Instagram Insights Guide

• What is Instagram Analytics
• How To View Instagram Insights on Desktop
• How to view Instagram Insights on Android and iOS
• Instagram Analytics. Account Overview Tab
• 1. Instagram Insights Accounts reached
• 2. Instagram Insight. Content Interactions
• Where to See Instagram Photo and Video Statistics
• 3. Instagram insights: Total Number of Instagram Account Readers
• Instagram Metrics You Should Be Tracking
• Instagram Engagement
• Instagram Reach
• Number of Subscribers and Follower Growth
• Website Clicks on Instagram

Every day, more than 1 billion users around the world visit the Instagram platform and spend about 29 minutes there. Are they watching your rolls, scrolling through your stories, or finishing the videos you post? Is your online presence effective? Instagram Analytics provide this knowledge.
With the help of built-in statistics, you can analyze and identify trends, popular hashtags, and the most viewed content. Instagram is a powerful tool for reaching users and increasing engagement. Instagram Analytics provide insight into the effectiveness of posts and the account as a whole.

What is Instagram Insights

Instagram Insights is Instagram’s own free feature that helps you view account, post, and follower data.

Some people call Instagram Insights Instagram Analytics, others call it Statistics. Instagram itself says Statistics in the Settings. In terms of functionality and data provided, Instagram Insights is close to Google Analytics, so if you already have experience using Analytics, you will quickly understand Instagram Insights.

Instagram Insights shows a variety of data, including:

• hours of subscribers activity;
• number of recent visitors;
• gender and demographic indicators of the audience, etc.

These Instagram Analytics help:

• find out who your target audience is (who is your buyer);
• find out what content brings effect (purchases, subscriptions, starting a dialog in Direct);
• adjust the online presence strategy in time;
• track the results of work on the platform.

How do I get access to Instagram Insights? Instagram Insights is currently only available for content creators and business accounts. The good news is that any user can switch to a professional account at any time. Just turn on your business or creator account in Settings.

How To View Instagram Insights on Desktop

In the desktop version of Instagram, full-length Statistics is not yet available for viewing. However, you can get basic analytics of posts — there is a clickable text View Statistics below each post.

Fig. 1 — Post statistics in the desktop version

The pop-up window contains the total amount:

• likes;
• comments;
• shares;
• saves;
• reaches;
• impressions;
• new readers.

For other content formats, the option to view statistics as of January 2023 does not work.

How to view Instagram Insights on Android and iOS

So, let’s move on to viewing the statistics. My account is the creator’s account. To access account statistics, I go to my Instagram profile and tap the button with three dashes in the upper right, then Get Statistics or Insights (for Android and iOS users, respectively).

Fig. 2 — How Analytics looks like for Andriod and iOS users

*In the following, I will use screenshots of Settings from iOS.

Now let’s navigate through the tabs and figure out the metrics that the social network offers to track.

Instagram Analytics. Account Overview tab

As soon as you click on Instagram Insights, you are taken to the Overview tab.

Fig. 3 — Instagram Insights, Overview tab

In the header of the tab, we can select the time period for research:

• last 7 days;
• last 14 days;
• last 30 days;
• previous month;
• last 90 days;
• a custom period that you can choose.

Fig. 4 — Selecting a time period for Instagram statistics

Select Last 7 days and click Refresh.

The tab provides information about the account as a whole:

1. account reach;
2. accounts that interacted;
3. total number of readers;
4. statistics on the content shared by the account owner (posts, stories, reels, videos, live broadcasts);
5. active promotion (meaning advertising).

Each of the items has its own separate tab with advanced statistics. Let us consider each of them.

1. Instagram Insights Accounts reached

First, let’s understand the difference between reach and impressions.

Reach is the number of Instagram users who saw our content (the network counts the number of accounts).

Impressions — the number of times a post/reach/story is displayed, etc. The number of impressions is usually higher than the reach figure. After all, 1 account can view your story/post etc. 2 or more times.

The Reach tab provides information about:

• audience reached (by city, country, age range of users, gender);

Fig. 5 — Data on reached accounts

• content reach (posts, video rolls, stories, videos/live broadcasts);
• profile actions (visits).

Fig. 6 — Covered accounts tab

Followers and non-followers — we see how many of our subscribers and non-follower accounts have viewed the published content.

The content metrics themselves will be discussed in the next tab.

2. Instagram Insight. Content Interactions

Interacted accounts is the number of accounts that interacted with your content (posts, stories, shares, videos, and live streams) by liking, commenting, saving, sharing, and writing to Direct.

Fig. 7 — Interacting accounts tab

In other words, interaction is an indicator of audience engagement. Audience engagement primarily affects the impressions of posts in the feed and stories to followers, as well as the impressions of a profile in Instagram search (recommendations).

Fig. 8 — Interaction with content

On the Interaction tab, in the Content interactions section, click on View all and select the type of content you are interested in:

• posts;
• reels;
• stories;
• video;
• Instagram Live.

Fig. 9 — Analytics by content type

Let me remind you that since August 2022, any video shorter than 15 minutes has become a ruler. So since then, we have been able to access statistics on previous video publications up to 15 minutes. And all the data on such videos is now available in the Rills section.
Information on video types and formats that will be useful to you is collected in the Instagram Video Guide. Go ahead and read the article, it contains both recommendations with examples of video creation and ideas for your videos.

Where to See Instagram Photo and Video Statistics

Publication

You can get post statistics in 2 ways:

1. by clicking on View Statistics under each post in your profile;
2. by going to Instagram Insights.

Fig. 10 — Post statistics

Post statistics provide comprehensive information about the photo: reach, number of interactions, etc.

What should you pay attention to? On the views:

• from the Home tab;
• from another source;
• from the Search tab.

Why and how did the post end up in the Featured (aka Recommendations)? The current post uses music selected by the built-in Instagram tool. And the network encourages users to use all the features of the platform.

Reels

Reels is a video of up to 15 minutes, a tool for increasing engagement organically.

Instagram promotes it in every possible way, and for good reason. After all, the ads collect several times more views and have a significant reach. And this helps the account grow without financial injections from the owner (I mean advertising).

The Content section contains filters:

• by content (post, reel, story, etc.);
• by date;
• сортування за метрикою (sorting by metrics (comments, likes, shares, reach, reproduction, distribution, interactions with the reels).

Fig. 11 — Reels statistics

Content analytics can be analyzed up to the last 2 years (only if your account was professional 2 years ago, and you did not switch it to personal for some time — in this case, the statistics are reset and will be displayed from the moment the professional account option is restored).

In the Metric field, you can choose to sort by 7 metric options:

• comments;
• likes;
• saving;
• reaching;
• playback;
• sharing;
• interactions with reels (the sum of comments, likes, shares and saves).

Fig. 12 — Sorting by Reels metrics

Usually, when it comes to influencer marketing, experts recommend paying attention to the reach and growth of the number of followers. After all, if a person subscribes to you through a rally, they like your content and will be willing to continue interacting with it, helping your account to grow organically.

Story

A story is a short sketch with a photo or video up to 1 minute long that is available to users within 24 hours of publication.

Story stats display the most popular stories by impressions. Story statistics have a built-in filter for 17 story metrics and sorting (newest, ascending, descending). I wrote about each metric in detail in the article Engagement in Instagram Stories.

Fig. 13 — Statistics of stories

Instagram stories usually have their own set of ideas and content plan. The number of stories users have is much higher than the number of posts or reels.

What metrics are important to a marketer, and what should be emphasized in stories:

• back — how many times people went back to the previous story;
• exits — how many times people “scrolled through” a story to exit the Stories section altogether;
• next story — how many times the story viewers moved to the next story;
• impressions — the total number of times a story was viewed, including repeat views from accounts;
• skip ahead — how many people have skipped ahead to see your next story;
• reach — how many individual accounts have viewed your story (regardless of how many times that individual account has viewed it);
• clicks on stickers (links, mentions, etc.) — the number of times a sticker was clicked, i.e., clicked to a link page, profile, geolocation, etc;
• replies — the number of people who replied to your story in Direct;
• profile visits — the number of times people went to your profile from this story;
• sharing — the number of times your story was shared or forwarded;
• tracking — the number of users who followed your profile after viewing the story.

Instagram Live broadcasts and videos

I wrote in detail about Instagram live broadcasts and long videos in the article How to upload videos + ideas. Follow the link to get inspired by the material we’ve collected and find new ideas for your videos.

3. Instagram insights: Total Number of Instagram Account Readers

The tab contains data on the geo, demographics, and periods of activity of your content readers. This allows you to determine the best time to publish to attract as many followers as possible.

Fig. 14 — Total number of readers tab

• follower growth;
• geolocation of followers by cities and countries;
• age range of followers (All, Women, Men);
• activity periods by days of the week and hours.

The most useful information in this tab is the periods of reader activity, i.e. when the majority of the account’s audience is online. We know that interaction with content affects the visibility of a profile on the network. These interactions are especially important in the first time after publication – this is how Instagram understands whether the posted content is interesting and whether to show it further in the feed and Recommendations.

From the screenshot above, we can see that there are almost no interactions with content around 3 a.m., as well as few at midnight and in the morning, and a lot of them around 9 p.m. So we conclude that subscribers most often view content in the evening.

Although now, with the power outage due to the russian invasion of Ukraine, the only thing we know for sure is that subscribers view content when they have internet access. And now it can be at 3 am. But we focus on the highest column in the tab and publish our content then.

The data obtained will be useful for choosing the most appropriate time for publication.

Instagram Metrics You Should Be Tracking

The metrics you should track depend on what you want to achieve with your Instagram presence.

For a blogger or content creator, this is primarily engagement, reach, and audience size.
For ecommerce, it’s sales and clicks on the website.

Instagram Engagement

Instagram’s algorithm rewards posts that have high engagement. Which posts will be the first in users’ feeds largely depends on how quickly people interacted with them after they were posted.

Instagram is interested in showing users the content that is more likely to be responded to.

Instagram Reach

Reach indicates brand awareness among readers.

Look at the reach, not the impressions of the content. If someone scrolls through the feed and reads your post 5 times without reading it, Instagram counts it as 5 impressions, and the reach is 1.

Reach tells you which posts appear in the feeds of most people. If a post reaches a high percentage of your followers, it means that people are interested in and engaging with your content. Also, pay attention to the time of publication – the majority of your followers should be online.

Number of Subscribers and Follower Growth

The number of followers affects the overall performance of an Instagram account. The more subscribers you have, the greater your reach. The same goes for engagement and clicks on the website.

Growth rate of subscribers compared to the number of subscribers

We’re talking about upward or downward growth: that is, how many more people are following you every month. If it’s +2, +4, +8%, your account is doing well, it’s attracting readers. If, on the contrary, it’s +8, +4, +2%, then you’ve lost something – there’s an urgent need to analyze your content strategy and change it.

Instagram statistics does not have such a counter – comparison with previous periods. Here you will have to work manually – record the number of followers each day/week/month in a table and calculate the % of changes yourself. Or you can use a third-party analytical tool to calculate it.

Website Clicks on Instagram

Click-throughs are an indicator of how many people clicked from your Instagram profile to your website or landing page.

Click-through rate is important for increasing traffic and sales. If your website doesn’t receive conversions from Instagram, try changing the CTA in your profile header and stories.

Test a link sticker with a new CTA – use the utm tag to track traffic from Instagram. You will also need Google Analytics data for this.

Many different factors affect the performance of your content on Instagram, including profile visuals, audience engagement, brand image, captions, hashtags, etc. Tracking Instagram statistics over time gives you a better idea of what type of content helps you achieve your social media presence goals and adjust your development strategy.