The Instagram platform offers several metrics and numbers that you can track in order to fully leverage the potential of the platform, but not all metrics are equally important to everyone. The numbers you will pay closer attention to are related to your goals and what you want to achieve on Instagram. We wrote a bit more about goals and tactics for success on social media here, but we warn you in advance that the text is quite long :)
What we will cover here are the three most common goals that business profiles have when using the Instagram platform, as well as the numbers to track in order to achieve those goals. First and foremost, it's important to have a business or creator profile, as these metrics are not available for personal profiles. If you need assistance with switching to a business profile, the information is available here.
Now that we have that sorted, let's move on to the goals.
1. Sales - Instagram as sales channel
If the goal is sales, which is usually the case in most campaigns and business operations, Instagram is definitely a channel that should not be neglected. However, if the goal is sales, then activities, communication, and content must be focused on that..
The content should highlight the benefits of the service or product for the end customer, answer why they should buy from you, showcase the satisfaction of existing customers, offer discounts and special promotions, and more. Additionally, you need to make the purchasing process easy. Your Instagram followers should not spend too much time and energy searching for ways to make a purchase.
That's why one of the important elements here is the link to your website. Make sure to include it in your profile description and use your content to direct followers to that link. Additionally, use story formats with direct links to drive people to your website.
When it comes to organic sales (without investing a budget), which can be a challenging battle, the metrics you should track and aim to increase are as follows:
- Profile visits: to track how successful your content is in driving the audience to your profile where the link to your website is located.
- External Link tabs: indicates the number of clicks on any link you have placed (in the profile description or in story format).
- Engagement: which can be observed at the post level or profile level, and is an important indicator of the quality of your content and therefore the effectiveness in sales communication.
Where the potential for sales on Instagram lies is definitely in ads. You won't fully utilize the sales potential that this platform offers without investing a budget. It's important to note that the conclusions you reach by observing organic results can be used in campaigns. Content that effectively communicates sales organically can be smartly utilized as ad content.
2. Reach - increase the reach of your brand
The other two goals are, we can say, simpler. Here, the goal is to reach as many people as possible with your message. Instagram finds it much easier to provide you with reach than to convince someone to make a purchase, especially with paid ads. When you start paying for reach campaigns, the amount of reach depends on how much budget you have invested. Therefore, it may be better to focus on the organic reach you obtain because it indicates the quality of your content.
How does it work?
When you post something, the first few hours are crucial. Instagram's algorithm checks how people are reacting to your content, and if the number of reactions is high compared to the number of people who have seen the content, the algorithm automatically starts showing your post to a larger audience.
For example, let's say that within the first hour of posting, your post is seen by 100 people, and out of those 100 people, 80 take some action (like, comment, etc.). Your engagement rate would be 80%. This signals to Instagram that the content is so good that the audience couldn't help but react to it, and as a result, Instagram will automatically start showing your content to a larger number of people.
When it comes to the goal of increasing brand visibility, it is most important to track these three metrics at both the individual post level and the profile level over a period of a week or a month:
- Reach i Impressions: You can, for example, compare whether you have a higher reach when using more video posts compared to a week when you had more photo posts.
- Accounts engaged: Similar to sales, the amount of engagement relative to reach shows you the quality of the content you are posting.
- Reached followers / non followers: This is important for reach because if a large number of people who don't follow you see your content, it means that the algorithm is pushing it as high-quality content to users who might find it interesting.
3. Engagement - how to increase number of followers
The third goal is engagement, which refers to the interest and involvement of your audience and followers with your profile. Here, the objectives can include increasing followers, increasing comments, and so on. The absolute focus here is on the content that you need to track in order to determine what works best. What messages resonate? What tone of communication? Which formats, photos, or videos? To detect this, the most reliable and important metric is the engagement rate.
As mentioned above, this refers to the number of people who have reacted to the content in relation to the number of people who had the opportunity to see it. Within the engagement metric for each specific piece of content, the best metrics to track are the number of comments (as well as the quality of comments), saved and shares. These metrics are a much better indicator of quality than the number of likes. An increase in these metrics leads to an increase in followers and profile reach.
That's it. At least for this basic part. Now, it's up to you to start regularly tracking these numbers, test and give meaning to those numbers. If you do all of that and reach accurate conclusions, achieving your goals is unquestionably within reach in most cases.
