The Ultimate Guide to Instagram Insights in 2022

Instagram Insights is one of the most underutilized tools on the platform. Believe it or not, most small businesses, influencers, and social media managers do not spend enough time reviewing their Insights. 

Staying up to date on the latest social media trends is essential to your success when creating your content plan and posting schedule. And if you're not already familiar with Instagram Insights, then you're missing out.

Why Insights matter

What do Insights do for you? They offer incredible data about your content and audience with detailed metrics for each format, so you can understand: 

• who your followers are
• what content they love
• which times they are active
• why they engage with your content

You can access Insights by either clicking on the Insight button on your profile, or locating it in drop-down menu on your app. When you reach the Insights homepage, you’ll find “Insights Overview,” which provides data regarding your reach, engagement, and followers. Below that your Insights can be viewed by content type.

All that data can feel overwhelming, even daunting. Plus, IG Insights have changed in the past six months with the addition of Reels and Live insights, demonstrating that the app is banking on video content more than ever right now. And you can expect even more changes to come in 2022 as Instagram continues to ramp up features such as Live Shopping and Collabing.

Keep reading for a comprehensive guide to Instagram Insights and how to analyze them. Then you will understand how your content is performing and can tweak your strategy to achieve greater success on the platform.

Content views

Are you curious how many people are viewing your Instagram content? Wonder what is performing the best? How long users watching your videos? Instagram Insights can answer all those questions and more if you know where to look.

Go to your Instagram Insights dashboard, to see your content performance. Right below “Insights Overview,” you'll see “Content you shared,” where you can access metrics for different types of content, including Posts, Stories, Reels, Videos, and Lives.

Choose the type of content you'd like to review, and by clicking on it, you'll be able to access a list of all the content by type you've shared on Instagram, with stats for each, and learn how well each one of your posts are performing. 

Let’s go over how to review different content formats.

Posts 

You can see how many impressions each post received, how many times it was liked or commented on, and the reach and engagement rates for posts and videos. 

This data can help you determine which posts are most successful or which ones need improvement. You can also access an ad overview, showcasing data for only paid content. 

Stories 

Story insights now feature a lot more metrics, including exit-intent (how many people left your stories after a specific slide) as well as interactions and messages.

You can choose the metric you'd like to review for any content format and the time range (from seven days up to a year). There are three metrics I am particularly interested in when looking at content:

• Impressions—The number of times the content has been seen
• Saves—My favorite metric when it comes to engagement
• Overall engagement—the number of interactions (which will change depending on content) a post has received

Reels

For Reels, you can access data such as plays, reach, comments, and interactions. 

IGTV/Video 

Even though IGTV has dissolved into simply “IG Video,” this section is still labeled as IGTV and displays stats for any Instagram video content you have that isn’t a Story or Reel.

Lives

A metric unique to IG Live content is Peak Concurrent Views, which gives you the maximum number of people who watched your Live at any given time.

Pro Tip: Review your content every 30 days and identify three to five of your top-performing posts to help you understand how your audience engages with your content and what you need to do to grow your account. Plus, using a tool like UNUM Insights makes it even easier to see how each of your posts are performing.

‍

Now that you understand how each IG surface is measured, let’s return to the Insights Overview to look at how your overall content is performing. 

Reach view

The first section in your Insights Overview is Reach. This section includes data on impressions and views for your Instagram account.

As well as showing you the number of accounts reached, this section will show the percentage from ads versus organic content, a metric can be beneficial to outline the effectiveness of your ads efforts. 

Reached Audience

If you are planning on creating targeted ads, this metric crucial. Reached Audience, breaks down demographics for your reach such as top countries, top cities, gender, top age ranges, and the split of followers vs non-followers. Keep in mind, the stats listed here or unique views, rather than repeat views of your content.

Content Reach

Content reach is another powerful part of this view, as it will help you understand which format is most popular, outlining top-performing content for your brand. For extra help, UNUM Insights also shows you top hashtags to maximize your content reach.

‍

You can also see your impressions at a glance. Impressions are the number of times your content was shown, while views are the number of times someone clicked through to see your content. These metrics can help you determine which posts are most popular and which ones you might want to post more of. 

Finally, this view features a profile activity tab at the bottom of the page, with profile visits and website taps (how many people clicked to your link in bio). Similar to your content views, you can adjust the time range for your reach stats. 

Engagement view

Are you looking to understand better what content is encouraging people to interact the most? 

One of the most critical areas to focus on when reviewing your insights for businesses on Instagram is engagement. Engagement includes likes, comments, saves, and shares, among others. 

These interactions are vital because they indicate whether people are interested in your content. It also shows how effective your calls to action are when it comes to the content you create.

Accounts Engaged

This is an at a glance a demographic breakdown similar to your reach view (countries, cities, genders). I would focus on the split of followers vs non-followers as this metric can highlight the level of discoverability of your account and how your content is helping with exposure.

Content Interactions

For more data, you can scroll down on the Content Interactions section, where Insights will break down the ways in which users have been engaging (reaction, saves, likes, and comments). 

Finally, you'll be able to see an in-depth breakdown of top content based on engagement and interaction breakdowns by content type.

Pro Tip: Identify what content you want to focus on the most based on your Reach analytics and use this view to help you see how people interact with each one. 

Follower view

Audience Insights give you data about your followers, such as their age, gender, location, and interests. This information can help you create content that is more relevant to them and see growth trends.

If you are interested in more follower data, UNUM Insights will help you to understand how your content is perceived by your audience and how your page is growing. In this way, you can easily plan your social media strategy.  Not only can you see their locations and age, but you can also track growth (both follows and unfollows). 

I would recommend checking for any spikes in following or unfollowing and looking at your content for those spikes. Is your growth linked to any of the content you created recently? This view can also help you identify the best time to post by looking at the hourly breakdown and the days. 

Pro Tip: Consider when your followers are most active on the platform, and post some of your most popular content topics and formats on those days and times.

Summary

To get the most value from your marketing efforts, you should utilize Instagram Insights to guide your content creation efforts. 

Getting familiar with insights and powerful tools to grow your account is crucial. Did you know that UNUM has its own insights dashboard to help you grow your account? You can find an overview below.

Taking time to review your content performance can offer you vital insights into what works (and doesn't) on the platform. Create a practice for yourself to check your analytics every month, highlight your top content, review your engagement, and refine your posting times and days.

Use your content view to see what your most popular content is. Gauge when and where your content receives the highest engagement and use this knowledge to design your posting strategy via your UNUM account. 

+++++

UNUM is your best tool for planning, creating, and executing beautiful social media feeds and stories. Signup today for a free account.

~~~~~

[Photo by Richard Jaimes on Unsplash]