Successful marketing teams utilize metrics and analytics, like KPIs, to determine trends and strategize campaigns to grow their business and apply a data-driven marketing strategic approach. Social media, like Instagram, provides a platform for you to successfully market your product or service to an audience of more than 4+ billion people as of 2021.
There has never been a better time for businesses to utilize social media marketing, with users averaging around 147 minutes daily on social media platforms. Keep reading to learn how to use analytics, like KPIs, to help you market your business. We'll tell you which ones to follow and how to improve them.
Tracking the progress of your business or personal brand is integral to evaluating present growth and future projections. Identifying patterns can help you optimize your growth, pivot goals when needed, and set targets.
KPIs, or Key Performance Indicators, are a set of metrics used to measure the progress of your business or personal brand toward a specific goal it's attempting to achieve. KPIs are measurable values you can track over time to see how effectively your business or personal brand is reaching targets.
KPIs are used in various industries and platforms, even social media like Instagram. In the same way you track a business's progress over time, you can use Instagram KPIs to track the performance of Instagram marketing strategies and campaigns.
Using social media, like Instagram, as a digital marketing and analytics tool requires progress reports—a tangible way to measure performance and track success. KPIs will help you succeed in achieving your objectives.
Tracking Instagram metrics, like KPIs, allows you to keep your content focused, identify trends and patterns, monitor progress on Instagram marketing campaigns, pivot strategy when goals aren't being met, and plan ahead.
Every Instagram strategy has a goal: leads, sales, brand awareness, or engagement. Your desired goal will determine what kind of KPIs you will need to track to be successful.
Accessing the analytics on Instagram is simple, but to view these insights, you must have an Instagram creator or business account. You can access this information in several ways, but remember that they are specifically for the mobile app and not for the desktop.
Here are two ways to access your Instagram insights on the mobile app:
Keeping up with your metrics and making sense of them can be challenging, especially if you have multiple social media accounts. You can use tools, like Catchr, to connect all your platforms and have all your data on metrics in one concise location.
There are a good number of stats and metrics you can access on Instagram. If you're a business owner or creator, you might wonder which KPIs to follow to track progress and meet targets. Common metrics that users typically follow, like follows and likes, won't exactly provide the data you need to move toward your business goals. So, here is a list of the top KPIs for Instagram:
Reach tells you the number of users seeing your content. If this metric sounds a lot like impressions, it's because the two are very similar. The most notable difference is that impressions are how many times your content is seen without generating some form of alternative engagement, while reach equates to actual views.
Your engagement rate will show how well your content resonates with viewers relative to your follower count. Measuring engagement relative to your followers lets you put your performance into better perspective and avoid getting carried away with comparisons to larger brands with larger audience sizes.
A few categories fall under the engagement umbrella, including likes, comments, and saves. In addition, engagement applies to posts and reels on Instagram and can be calculated similarly. However, there is some debate about how to calculate engagement and whether categories should be divided by followers or impressions.
The following is considered the most accurate of the options for calculating the engagement rate:
Stories were introduced to Instagram after the popularity of a competing platform, Snapchat. Eventually, stories on Instagram became the more popular option, with brands posting twice as many on Instagram as on Snapchat. Stories are an excellent way to engage with your target audience and build relationships with your followers.
A high view rate coupled with forward or back taps will let you know how your content resonates with users. Typically, Instagram story view rates are tracked by the watch-through rate metric. This metric gives you the percentage of individuals who watched your story to the end. Watch-through rate equates to final story view/first story view x 100.
Calculating your growth rate is about tracking both increases and declines in followers on Instagram. Remember, spikes or follower drops could be due to promotions or marketing ads that expose your business or brand to users and provide an incentive to follow. So when you calculate your growth or decline of followers, keep it within the context of current promotions and ads, so you can track what is or isn't working in terms of Instagram marketing strategy.
While some believe that follower growth wastes time and only amounts to a vanity metric, it has much to do with how the public perceives your business or brand. Often, Instagram pages with a lot of followers are perceived as credible sources, experts, or authorities. Brand perception directly impacts revenue, as the more the public loves and enjoys your brand, the more inclined they will be to follow and utilize your products or services.
Comments tell you how your audience really feels about your content. Likes can be fairly easy to come by, as they require minimal effort to dish out. Comments, whether positive or negative, show your content's impact on the audience. Tracking comments is an easy way to assess the success of the content and provides an opportunity to engage with your audience and establish a community with your followers.
Mentions are not to be overlooked and should be tracked by all brands as they help build brand awareness. A positive mention attests to the excellent products and services you are already delivering to your consumers. It also allows you to get ahead of any negative reviews and provide the type of customer support that wins over many of the consumers you would have otherwise lost.
Referral traffic monitors how many people click on the link to your website in your profile bio, in the caption of a post, or on a story. This metric gauges how many users are taking action and going to your website, eCommerce store, landing page, or app via Instagram.
Referral traffic allows you to generate more revenue for your business. Typically, 4–5% of the visitors to your website will purchase a product or service. So, for every 100 site visitors, 5 will become clients or customers. Review the data on referral traffic via Insights > Accounts Reached > Profile Activity.
Instagram has allowed businesses to integrate their products and services into their profiles through various features like integrated product tagging, creator-led shopping, and an easy-to-use checkout system. It's important for businesses to be able to track sales and trends that will help increase sales.
Timing is an integral factor in the success of content on Instagram. You want to post when you have the best reach to your target audience, and there is a limited window since Instagram's algorithm prioritizes new posts over older posts. The way the algorithm functions also necessitates that you often post, so your content is continuously pushed to your target audience. You can find the best time to post content in your insights on your Instagram profile.
It is speculated that no matter what you do, your content on Instagram will not reach 100% of your audience because the platform wants you to pay for ads. Regardless, there is content that performs well on Instagram and has a broader reach, namely entertaining and highly educational posts.
Key things you can do to improve KPI on Instagram include:
As you build your reach and create goals for your business, continue to monitor your KPI on Instagram. Look for trends and patterns that are working in your favor and hone in on the components that make that content successful. Then, take that data and use it to focus and improve your content. On the flip side, pay attention to the metrics that aren't performing as well and adjust your strategy in these areas using these suggestions.
Equipped with the knowledge of the essential Instagram metrics your business or brand should follow and how to improve them, you can start monitoring them now. Connect your platforms and have your data pulled live into Looker Studio connectors for Instagram or Google Sheets with Catchr. Try it out risk-free with a 14-day free trial; no credit card is required.