Understanding Your Insights
You may have heard my signature catchphrase “don’t worry, I speak analytics”. There’s so much to understand about analytics that most professionals devote years of study to all the different aspects. For this post, I’m going to simply focus on social media, specifically Instagram. While Facebook provides the most free insights for business accounts, when you’re just starting out they may seem irrelevant or be too complicated. Instagram provides just a few insights that can help guide posting as you experiment with new content. Under the insights tab you’ll be able to access content, activity and audience data. Here’s a break down of what those tabs mean and why they’re important to pay attention to.
Content refers to what visual media you’ve actually posted such as posts and stories. Posting content regularly keeps your page relevant and keeps your audience engaged. It’s important to stay consistent so your followers know you’re still open and you’re okay. I try to post often enough to be relevant but not so often that I flood my follower’s feed. Unless you’re a meme account, puppies or a celebrity, followers typically do not respond positively to spammed content on Instagram. Let’s look at some of the best insights that Instagram offers for free:
Overview shows you how many accounts you’ve reached with your content for the week and any followers you’ve gained or lost from that content. It also shows interactions, which refers to engagements, specific comments. These are good insights to know. Let’s say your goal is to spread awareness and a reputation for your brand so you post a lot of content. If you’ve reached a lot of potential followers, but haven’t gained any followers, or have lost followers, then you should consider dialing back the number of posts you’re doing. Remember, work smarter, not harder. Your time creating those posts is valuable. If your goal is building a reputation surrounding your brand, then consider making fewer posts, but tag influential accounts related to your type of service or industry. You’re able to look further into all of these features under “Overview”.
Accounts reached will show which days was most successful for your page. It also shows which posts had the largest reach. Reach refers to how many people saw your content. Reach is really important if your goal relates to awareness or you’d like them to engage with your content in some way. Under this section you can also see how many people viewed your website or visited your profile. This is great when considering your brand’s marketing funnel. Clicking your page or website can indicate more users moving from an awareness stage and further considering your services or products. The biggest question I usually receive about this section of insights is “How come the ‘accounts reached’ is different than if I just added up all the reaches for my posts. Why is the total of all my posts different?” Accounts reached is smaller, because it’s considered unique reach. Unique means different users. If you added up all the post reach, some of those users may have already been counted.
Content interactions are pretty self-explanatory since it simply breaks down the total number of each type of interaction for your weekly content. Shares are going to be your favorite to see because that typically indicates that you have users advocating for your account or content. Advocates are your favorite people because they do the work of influencers for free. They promote your content and help you gain exposure. This could translate to brand awareness or even sales. While Instagram’s privacy regulations won’t allow you to see who’s sharing the content, you can see which post/content was “share-worthy”.
"Total Followers" is my favorite pool of information. This is your audience data and it’s extremely valuable if you’re trying to figure out more about who’s using your products and services. In addition to the unfollows and follows, it shows you what days of the week those occurred. This can really help you if you get into the weeds like I do because you can hone in on what style of posts are leading to followers or unfollows. Style can refer to promotional posts, product highlights, service features or any way you categorize the type of post you’re creating. This can help you better understand what type of content your audience wants to see. The other data can help you create profiles of your largest audiences. For all of the profiles I manage, their largest audience are women, ages 35-44, located in Sacramento. While this is broad and may tell you nothing, further research in the interests of this user group can suggest their interest in promos/deals, family and are more likely to make informed decisions. Which means this user group would be less likely to purchase something because they thought it was “cool” or “trendy”. They’d like to make a purchase if they knew a lot about it and why it was high-quality or worth their money. They’d also be more motivated to try it using promotional codes or if it catered to their family needs. I’ll definitely be doing a future post on some on demographics and building a customer “profile” in the future. Be on the look out if audience data interests you.
As you can see Instagram provides some great insights! You can make really informed decisions surrounding free information and data within the app. Make sure to have at least a few weeks of content to analyze before you start experimenting with improvements. Good luck!
