A new feature on Instagram that some accounts will now have access to is Insights. Insights are stats on your account, images and followers. Not all accounts have this feature, it’s currently available to some business and large individual accounts, but it may be rolled to move down the line. If Insights are available, to open it, you click the graph icon top right of your profile.
The first thing you see when you open Instagram Insights is an overview such as below.
Overview
At the top of the overview screen you will have various counts. As well as providing the stats for that week, you will be able to see an increase or decrease based on the previous week.
Impressions – Impressions are the number of times your photos have been seen across the web. These won’t necessarily be unique views.
Reach – Reach is the number of unique people that have seen your photos. This gives you a good idea of how many people are looking at your photos based on your following.
Profile views –Â This is the number of profile views to your account.
Clicks to your website – For businesses, brands and anyone who is hoping to send traffic to their website from Instagram, this is the perfect stat allowing you to keep track. For example, if you have a product that you are selling on your website, you could have a link to it on your profile, and then track how many people are heading there after you mention it.
Posts –Â In the top posts screen you can view your top performing images/videos over the last 7 days in descending order.
By clicking on the blue text you have the option to change the filters, so you can filter by photo or video, impressions, reach, engagement, likes and comments, and also a time duration from 7 days to 2 years.
Followers – In the follower section you can see how many followers you have, how many new followers you have gained or lost in the last week, as well as detailed information such as gender, age, location and the best time to post based on when your followers are online.
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Individual Pictures
On each image, you will find a button on the bottom left below the image allowing you to open Insights/stats for that particular image.
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Impressions – Similar to earlier, Impressions is the number of times the image has been seen on the web.
Reach – The number of unique accounts that have seen your picture.
Engagement – The engagement for the image, this includes both comments and likes.
How Can Instagram Insights Be Useful?
Here are some ways we think Instagram Insights can be useful.
- You post an image and feel your engagement is lower than normal. You could then look at the impressions/reach and determine if the hashtags or location may be the issue, or if maybe the image just isn’t what your followers want to see.
- Insights allow you to track how many people are visiting your website. You could even do a test and ask people to visit your website and then see how many people actually do, by keeping an eye on the numbers.
- Through the popular images screen, you can see which images do best, and then decide if certain edits, types of picture, or locations do better than others.
- You can be strategic and only post during the times that your followers are online.
- Through the follower screens you can see what your market is, especially useful for brands and businesses.
- You can track whether your account performance is improving or the reverse.
Summary
For businesses and serious Instagrammers, Insights is going to be a great way to learn about the performance of posts, as well as look into detailed information such followers location and active times, which will in turn allow you to be more strategic with what and when you post.
Want to see some of my Instagram posts, follow me on @mikecleggphoto, and also my hub @travelanddestinations.
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