram analytics.

Engagement rates on Instagram (likes vs. comments)

The number of likes your post get on Instagram is the least meaningful metric (just like tracking Instagram followers), and definitely should not be a base for analyzing and indicating your brand’s performance. 🙂 The reason why is that it is dead-simple to tap the screen to give a like on Instagram and you can never be sure which element of the content you published motivated a user to like it.

Comments, on the other hand, are the metric at which you should take a closer look. It takes some time to comment on content so there is no doubt that the user is already engaged. Moreover, comments themselves are full of insightful data on followers’ interests and opinions.

Instead of measuring the number of likes, comments you got and tracking Instagram followers, you could better measure the engagement rate on this social media network, which is calculated as the number of interaction with your content divided by the number of posts per day divided by the number of followers on a given date (Instagram analytics of KUKU.io will track Instagram followers and engagement metrics to calculate it for you). As you see, the posting frequency and the audience size are normalized with this formula, so the engagement rate for a brand can be easily compared in time.

Through 2015 with a significant rise of the number of profiles created for business aims, the average engagement rate in branded profiles decreased almost two times comparing with the previous period. So when you track the trend of the engagement rate analyzing Instagram, you can not only test the content you post but instantly react on changes.

Trending hashtags on Instagram are worth analyzing too

Not only performance metrics are worth to measure and analyze on Instagram. There are many conversations about the effectiveness of hashtags on social media networks, but an interesting fact is that the engagement rate of posts on Instagram with 11+ hashtags can have up to 60% higher engagement rate than with a lower quantity of them.

However, adding random hashtags will not help you neither to grow your audience nor to drive engagement. When choosing and starting analyzing hashtags you should focus on one of three strategies for using Instagram hashtags for followers growth: brand and campaign (tags you use for your brand, contests, and promotions), trending (tags that recently became very popular; Hashtags.org – you can find all statistics about hashtags here), content (common hashtags related to your posts).

To choose relevant hashtags for Instagram:

• Think about 2-4 hashtags you think are related to your industry or content strategy.
• Find posts from other users who used the same hashtags and see what hashtags they used with them (just like with keywords, combine high-volume with low-volume hashtags to get most of them).
• Test groups of hashtags and leave hashtags, which perform best for you.

Hack: Use KUKU.io to analyze Instagram activities and UnionMetrics to analyze hashtags and top followers.

Clicks from profiles and visits from shortened links

Instagram business marketing is growing nowadays. While Instagram encourages business to buy advertisements to be able to insert clickable links into posts, the clicks through rate in Instagram analytics, whether it is from a profile page or from any posts you publish, can be a meaningful indicator of your audience interest in your content and in your brand in general.

The clicks on the link, which is placed on your profile page, you can track in Google Analytics in Social traffic. However, if you change the link often and want to receive particular information about the interest in it, you can also attach UTM-codes. In this case, the statistics will appear in the Campaigns tab in Google Analytics, but will be divided into groups by source, campaign, content and name you set up.

Your links will not be clickable if you add them to non-promoted posts, but there’s still a way to drive traffic from Instagram to you web page and, what’s more, measure the click through rate:

• If you decide the link will be shared on Instagram, make sure it is short and easy to remember (for example, kuku.io/analytics) and your followers are engaged enough to insert it in a browser. In this case, the link cannot be tracked and will be put in Direct traffic in Google Analytics.
• To be able to measure CTR and understand whether Instagram can be a valuable source of traffic for you, you can also use a custom link shortener, for example, Bit.ly. Therefore, the statistics will appear in your Bit.ly dashboard.

Overall, when promoting your business on Instagram, managing multiple social media accounts, building a community around your brand, just choosing hashtags, or whatever you decide to do on social media, you need to be sure your efforts will pay off and you definitely know what you should do to continue improving results. The best way to keep fingers on the pulse of any changes in your social media management and marketing is constantly analyzing your activities and making decisions based not only on your intuition but also on data.

Start analyzing Instagram with KUKU.io

Read more: Instagram / Social Media Analytics / Update