Posting on your business’s Instagram page is only half the fun, the other half is looking at your insights and measuring the success of your posts and ads, and adjusting as necessary. In this blog, we will discuss Instagram insights, how to create an Instagram ad, and how to measure your success.
Insights
Instagram business accounts are great because they let you track the success of stories, posts, and promotions. Here’s how to see those insights:
Go to your profile
Tap the ‘Insights’ button
Select the post, story, or promotion you would like to research
Track the insights of a particular post by going into the Insights page and clicking on the post you’d like to research. Once there you’ll find helpful metrics for your post like:
- Impressions- this is how many people took an action from your post like visiting your profile or using the call/email button attached to your post
- Likes- how many times people liked your post
- Comments-how many comments the post received
- Saves-how many times your post was saved to a user’s Saved folder
- Discovery- how many people found your post from the Discovery page, how many users found your post from their home feed,
- Follows- how many new followers were gained from the post
Instagram tracks audience insights as well. It tracks a user’s age demographics, gender, and location. The location can be set to a country or a specific city, so small businesses can find this feature extremely useful. This audience insights page also contains:
- The hours your followers are most active each day
- The days your followers are most active
The Activity tab lets you track weekly Interactions, Reach, and Impressions. This can give you an idea of how well your page performs. Some other helpful features you can track in the profile analytics page include:
- Profile visits- how many times users visited your profile
- Website clicks- how many times people clicked on your website from your profile
- Call/email clicks- how many times people clicked the call/email call-to-action buttons on your profile
- Mentions- how many times people mentioned you using your Instagram handle
Advertising On Instagram
The quickest way to gain a following on Instagram and start achieving your goals is to place paid ads. You should be targeting your demographic with these ads to increase sales and brand awareness. Here’s a quick rundown of how to create an Instagram ad:
1. Create a business Facebook page
If you don’t have one already you will need to create a business Facebook page since the apps are connected and the Ads Manager is run through Facebook.
2. Set up an ad
In the Ads Manager select the ad objective, target audience, and ad format. You can also select a post you’ve already created and tap Promote. Instagram will do the work for you of selecting an audience to view your ads. This is recommended unless you feel very comfortable and knowledgeable about your target audience and how to use the Ad Manager.
3. Set your budget
Choose your maximum budget and how long your ad should run.
4. Publish
Publish your ad, once it is reviewed and approved you will get a notification that indicates it’s ready to run.
Measuring Success
When measuring success on Instagram it’s important to remember why you created it. Was it to gain followers, get more bookings, build brand awareness? Here are three important metrics to consider when measuring success on Instagram:
Brand Awareness
Brand awareness ties into previously discussed topics like posting high-quality content, posting consistently, and targeting the right audience. When you do these things well a following comes naturally. These are the metrics for measuring brand awareness:
- Followers- Watch your follower count over time. This will grow slowly at first then exponentially when you start posting more frequently and running ads.
- Reach- Reach tracks the accounts viewing your stories, posts, profile. The great thing about this metric though is that it only measures new accounts viewing these things. So the same account viewing your profile more than once won’t skew the data. Over time your reach should improve steadily.
- Impressions- Impressions are similar to reach in that it measures how many users view your stories, profile, and posts. The only difference is this metric can be skewed because it counts the total number of impressions, so if someone views your profile more than once it will count multiple views. It’s still a helpful tool if you want to measure how your posts are affecting your profile views or how your stories are affecting if people are looking at your profile, but reach is a better metric to measure how many new people you’re reaching.
Ad Success
Placing paid ads is a crucial part of a business’s success on Instagram. Track how your ads are performing with the following metrics:
- Website Clicks- It’s likely if your advertising a product you’ll place a ‘Shop Now’ button on the ad that brings an Instagram user to your website. Track these metrics to figure out how well your ads are doing. Visit the Activity page in the Insights to see how many website clicks you’re getting
- Email/Call Clicks- If your goal for creating Instagram ads was to receive emails or calls track how many of these are coming from Instagram with your Activity tab in the Insights page.
- Success of ads- What ads are generating your desired results? Ask yourself if its the content that’s accompanying your ad, the copy, the time of day you posted it. Figure out what ads work for your business and replicate that.
Community Engagement
Follower counts and leads are great, but are you building a genuine relationship? Brands that build a genuine community have the most success long term. Here are some important metrics when considering your community engagement on Instagram:
- Comments- This shows people are engaging with your content. You want to build a community and have a dialogue with your followers. It’s crucial that you have people commenting and that you respond to these comments.
- Story replies- If a user is invested in your business they are likely to watch your story and reply. How many replies you get is a good measure of how good of a relationship your building with followers
- User-generated content- Are people frequenting your business or using your product/service and creating content based on it? This is one of the biggest factors to look at. If a customer is really invested in your product they will advertise for you. This shows you have a quality business. It’s very important to engage with these users when they post about your business since it opens a dialogue and creates a deeper relationship.
Interacting With The Instagram Community
We touched on the importance of engaging with your community earlier. It’s also important to engage with other businesses in your area and industry. Being active and commenting on other’s posts is not just showing your support, but it’s getting your business out there in another way where potential followers or customers could see it. Instagram’s algorithm also favors people who exchange DM’s, comment, and like other’s posts. So if they’re following you you’re more likely to appear at the top of their Home page. This is crucial for engagement rates.
Contact Us
If you would like to outsource your social media advertising to experts contact us online or by phone. We have two offices to serve you. The number for the Tampa location is (813) 556-7990 and the number for the Las Vegas location is (702) 515-2057.