Sometimes posting on Instagram feels like a shout into the void: Is anyone listening? Is this having any kind of impact? It can be tempting to get both discouraged at not knowing what’s working and also overwhelmed with all of the “perfect Instagram feeds” all over the internet. The best way to know if your social media strategy is working? Knowing and using your Instagram insights.
Insights are the must-know analytical tools built right into the Instagram app. Just a few moments a week to take a look at them and make some notes can help you make better, more effective content in the future.
Read on for your basic crash course on insights.
Audience insights
First up is your audience insights. When you click on Insights from your profile, tap the blue “See All” button. Here, you’ll find your follower breakdown and how your follower count has grown, the demographics of your audience, and a daily breakdown of their most active times. Toggle between 7 days and 30 days to see stronger trends, especially as it relates to growth.
How to use these insights
Check out your spikes in follower growth (or loss) on certain days. Go to your feed to review your content, both posts and stories (under archives), for that day for some insights into what your audience is vibing with (or not so much) so you have an idea of what type of content to keep posting about (or not about) in the upcoming week.
Scroll down to see the top locations, age range, and gender of your audience. Is this what you expected or are you reaching a different type of audience than you thought? Share this data with your sponsors to make sure they are aware of who is following you and hopefully it aligns with their target market. If not, then work together to adjust your content and hashtags to try and reach the different locations, ages, and gender that they are aiming for.
At the very bottom, use the “most active times” section to map when you’ll share your content in the future. Share feed posts when your followers are most active (for me that is 5pm CT), and post stories leading up to that time so they will have a next step on your profile after engaging with your post.
Post insights
There are lots of data points you can gather from this section under “Content You Shared”. Over the course of a short (7 days) or long (two years) period of time, you can see what posts resonated the most.
Here’s how you can use some key pieces of information:
Posts with the most reach means they reached lots of eyes, likely new people! For sponsors, this is important. Pay attention to the kinds of photos and captions that have the most reach. Your hashtag strategy plays into this, too.
Posts with high follows, profile visits, and website taps are high-converting posts. That means that your content was not only appealing but actionable. Compare these successful posts with other posts that encourage the same call to action (“tap the link in my bio” for example) and look to see what images or words you used in the successful posts versus the less-successful ones.
Posts with high shares can tell you that you shared about something that others really resonate with. The more you can work to get your race successes and schedule as well as sponsored posts shared widely, you’ll start to see some growth in your followers and your conversions.
This was just the quickest of introductions into the world of analytics. Really understanding and tracking your Instagram insights will help you make potentially career-defining decisions when it comes to your social media and your content, and using this information to present to potential sponsors.
My course DRIVEN BY SOCIAL will teach you how to get a handle on your analytics, use social media to get the fans and sponsors you need, and do it all without burning out or trading your race training time away. The doors open July 23, but you can get on the waitlist right now to save 10% off! I can’t wait to see you inside the course.
