Instagram Analytics: Your Ultimate Guide
Instagram Insights: Your Guide to all things Posts, Reels, IGTV, Stories + More and how to use them for your overall Instagram strategy.
Posted 1 month ago
Written by
Mackenzie TaylorPosted 1 month ago
When it comes to growing your Instagram account, knowing your analytics and where you stand currently is the perfect place to begin.
Not only will your analytics help you figure out who your audience is, but it’ll give you ideas on the best time to post, what kind of content your audience engages the most with and a lot more to help you improve your content strategy and potentially reach a wider audience.
We know going through analytics reports can be a bit … overwhelming especially when you’ve never really done it before. But that’s where we come to the rescue (we should really be wearing a cape!) by bringing you our guide on all things Instagram Analytics to help walk you through what each metric means and how to improve upon each to boost your Instagram strategy.
Jump to a section ✨
First things first, why do your Instagram analytics actually matter?
If you’re new to Instagram and social media in general, you might not know and that’s okay! Instagram analytics are the best way to figure out and understand who your audience is, when they’re online and engaging, and what kind of content they want to see on their feed.
How do you do this with analytics though? By tracking the different metrics that are driving results for your brand or business and building a content strategy around those metrics.
When you know exactly what metrics are helping your account, as well as being able to interpret what they actually mean, it’ll be a major game changer when it comes to your online platform.
Now before we dive deeeeeep into the analytics, let’s start with a question:
What’s your goal for your business? What are you wanting to drive traffic and attention to? Is it a link in your bio? Is it to get more engagement on a photo?
Once you have a clear and defined answer on what you’re wanting to get out of your account, you’ll be able to better monitor your analytics and figure out what you need to change (or keep doing well on!) when it comes to your content.
How do you access Instagram Insights tool?
How to get to Instagram Insights tool for all posts
Currently, Instagram analytics are only available to those with a business or creator account on Instagram, so if you don’t have one of those accounts, we highly recommend switching. Like, now.
Now that you have a business or creator profile, you can easily access your analytics on your Instagram app through the Insights tab on your profile page. You can either click the three lines at the top of your profile page and click “insights” or the big ol’ button that says “insights” on your main page.
From there, you’ll be able to find metrics and analytics on your posts, stories, Reels, audience demographics, and more.
If you’re still having trouble switching to a business or creator account, you can follow this tutorial.
How to use Flick’s Instagram Analytics Tool
If you’re wanting more details outside of Instagram’s own Insights tab, Flick’s Instagram Analytics provides a good snapshot of how your account is performing—all in one easy and user-friendly platform.
Whilst Instagram provides you all the low-level metrics, Flick helps turn them into actionable insights. You can easily see your follower growth rate, the best times to post on Instagram each day, reach, impressions, and so much more.
You’ll also be able to see how your most recent post performed through reach, impressions, likes, comments, and even hashtag performance! The analytics will break down if you ranked on any of your hashtags and, if so, in what position.
If you want to go even deeper into your account, you can now click the “similar accounts” feature next to “Compared to” and view how your account compares to other accounts similar to yours.
Plus, you can track up to 12 months’ worth of Instagram feed posts to see what worked well based on the hero metrics that matter the most to you.
How to See Instagram Audience Insights
Figuring out who your audience is and understanding the content they want is going to play a huge part in your overall Instagram strategy. Knowing your Instagram Audience analytics will help you tailor your content to their interest and help you figure out the perfect time to post.
Open the Insights tab in Instagram, scroll down to “Your Audience” and click “see all.”
In this section, you’ll be able to gather loads of data about your audience.
- How many people followed/unfollowed
- Top cities and countries of your audience
- Age and gender
- Most active times (hours and days)
Now what do these actually mean and how can it help your overall strategy?
How to use your growth metrics on Instagram
If you’re looking at your growth metrics and wondering how in the world it can help with your strategy, you’ve come to the right place.
Being able to compare and contrast your follows and unfollows after posting content will be a great indicator of what type of content your audience is liking and … not enjoying so much.
Posted a funny Reel recently and noticed a large number of followers coming in? Knowing this information will help give insight into what your followers want from you.
How to use most active times Instagram metrics
Being able to know exactly when your audience is active and most likely to engage with your content is one of the best ways to optimize your social media calendar.
You’re not going to want to post an image or Reel at 10am if most of your audience is active at 7pm. The more engagement your post initially receives, the better it’ll perform with Instagram’s algorithm.
Top tip: You can see exactly what time your audience is online and when they’re most engaged over on Flick’s analytics page. We break it down for you based on the day and exact time you had the most amount of followers online.
How to use Instagram feed post insights
From the Insights tab on Instagram. scroll down to “content you shared” and click the arrow beside the posts you’ve made recently.
You can now sort through up to 2 years worth of feed posts based on a number of metrics:
- Call Button Taps
- Comments
- Email Button Taps
- Follows
- Get Directions Taps
- Impressions
- Likes
- Post Interactions
- Profile Visits
- Reach
- Saves
- Text Button Taps
- Video Views
- Website Taps
From here, you’ll be able to capture a better idea of the exact amount of people engaging with your content, clicking on your website, the number of saves, etc. This will give you a good overall impression about what content your audience likes and what is driving them to content, CTAs, and more!
Want even more details per post? Head to the post you want to learn more about and click “view insights” underneath the post. You’ll be able to see more detailed metrics about this post, like:
- Interactions: The actions that are taken from your post, like visiting your profile, clicking the link in your bio, or using the call or email button.
- Discovery: This is the place that tracks those who aren’t currently following you and your post reached their eyeballs.
- Follows: How many new followers you received from a post.
- Reach: How many unique accounts the post reached.
- Impressions: The total number of times your post was viewed. Instagram breaks this down by category to see where on the platform the post was viewed from, like home, hashtags, from profile, or from other (i.e. Explore Tab).
- Saves: The number of unique accounts that saved your post to their personal saved folder.
- Comments: The number of comments on your post.
Top tip: If you’re trying to get more impressions with your hashtags, be sure to check out Flick’s Smart Collections feature. We give you suggested hashtags that will help you get better reach and engagement.
How to use Instagram Stories Insights
Similar to how you find the insights for your Instagram feed posts, you’ll be able to view your Story insights through the Insights tab on your profile page or by swiping up on a Story that is still live.
On your Insights page, scroll down to “Content You Shared” and tap the arrow by your recent stories.
In this section, you’ll find metrics over the past 30 days of stories including:
- Back
- Call Button Taps
- Email Button Taps
- Exited
- Follows
- Next Story
- Get Directions Taps
- Impressions
- Link Clicks
- Forward
- Profile Visits
- Reach
- Text Buttons Taps
- Website Taps
So how do these metrics help you? By reviewing your stories’ performance regularly, it’ll help with knowing what kind of stories your brand should continue creating. Do people like knowing what you do daily? Do they want to engage in polls? See BTS content? Figuring out which stories people actually watch all the way through and interact with is a great way to reconfigure your content strategy that resonates with your audience.
For an even more detailed performance overview of your story, it’s best to view the analytics while the story is still live. Swipe up on one of your stories and click the “insights” button in the top left corner next to the eye.
From here, you will see:
- Impressions: The number of times your story has been viewed.
- Reach: The number of unique accounts that viewed your story.
- Exits: The number of times someone exited your story mid-way through (how dare they!)
- Replies: The total number of replies to a video or picture on your story.
- People insights: This will list the accounts that have seen a particular component of your story.
How to use Instagram Reels Analytics
The newest feature in the Instagram insights tab is the Reels analytics! You can find the analytics either in the Instagram Insights menu (like the rest) or open a specific Reel you’re interested in knowing more about by tapping the three-dot icon on that Reel.
The metrics you see from Reels are:
- Accounts Reached
- Plays
- Likes
- Comments
- Shares
- Saves
Again with these metrics, you’ll be able to identify which video content your audience enjoys and how they interact with it. Are they liking it? Sharing it with friends? Saving it for later? You’ll find all of that information and more under the Insights tab.
How to use IGTV Analytics
*Instagram has since transitioned all IGTV video content into Reels on the platform.
You’ll be able to discover all of your IGTV analytics in the Insights tab on your profile page. Similar to Instagram feed posts, you’ll be able to pull up to 2 years worth of data through Insights.
Scroll down to “Content You Shared” and click the arrow next to your recent IGTV videos.
From here, you’ll be able to check quite a few metrics like:
- Average Percentage Watched
- Comments
- Likes
- Reach
- Saves
- Video Views
- IGTV Video Interactions
By knowing which videos your viewers are interacting with will help you get a better idea of what content to make in the future.
The more engaged your audience is with your IGTV, the more likely Instagram’s algorithm will help you reach the most number of people possible. A key metric to take note of is your reach on these videos. Is the reach a lot higher on one compared to another? What were you talking about in that video? How did you promote it? What hashtags did you use? The best way to really know how to plan your content strategy accurately is by diving deeper into the content you’ve already made and measuring the results.
How to use Instagram Live Insights
Do you go Live on your platform a lot? You can track the analytics of your Lives from the Insights tab on your profile page.
Image from Instagram
The metrics you’ll be able to pull are:
- Accounts reached
- Peak Concurrent viewers
- Comments
- Shares
When it comes to lives, they can be pretty hit or miss based on a number of things. Did you talk about going live in advance? Did you have a guest on? Did you have a specific subject you went live about? Did you let people interact and ask questions in advance or during?
You’ll be able to get a better idea of why certain lives went well and others … not so well by recognizing what was different between each of the videos.
​​How to use Instagram Shopping Insights
Do you or your business tag products in your posts? Well, it’s probably a good idea to make sure you’re tracking and keeping an eye on what items people are clicking and wanting!
You’ll be able to find the insights for shopping much like other insights. Head to your Insights tab and click the arrow alongside your recent posts or stories. On this page, you’ll be able to pull a few product-specific metrics (Product Page Views and Product Button Clicks) depending on whether your account has Instagram Checkout enabled or not.
Image from Facebook
If you’re curious how a specific post is performing, click on that post and tap “view insights” to dive even deeper into the shopping-specific metrics. Here, you’ll find:
- Product page views
- Product button clicks
What does this mean to your overall strategy as someone who sells directly on Instagram? Well, by seeing if a product page had a high number of page views but not a lot of clicks to buy, you can rethink how that product looks and is described. Are the photos clear enough? Is the description enticing enough? These metrics are good to know if your shopping page is converting your followers.
How to track and determine which Instagram Metrics are most important
When it comes to figuring out which metrics are most important, it all comes down to you and the overall goal of your business or brand. Are you wanting to get the most people engaged? Then, make sure to keep an eye on what content is performing well when it comes to likes, comments and shares, and make other content that is similar!
Are you wanting to build overall awareness around your brand? Focus on making sure your content is reaching the most people possible. Pay special attention to posts that have a higher reach rate and focus on creating similar content. Need help with boosting your content? Why not try some fun Instagram polls to engage your audience, or learn more about how to grow on Instagram with an expert.
The best approach is to always experiment and see what type of things your audience wants to engage with. We won’t lie, it’s not always easy but it is always fun when you finally have that breakthrough.
More articles related to
The Complete Guide to Instagram Scheduling (Stories, Posts, Reels and more!)
In today’s guide, we’ll walk you through how to schedule Instagram posts, optimize your calendar to successful posting times and analyze your results.
Julia Cohen
2 months ago
How to Create a 30-Day Social Media Marketing Strategy
Trying to figure out how to create a social media marketing strategy? Here is your step-by-step guide on how to create a 30-day social media plan.
Mackenzie Taylor
7 months ago
How to End Up on Instagram’s Explore Page in 2023
The Explore page is where you want to be, but how in the world do you end up there? Let us take you through the various tips and tricks to get your content on Instagram’s Explore Page.
Mackenzie Taylor
25 days ago