Instagram Metrics to Track and Measure Performance

Instagram is one of the most popular social networking platforms. It is home to so many young and young-minded people who are very moved with visual and audio-visual contents across various topics of interest.

However, for individuals, brands or business who are conscious about creating a relatable online presence on this popular social networking site while driving their peculiar goals or objectives, in relation to their brands or businesses, it is important to measure their performance online.

In order to do this, the brand’s or business’ Instagram account has to be switched to a business account on Instagram. With this, they can gain access to the different metrics on Instagram that can be tracked in order to measure their performance over a period of time (daily, weekly or monthly).

It is also important to note that the Instagram metrics that you choose to track would be highly dependent on the reason for deploying efforts and resources into creating a relatable online presence on Instagram.

Ready to start knowing how well your brand or business is performing on Instagram? In this article, we tried to segment the different trackable metrics based on the possible different reasons why brands or businesses use Instagram. Here are some Instagram metrics to track to measure performance which can also be implemented with the help of a reputable Instagram marketing agency.

Traffic source

For brands or businesses using Instagram to increase website traffic, they can run Instagram adverts promoting links to their website or publish contents in the feed area for the sole purpose of getting traffic. If this is the case, there is no need to measure the traffic source from Instagram. There are many paid or free tools (like Google Analytics) that can be used to track any traffic coming to a website with very specific details about the traffic source and number.

Instagram demographics

Instagram analytics comes with details about the kind of people who are engaging the content on your account. This is very important to track in order to get a better understanding of the kind of people who are interested in whatever the brand or business is offering. Their behavior on the website can also be studied to know how best to create and push contents to them on Instagram in order to keep driving them back to the website.

Whether you are running Instagram adverts with your website link inserted somewhere in the adverts, links inserted in the “stories” or you occasionally push out contents with call-to-actions that directs your followers to click the link in your bio area, you will be able to get details of the kind of people who are engaging your content. And this can also help with defining the persona of the customers in order to know how best to present the services or products offered to them.

For brands or businesses, using Instagram is a great way to engage their target audience primarily to reveal a more personal side of the brand or business, which could improve brand awareness, brand interaction and brand loyalty.

Comment sections

The comment section of every post made on Instagram is one of the simplest ways to know if people are engaging published contents. Making posts that could elicit responses in the comment section is one of the best ways to increase this engagement type.

Both those following the page and those that aren’t can make comments. Just counting the number of comments should reveal how engaging the post is. To determine the overall engagement percentage, the total number of followers should be divided by the total number of engagement (likes, comments and saved posts).

Viewed stories

With the “stories” feature added to Instagram, brands and business can put up more engaging contents with a time lapse of twenty-four hours. They can also take advantage of the different features of Instagram stories like taking polls, telling followers to ask any question. This allows brands to take count of the number of active users they have and find more engaging contents to push out on the Instagram stories to increase the number of engagement.

Saved post

The “save” post feature on Instagram allows followers to save published posts so they can view it later. The implication of this is that only posts relevant to the target audience would be saved. So if the number of saved posts increases, this implies that the brand or business is creating contents relevant to the target audience. To calculate the percentage of this, the total number of followers should be divided by the total number of saved posts.

Post likes

Post likes are one of the quickest ways to know if people are engaging the published content. It merely implies that followers (and non-followers) are paying attention to what the brand or business is doing.

Reposts

When people repost a post from a brand or business page (willingly not out of obligation to a conditional offer) and either tag the page or re-post word-for-word, this is a form of validation. This implies that the brand or business is doing or saying something that resonates well with the individual. And the person feels it is worthy of being shared with his or her own followers.

Top post

Knowing the best performing post would help brands and businesses be more deliberate about contents published and when it is published. Top performing posts are usually determined by the number of likes, comments, shares, reach and impressions.

Followers

The number of followers is also an important metric to track because it helps brands or businesses know the possible number of people that are going to be seeing their content regularly. The more followers a page gets implies that the content strategy deployed is working and it also increases the popularity of the page.

Reach

It is not just enough to track the number of people who are likely to view a published content; it is also important to know if the percentage of this number actually get to see the content. This is the importance of tracking reach. Reach reveals the number of persons that have seen the content while impressions are the total number of times a post was viewed.