Are you already analyzing or are you still estimating? If you listen to your gut feeling on Instagram and rather estimate how many users really click on your website, you should urgently change this.
Instagram Insights gives you the opportunity to get deeper insights into your profile for free. The insights offer you the chance to improve your marketing with the help of internal statistics and give you a good overview of successes and failures.
Find out below what you can find in Instagram Insights, how to interpret the figures and which key figures are really important for your company.
The most important facts in brief
- To use Instagram Insights, you must convert your profile into a business profile and have more than 100 followers.
- There are two ways to access Instagram Insights: via your profile or via one of your posts.
- The key figures from Instagram Insights that are important for you depend on the goal you are pursuing with your company on social media.
Background information: What is Instagram Insights?
Instagram Insights is an additional function in the Instagram app. Insights is a statistics function that helps you to find out more about new visitors and which content is popular and which is not. This allows you to recognize which posts are performing well or poorly and thus adjust your content strategy. A conscientious evaluation of Instagram Insights creates a win-win situation: your followers get what interests them and you increase your reach.
Statistics, figures, data and facts are not everyone’s cup of tea. However, the Instagram Insights are very easy to understand and perfect for beginners. All numerical values are explained to you so that words such as impression or click rate will soon be part of your vocabulary.
What is the aim of Instagram Insights?
Instagram Insights is an Instagram analytics tool that gives you valuable insights into the performance of your profile and provides you with valuable information about your followers. With the help of the data provided here, Instagram gives you the opportunity to tailor your social media marketing precisely to your business goals.
What are the requirements for using Instagram Insights?
To be able to use Instagram Insights, you must fulfill the following two requirements with your account:
Business profile: You only have access to your Insights if you create your profile as a business account. It is also possible to convert a personal profile into a business profile.
To convert your personal profile into a company profile, go to your profile, click on Menu at the top right and then on “Settings”. Then click on “Account”, scroll to the bottom and change your profile.
Your statistics are now automatically available to you.
100 followers: You have now converted your profile to a business profile and integrated the Insights, but you are not seeing all the results? This is because you have fewer than 100 followers. As soon as you have crossed this magic threshold, you can use all the Insights functions.
Where can I find Instagram Insights?
Below I will explain how you can access Instagram Insights. There are two ways to view your Insights.
- Go to your profile. Under your Instagram bio you will find the “Insights” button. At the top left you can then choose whether you want to see your last 7 or 30 days.
- The second way to see your insights is in your posts. Click on a picture of your choice. Below your picture there is a blue button “View Insights”. If you click on this button, you can see the insights for your individual post.
How are Instagram Insights structured?
If you click on Insights in your profile, the following breakdown opens.
- Overview: The overview shows you the accounts reached and the content interactions. Both show you the number of accounts and interactions, as well as the percentage increase. You can click on both to get more detailed insights, such as days of the week with the most activity, profile and website views, as well as top posts and stories.
- Target group: Next we have the target group. The interface again shows the number of subscribers and the percentage change. Under “View all” you can gain more detailed insights. Your target group is broken down by activity on the individual days of the week and times, locations, age and gender.
- Content that you have shared: The last point is explicitly dedicated to your shared content, divided into posts, stories and IGTV. By clicking on these individual categories, you can see an overview of the reach of all posts.
When do I need which key figures?
Now you know that you can view a lot of relevant data from Instagram Insights for free. But what can you do with this data and which is the most important?
Unfortunately, we cannot answer this question, as it depends on your goal. If you don’t yet know exactly which goal you want to pursue, then take a look here.
If this is not the case, we will now show you the most common goals and the key figures that are most important for them.
| Goals | Key figures |
| Brand Awareness | Number of followers, impressions and reach |
| Lead generation | Clicks on the website, clicks on links in stories |
| Interaction | Interaction, posts and stories, target group |
Brand Awareness
Do you focus on raising awareness of your brand? Then you should pay particular attention to your follower count, impressions and reach in your analysis.
- Number of followers: The more followers, the more attention? Yes and no. Of course, an increasing number of followers is a sign of more attention, but the growth rate is important here. This means that it not only counts how many followers you have in total, but also how many have been added in the last month.
You calculate the growth rate as follows:
Followers gained in the past month : Total number of followers
If the result is 7%, everything is going well for you. Do you only get 1%? Then you should review your strategy. - Impressions and reach: Thousands of followers won’t do you much good if none of them are interested in your content. Reach is slightly more important than impressions, as impressions cannot differentiate between multiple views of a single user, unlike reach.
Lead generation
If your goal is to generate leads, the clicks on your website and on links in your stories are particularly important.
- Clicks on the website: The options for sharing links on Instagram are limited. It is therefore all the more important to get users to click on the link in your profile to your website. You can see how successful you are in this in the Instagram Insights.
- Clicks on links in stories: This is unfortunately a limited function. However, if you are one of the lucky ones who have over 10,000 followers, you have activated this function. You can integrate links into your story using a swipe-up function.
Interaction
Is a highly interactive community your main goal? Then these points are particularly important for you.
- Interaction: To pursue your goal of interaction, you need to pay attention to interaction in the Insights. Logical. Note, however, that not every interaction is worth the same.
- Posts and stories: Comments require much more effort than a simple like, as do reactions to your story. Try to animate your community, ask questions, create a quiz, etc.
- Target group: Instagram Insights shows you when your target group is online and active. Instagram tells you the best times to reach your followers and encourage them to interact.
Summary
Instagram Insights allows you to gain many important insights into the performance of your profile free of charge. To access the insights for your profile, you must convert your profile into a business profile and have at least 100 followers.
The insights that should be important to you are those that support your business goal and your goal on social media. So first, be aware of what you want to achieve with Instagram and check the insights that are important to you.
