Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Later Instagram Analytics Strategy Guide
Later Instagram Analytics Strategy Guide
Analytics
Strategy
Guide
Understanding the Numbers Behind
Your Instagram Account to Help You
Grow Your Business
Table of
Contents
Introduction 4
Conclusion 60
Glossary 63
A B O U T L AT E R
Introduction
Ready to start killing it with your
Instagram marketing strategy?
Why Instagram
Analytics Matter
CHAPTER ONE : WHY DO INSTAGRAM ANALYTICS MATTER? 7
CHAPTER ONE
Why Instagram
Analytics Matter
Being able to understand and track your Instagram analytics is
like holding the golden ticket to growing your Instagram account.
One of the most beneficial things you can do for your business’
Instagram strategy is to closely monitor the patterns in your
Instagram analytics. If you can pull out the positive trends in your
performance, and pinpoint your audience’s engagement patterns,
these insights can really influence and lead to positive changes in
your Instagram profile and marketing strategy.
The good news is that all the metrics you need to understand how
your account is performing can be found within the Instagram
app or with Later!
CHAPTER ONE : WHY DO INSTAGRAM ANALYTICS MATTER? 8
Don’t worry! This guide will take you through everything you need
to know about Instagram analytics without any of the jargon
or tech talk! Just plain and simple knowhow to take your
Instagram account and marketing strategy to the next level.
CHAPTER ONE : WHY DO INSTAGRAM ANALYTICS MATTER? 9
By tracking some key metrics over time, you can gain invaluable
insights for your business and start to develop a strong content
strategy that resonates with your target demographic.
Sounds like a lot of information you could use for the future, right?
Switching to an
Instagram Business
Account
CHAPTER 2: SWITCHING TO AN INSTAGRAM BUSINESS ACCOUNT 11
CHAPTER TWO
Switching to an
Instagram Business
Account
Did you know your Instagram account is a goldmine for analytics?
And all you have to do to find all the metrics behind your Instagram
profile is set up an Instagram Business account!
CHAPTER 2: SWITCHING TO AN INSTAGRAM BUSINESS ACCOUNT 12
What is an Instagram
Business Account?
Back in early 2016, Instagram started testing business profiles,
a new type of Instagram profile dedicated to helping businesses
grow and stand out on the Instagram platform.
Now, just two short years later, there are over 25 million business
profiles worldwide!
If you already have a Facebook Page for your business, you can
skip this step and move on to the next step.
From here, select your business category and name your page.
We suggest keeping it as your business name, or a similar name
that people may search for to find your business.
Upload a profile photo and a cover photo for your business. You
can use your business logo, or the same profile image as your
Instagram account.
Next, tap the “gear” icon in the top right corner of your screen to
go to your account settings.
Tap “Continue As” to connect the Facebook Page. If you don’t see
your business’ Facebook Page as an option, make sure that you’re
listed as an admin in the settings menu.
Once the correct Facebook Page appears, select it and tap “Next.”
CHAPTER 2: SWITCHING TO AN INSTAGRAM BUSINESS ACCOUNT 17
When you’ve added all this information, tap “Done,” and you’re
all set up!
CHAPTER THREE
Instagram Analytics:
What They Mean and
How to Use Them to
Your Advantage
CHAPTER THREE: HOW TO USE INSTAGRAM ANALYTICS TO YOUR ADVANTAGE 19
CHAPTER THREE
Instagram Analytics:
What They Mean and
How to Use Them to
Your Advantage
It’s time to get down to the nitty-gritty of your Instagram analytics
and see where you can find ways to grow your business, boost
your sales, and build an active community with this newly found
knowledge!
Knowing where your audience is based, their age, and how often
they engage with your content could help you make changes to
your overall content strategy. And the good news is that all this
information about your audience can found in the Instagram app!
CHAPTER THREE: UNDERSTANDING YOUR AUDIENCE 20
If you just created your business profile today, or in the last couple
of days, it may take a while for Instagram to generate the data
on your posts. Unfortunately, Instagram can only show you the
metrics on posts that went live after switching to a business profile.
From your Insights page in Instagram, tap on “Audience.”
CHAPTER THREE: UNDERSTANDING YOUR AUDIENCE 21
Followers:
Firstly, at the top of this section, you can see your total number
of followers, and the number of followers gained (or lost) over the
last week.
If you scroll to the bottom of this page (don’t worry, we’ll cover
everything that comes up in between shortly!), you’ll find more
detailed information about your followers’ activity.
CHAPTER THREE: YOUR AUDIENCE DEMOGRAPHICS 23
You can also take the guesswork out completely with Later’s Best
Time to Post feature! Our algorithm determines your best time to
post by analyzing historical data on your top performing posts and
then highlights the optimal times right on your content calendar.
By knowing exactly what times are best for your audience, you
can maximize on your engagement!
Top locations:
Now let’s scroll back up to the top half of the Audience Insights
page.
Under “Top Locations,” you can see the breakdown of where your
audience is based (this includes both followers and non-followers).
You can also see these metrics organized by cities or countries
– just tap the option in the corner of the statistics box to toggle
between them.
Age range:
Instagram Insights also breaks
down your audience into age
ranges.
Gender:
This pie chart represents the
divide between your male and
female followers.
From here, select the “Activity” tab. This will show you more
information on the actions your audience is taking, whether
that’s simply scrolling past your post, liking a post, or going a
step further and leaving Instagram to send you an email or click
on the link in your bio.
CHAPTER THREE: YOUR AUDIENCE’S BEHAVIORS 27
Interactions:
This section will show you any interactions taken by visitors to
your page over the course of the last week.
Or if you’re seeing that lull in activity when you posted video content
this week, it might mean your audience isn’t as engaged with video
as they are photo posts.
Profile visits: This is the total number of times your profile was
viewed this week.
Clicks to email: Here you’ll find how many people emailed you using
the Email feature on your profile page.
Discovery:
Want to know just how many thumbs have scrolled past your posts
this week? Here’s where you can find that out!
The Discovery tab will tell you how many times your posts or
profile have been seen over the last seven days. This includes all
your Instagram posts since the day you switched to an Instagram
business profile. That means that if someone searches for a hashtag
and finds a photo that you posted a few weeks ago, even though
the post is old, this “view” will still be counted in your current
week’s analytics.
For this reason, it’s normal to see a higher number for Impressions
than Reach. But growing your audience and finding new people
to engage with your Instagram profile is key to your business’
success, so keeping a close eye on your Reach total each week
is important if you want to keep track of your audience growth.
CHAPTER THREE: ANALYZING YOUR INSTAGRAM CONTENT 30
We’re about to take a deep dive into the metrics and analytics
behind your photos, videos, Instagram Stories, and now IGTV
videos! By the end of this chapter, you’ll know exactly which of
your posts are getting the most attention from your audience!
There are a few ways to access the metrics behind your content,
but let’s start with accessing your Instagram Insights from your
profile.
As before, tap the “bar chart” icon on the top right corner of your
profile. From here, click on “Content” in Instagram Insights.
Firstly in this section, you’ll see just how many times you posted
in the last seven days and whether that figure is up or down from
the previous week.
Directly below this, you’ll be able to see the Impressions the last
six of your posts have received. To see more detailed information,
tap on the “See All” button in the corner of that section.
CHAPTER THREE: ANALYZING YOUR INSTAGRAM CONTENT 32
This Insights page arranges all your Instagram posts based on the
criteria you choose in the filter bar at the top.
Then you can decide what kind of engagement you’d like to see.
The results can be broken down by post likes, comments, profile
visits, or you can choose to see the results based on Impressions,
Reach, or Follows.
CHAPTER THREE: ANALYZING YOUR INSTAGRAM CONTENT 33
Impressions
= total number of times that your post has been seen.
Reach
= the number of unique accounts that have seen your post.
Finally, you can filter by time, from the last seven days (this
is particularly useful if you want to check and report on your
Instagram analytics weekly) up to the last two years.
CHAPTER THREE: ANALYZING YOUR INSTAGRAM CONTENT 34
TIP: At the bottom of the filter, you should see the option “Understanding
your insights.” Tap this text for more details on all the filters and metrics!
CHAPTER THREE: UNDERSTANDING ENGAGEMENT 35
Understanding Engagement
Through your Instagram Insights, there’s also an option to filter
by “Engagement,” which can be a good indicator of how well your
audience is enjoying your content.
Engagement
This is the total number of unique accounts that have liked,
commented, and saved a particular photo or video. However,
this total does not count multiple comments from the same user,
which could happen in the case of giveaways where users tend to
post multiple times to improve their chances.
Engagement Rate
Engagement rate is the percentage of followers or viewers that
engage with your posts. Generally, if you want to calculate your
average engagement rate for Instagram, you would divide the total
number of likes and comments by your follower count, which will
give you a percentage. To make it easy:
Start analyzing these post by drawing out the similarities. Are the
color palettes similar? Have you included a product in the photo?
Was it a landscape or portrait shot?
If you start seeing a trend with your best performing posts, you
could be on to a winning formula that you can use for future
content.
CHAPTER THREE: ANALYZING YOUR CONTENT WITH LATER 37
With Later’s Instagram Analytics you can monitor trends with your
Instagram account’s overall performance, measure weekly and
monthly growth, and discover which of your posts are driving the
most engagement.
You can also view your average number of likes and comments
per Instagram post.
To calculate your engagement rate with a free Later plan, add the
average number of likes and comments together, and then divide
by your followers, which should gives you decimal. Then multiply
by 100 to get a percentage. That’s your average engagement rate!
The huge bonus with the Pro Analytics is that your engagement
rate is calculated for you, so there’s no need to do any math!
If you want to take a closer look into which of your posts are
performing the best, toggle to the Performance tab of your Pro
Analytics.
CHAPTER THREE: ANALYZING YOUR CONTENT WITH LATER 40
While your story may only last for 24 hours, you can still analyze
how they performed up to 14 days after they’ve expired. You’ll be
able to view metrics like how many people viewed your post, the
number of replies you received, and how engaged your viewers
were while watching. From these numbers, you can start to plan
and strategize the changes you can make to help your Instagram
Stories perform better.
CHAPTER THREE: YOUR INSTAGRAM STORIES ANALYTICS 42
Here you’ll find important metrics that can help you measure
the success of your Instagram Stories and identify trends in your
content that leads to the best performance:
Interactions:
If you’ve included a sticker on your story – like a poll or vote sticker
– any actions that a viewer has taken to engage with your story
will be recorded here. You’ll be able to see how many responses
you received and how your viewers voted in this section.
Discovery:
This is the current number of accounts that you reached with your
story. It’s worth keeping an eye on this figure throughout the day,
especially if you’re trying to identify your best time to post.
While the number will naturally increase over 24 hours, if you can
spot any spikes in views – perhaps in the morning, or late in the
evening – you could tailor your next story to suit that trend. Also,
if you’re using any hashtag or location stickers in your story, you
can see how these improve your reach.
CHAPTER THREE: YOUR INSTAGRAM STORIES ANALYTICS 44
Navigation:
Here you’ll find a number of metrics, like taps forward, taps
backwards, and exits, all of which can help you understand how
your audience is interacting and engaging with your Instagram
Stories content.
Tracking these kinds of metrics can help you find out not just
how similar content performs, but how different content perform
against each other.
Let’s take a closer look at what these metrics mean for your profile:
Taps Forward:
Taps forward is the number of times a viewer
tapped the right side of the screen to jump to
your the next story.
Taps Backward:
Taps backward is the number of times a viewer
tapped the left side of the screen to rewatch the
previous story.
If you see a lot of Next Story or Exit results for your stories, you
may want to consider reviewing the quality of your content, posting
a little less frequently, or switching-up the format of your posts to
keep your audience more engaged – like including polls, stickers,
or swapping to videos!
Just have to follow these steps to find out how your expired
Instagram Stories performed:
From your profile page, tap the “bar chart” icon on the top right-
hand corner. Then navigate to the Content tab on the Insights
page.
If you want to see more Instagram Stories, all you have do is tap
“See All” in the top right corner of this box.
Similar to the Insights for your posts, this page will show all of
your Instagram Stories with the option to filter using the bar on
the top of the screen. However, you’ll only find metrics for your
Instagram Stories posted over the last 14 days here.
CHAPTER THREE: YOUR INSTAGRAM STORIES ANALYTICS 49
Using the filter, you can toggle to see the metrics for impressions,
reach, taps forward, taps back, exited, replies, next stories, and,
importantly, link opens.
Here, you can track how many people used the “Swipe up” feature
if you linked to an external site! If you see a low number of Link
Opens for the story that you added a link to, it could meant that
the content didn’t resonate with viewers or they didn’t notice your
call-to-action. If this is the case, you might want to consider adding
GIFs to your stories help draw viewer’s attention to the link.
CHAPTER THREE: YOUR INSTAGRAM STORIES ANALYTICS 50
If you haven’t created your channel yet, we have a full IGTV guide
to help you get set up and running. It’s a great way to reach new
audiences through video and showcase some of your business on
the new platform.
From your Instagram profile, tap on the IGTV icon. This will bring
you to your IGTV channel.
CHAPTER THREE: YOUR IG TV CHANNEL 52
Now, tap on the video you would like to see your analytics for.
When the video starts playing, just tap on the ‘...’ icon on the
bottom left-hand side of the screen.
This will bring up and list of options. Simply tap on the “View
Insights” button and it will bring up all the analytics related to
your video.
CHAPTER THREE: YOUR IG TV CHANNEL 53
Engagement:
Just like your Instagram Stories and posts, you can see how many
times your video has been viewed, liked, and commented on.
Audience Retention:
This is a metric unique to IGTV as you can investigate how well
your video was able to keep your audience’s attention!
Being able to see how much of your video was watched, and at
what point your viewer decided to exit your video, can give you
some great insights into your content.
CHAPTER THREE: YOUR IG TV CHANNEL 54
Overall, that means that 17% of our video was watched, but it
doesn’t necessarily mean the first 17% of the video as users can
tap forward through the video to skip ahead or watch snippets
of the video.
CHAPTER FOUR
It’s all well and good being able to see these metrics, but it’s more
important to learn from them. By regularly tracking and measuring
the changes in your analytics – both the good and the bad – you’ll
be better off when planning your social strategy. From here, you’ll
be able to make better informed, positive changes you can make
in the future that will help grow your Instagram account and get
more business sales!
SET: Set some goals for your Instagram account. Do you want
to increase your followers or improve your engagement rate?
Whatever your goal for your Instagram account, make sure it’s
measurable. For example, your goal could be to have an average
engagement rate of 10% by December 2018.
REVIEW: Now that you’ve built-up and recorded all this data, it’s
time to review and learn from the trends and patterns! This is the
time to really analyze the positive patterns with your audience
and content. If any of these learnings help you reach your goals,
it’s time to make changes!
Conclusion
Regardless of your business size, you
now have everything you need to start
understanding your Instagram analytics!
Glossary
Average percentage watched (IGTV): The percentage of your
IGTV videos that people watched calculated as the percentage of
your videos watched as an average of all plays.
Engagement: The number of times that your post was liked, saved
and commented on.
Profile visits: The number of times that your profile was viewed.
Reach: The number of unique accounts that have seen any of your
posts or Instagram Stories posts.
Taps back: The number of taps to see the previous photo or video
in your Instagram Stories.
Taps forward: The number of taps to see the next photo or video
in your Instagram Stories.