Getting the most from Instagram Insights

The Seek Social blog returns to our spiritual home of Instagram today, with another set of five social media tips that will help you use Instagram’s analytics suite – dubbed ‘Instagram Insights’ – to its fullest, and in the process get the most out of Instagram for business purposes. Before we get into the nitty gritty of things though, it’s important to remember that in order to use Instagram Insights, you’ll need to have your Instagram account registered as a business account. Don’t worry though, doing that is a simple process that only takes a few minutes. It can be turned off too, if you find Instagram Insights isn’t for you. Now, are you sitting comfortably? Then we’ll begin!

Know who your followers are

Any analytics suite worth its salt these days will include demographics information. Instagram Insights is no different. So, the first of our advanced social media tips is to take advantage of that data. Know who’s reading and interacting with your content. Know where they’re from, how old they are, and what device they’re using. Where possible, you might also consider tweaking your content to match that demographic. It’s all about that old roman saying…. ‘give the people what they want’.

Know when your followers are active

In addition to the demographics information, Instagram Insights will also tell you when your audience is online. An advanced social media technique is to schedule your posts to go out at peak periods in your audience’s activity… It might seem like a bit of a no-brainer when it comes to social media tips, but if you post when your audience is already online, you’ll reap three key benefits. Firstly, users don’t have to scroll too far to find your latest content… Secondly, they’re more likely to receive the notification that you’ve posted new content… And thirdly, since they have that notification to remind them, they’re more likely to go and interact with your content.

Compare and Contrast your posts

With Instagram Insights you have access to the cold, hard numbers that will make ‘giving people what they want’ easy. When you’re using Instagram for business, you don’t need to be an advanced social media user or a mind-reader to know just what it is your audience wants. So, our advice is don’t overthink things… Just check Instagram Insights and see which of your posts have been the most popular – it really is that simple!

Use Instagram Insights with stories

A few weeks ago we wrote about how you should be using Instagram Stories if you want to make the most of Instagram for business. Using Instagram Insights to keep track of your stories isn’t really an advanced social media tactic… For Seek Social it’s the next logical step in the journey if you’re using Instagram for business. It is true that right now you don’t have quite the array of information for stories as you do for regular posts, however, there are still a lot of useful…. Well, ‘Instagram Insights’…. That you can use to inform and improve your content, and thereby spread your reach on the platform.

Speculate to accumulate…

Just like you can boost a post on Facebook, you can ‘Promote’ a post on Instagram. And yes, our last advanced social media pointer for today is that you absolutely should be using Instagram Insights in conjunction with Instagram Promote. Use your Instagram Insights to discover your most successful posts and your most proven content, and then take things to the next level by re-using that post (another of our social media tips from the past), and promoting it to really maximise its exposure and reach. That’s not all though, because you can (and should) also be using Instagram Insights to help you better target your ads as well.