Instagram is one of the fastest-growing social media platforms today with roughly 1 billion users. It’s also a powerful platform that is all about creating visually appealing posts that appeal to today’s increasingly time-stressed and visually-oriented consumers. The concept of using hashtags is also interesting as a way to reach people who do not follow you but search using hashtags for likes that appeal to their interests. After discovering your account through hashtags, the potential of growing your account with new followers is also high. Hence tracking Instagram metrics and fine-tuning your Instagram marketing efforts is important for your business success.
Follower Growth Rate:
If your profile has a large number of followers, you might think it is a success but in reality, you need to keep growing your followers and keep them engaged with your content. Follower counts don’t tell you much about the success of your campaigns and we tend to think about these as vanity metrics because they make you feel important without contributing to your campaign success.
On the other hand, if your follower growth rate is on the rise, it means new people are interested in your profile and your reach is expanding, which is good news. Thousands of stagnant followers is not a good sign but if you have growing followers with high engagement, it is a great sign.
Engagement Per Follower:
Now, you may have thousands of followers but what is the use if they do not engage with your content? Your ultimate aim is conversions and, if your followers do not engage with your content, then the chances of conversion are minimal. Engagement per follower allows you to monitor whether your audience is really interested in your content. If you have 3,000 followers and your posts get just 30 likes, then it is just 1% engagement, hence your campaign is not working well. Whereas if you have 30 likes from 300 followers, the engagement is 10%, which is still decent. You can track this data by using web analytics software easily.
So, how do you increase engagement on Instagram? Here’s some advice from Iconosquare:
- Engage with similar accounts in your market or niche every day
- Engage with content before and after you post your own
- Use long-tail, strategic hashtags and vary them across posts
- Write better captions
- Post more photos of people
- Reply to comments left on your content as soon as possible
- Draw attention to your posts via stories
- Post at a better time
Best Time to Post:
Speaking of posting at optimal times, you must post great content on Instagram but, if your timing isn’t right, you might not reach your target audience. Understand that each of your followers follows many more accounts and their feed is filled with many posts, hence you should figure out the best time to post so that your content shows on the top of their feed. Using these Instagram metrics from your Instagram insights show you a pattern of when your followers are more active so that you can post during that time. You can also use web analytics to figure out your audience behavior and best posting time every day which may bring in more engagement.
Website Traffic
Instagram has a limitation in that you can’t add clickable links on every post, but you can add a link in the bio. Web analytics tracks these links to give you information about the traffic your website gets from Instagram. This indicates whether your Instagram posts are reaching the right audience and offers insights on how you can improve your Instagram content. You can change your Instagram marketing tactics and check through analytics to determine if the changes are really working.
Though Instagram has its own analytics, if your account is a business account, web analytics software from Siteimprove.com can improve your analysis and help you reach a more relevant audience. If you use the Instagram metrics produced to understand what efforts are bringing positive results and which ones need to be changed, in no time you will become an Instagram influencer and an expert.
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Thank you for the great post