You Should Be Tracking These Instagram Metrics!

Part of any good social media marketing strategy includes keeping tabs on where you stand, and Instagram’s Insights feature makes this job that much easier. However, sifting through the data is not always easy or intuitive. Let’s take the complexity out of it by focusing on these top Instagram metrics you should be tracking.

1 - Saves

With Instagram’s decision to try hiding likes, saves, is the new metric to watch. By tapping the bookmark button in the bottom right, users can save a post to review later. Saving indicates a keen interest in the content. Knowing what posts earned a “save” will help you drive your content strategy. To generate even more attention, you can remind followers to save your post in the caption. 

2 - Reach

Reach is another critical metric you should be tracking. With social media platforms changing the rules all the time, reach is a constant that will help you gauge how many people you are reaching. Reach refers to the unique number of users who saw your post. Don’t confuse reach with impressions, which is how many times the post was viewed (which means some users could view it multiple times). If you want to know the temperature of your brand awareness, reach is the metric to consult.

3 - Engagement

With likes disappearing, comments have taken center stage as the metric to measure engagement. Unlike reach, which only shows you how many people viewed your posts, comments give you a bird’s eye view into how the public is reacting to your content. So how do you calculate your engagement? According to Later, “Divide your total number of likes and comments by your follower count, and then multiply by 100 to give you a percentage.” Use the calculation below to determine your engagement rate.

Engagement Rate = (Likes + Comments) / Followers x 100

If your engagement rate is high, this means your audience not only likes your content but is actively engaging with you. If it’s low, then your message may not be resonating with your target demographic. 

4 - Stories Views

Each slide you post to an Instagram Story will have its own metrics showing how well it did over 24 hours. Key things to factor in are:

• The slide completion rate (how many people watched the slide and did not click away within 1 second).

• Instagram Stories watch through rate (how many people watched the entire video all the way through).
• The drop off rate (those users who did cut out before it ended). 

You can review each section of your story to see where your audience dropped off, what grabbed their attention, and what lost it.

5 - Growth

Watching your growth metrics can tell the story of how well you are doing. Take a look at the “Followed you” and “Unfollowed you” figures to see what posts or content strategies caused a change. These insights are invaluable when developing content plans. 

6 - Best Time to Post

Navigate to the Audience tab in Instagram’s Insights and review what day of the week and time most of your followers are online. Plan your post releases to match those times for the best possible engagement. 

It’s not enough to create content and post it to social media with crossed fingers. You have to study the feedback hidden within the metrics to continuously craft valuable content that resonates with your audience and drives traffic back to you over and over again.