Instagram Insights Explained

What Are Instagram Insights

As Instagram has taken over the world of social media, the platform has become a way that many influencers make their living. Social media influencers are able to make millions off of their Instagram businesses and brand deals. Business Insider states that by 2020 they expect businesses to spend up to $15 billion on influencer marketing. With so much money going into this business, influencers and businesses alike are capitalizing on Instagram and their detailed insights capabilities. Although brands can use Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter for brand deals, 79% of them go right for Instagram. Businesses can also use the NeoReach platform to filter through desired follower demographics to find the best influencers to promote their brand. 

A huge factor for how much influencers should get paid for brand deals is dependent on how big their following is and the analytics behind it. Although brands can see data like engagement rates and impressions on the NeoReach platform, influencers and businesses are able to see these stats down to the post level now with Instagram insights.

Quick Facts on Instagram Insights

• 25 million+ business profiles worldwide
• 200 million+ Instagrammers visit at least one business profile a day 
• Instagram has 1 billion active monthly users
• Instagram is expected to account for a quarter of Facebook’s revenue this year 
• 60% of people say they discover new products on Instagram 

Anyone on Instagram can now turn their account into a creator or business profile. You can easily switch to one of these accounts and access your profile’s analytics and data within 10 minutes. Follow the steps to start seeing how well your posts are performing using Instagram insights!

How to Create a Business or Creator Profile

In order to access Instagram insights and analytics, you first have to convert your personal profile into a public business account. In order to do this you have to follow these steps:

1. Go to your profile page and click on the menu bar in the top right corner
2. Open up settings on the bottom left of the menu bar 
3. If you are on private, go to “Privacy” and select “Account Privacy” as Public
4. Go back to the settings and select “Account”
5. At the bottom highlighted in blue you will see “Switch to Professional Account” and open that option 
6. Now you can pick between a “Creator” or “Business” Account (see the differences below) 
7. Pick what kind of creator or business label you want 
8. Start posting and see your insights accumulate 

Creator vs Business Profile

Creator profiles are typically those who identify themselves as content creators, artists, influencers, and public figures

• Creator profiles have insights like unfollows and DM filtering
  • Flexible Profile Controls
  • Simplified Messaging
  • More Growth Tools

Business profiles are for companies and brands 

• Capabilities to run ad campaigns and schedule posts 
  • Learn more about your followers:
    • Gain insights on your followers and their demographics and how they are interacting with your content
    • Gain metrics on your promoted posts are performing in real-time 
  • Reach your customers (create promotions on Instagram to reach more customers and build your business) 
  • Get new contact options 
    • Add a contact button to your profile to make it easier for people to get in touch with you
    • Share your company email, phone number, and address if wanted 

Decoding Insights Terms

Activity

Data and analytics that showcase your account interaction overall.

• Interactions: the number of actions taken on your account 
• Profile visits: number of times your profile was viewed in a week 
• Reach: number of unique visitors who have seen your post or account
• Impressions: number of times your post or story has been viewed 
• Discovery: number of accounts who don’t follow you who found your account via the discover page 

Audience

Information is broken down into an accounts’ followers demographics to help the user better understand what type of audience is most interested in their brand.

• Top Locations: top cities and countries where your followers are located 
• Gender: percentage divide of the gender of followers  
• Age Range: break down of the age range of your followers 
• Follower Hours: break down the time of day your followers are most active on Instagram 
• Follower Days: break down which days of the week your followers are most active 

Posts

Instagram allows you to see insights and data on individual posts. While overall reach and impressions are important data points, understanding how a specific post performs can help you determine what type of content gets the most interactions and is most effective in your marketing strategy. 

• Interactions: number of actions taken from your individual post, such as visiting your profile, clicking a link, creating an email or making a phone call via the information section on your profile
• Discovery: number of users who found your account via your post on the discovery page 
• Follows: how many new followers you got from this post 
• Reach: number of unique viewers on this post 
• Impressions: total number of times your post was viewed 
• Saves: number of times your post was saved to someone’s personal boards 
• Comments: number of comments on a specific post 

Instagram Stories

Video content often receives higher view rates compared to photos, so for any business, it is important to utilize Instagram’s story feature. Having insights on stories allows accounts to see if viewers are choosing to skip over their content or go back and take a second look which helps understand what is working and not for them. 

• Impressions: number of times your story has been viewed
• Reach: number of unique accounts that viewed your story
• Exists: number of times people exited your story mid view 
• Tap Back: number of times someone goes back to see your previous story
• Tap Forward: number of times someone skips a story to view your next one
• Replies: number of replies to your story 
• Swipe Away: number of times someone skips a story 

Why Companies Need Insights

Although Instagram provides users with all of this data on how their accounts and posts are performing, there are some flaws with using this feature. One of them being that the insights capabilities are only functional on a smart device. Many companies have employees working on utilizing social media and creating brand deals, but they are not able to access any data on their computers. Instagram has not made it possible for the data to be seen on their web app but it will likely come in the future. This may seem like a small flaw, but many companies rely on Instagram for sales and new business. 

For a brand who is looking to grow their business, they are able to have exact data to show a return on their investment as they are able to see how many people are interacting with their content and how much their following is growing. For larger companies that need to keep track of their influencer campaigns, software like NeoReach’s keeps the whole process in one centralized place. Starting from picking an influencer to keeping track of contracts and overall performance. 

There is a new level of information and transparency that has surfaced due to Instagram insights and more and more users are turning their accounts into creator accounts in order to see how well their content is performing. If you are an influencer or business and you are looking to build your brand, having the capabilities to track your marketing efforts and promote posts using the insights feature can be very beneficial. Many companies run primarily off of Instagram and are successful due to their promotions via the app. When you have the data and resources to understand when something is broken, why not use that information to help build it stronger?