Information for this blog post was obtained from 10 Steps to Performing a Successful Instagram Audit | Sprout Social, How to Use Instagram Insights (in 9 Easy Steps) (hubspot.com) , How to Analyze Instagram Competitors to Reach Your Goals | Sprout Social.
Do you want to optimize all the available features of Instagram for your brand? Social media is essential nowadays, especially in the business world. Our society is turning to technology for everything, and businesses should take advantage of this opportunity. Instagram is one platform that is constantly growing in the marketing and advertising field. Every business should utilize this social media platform to grow and improve its business. Here are a couple of tips that everyone should utilize when advertising on Instagram.
Instagram Insights
A growing feature of Instagram is the Instagram Insights provided for professional and business accounts. It is a tool used to view the analytics of your posts, videos, reels, stories, etc. Viewing the analytics of content is a great way for businesses to learn things about their audience, engagements, and performance. Let’s take a deeper look at all the features provided.
Features provided
Data Range: this feature allows you to select the days and weeks for which you would like to view analytics.
Accounts Reached: This feature shows the number of users that have viewed your content. It includes multiple different breakdowns of your views.
Reached Audience: shows the users who view your content broken down by follower status, gender, age, country, and city. It also includes a breakdown of the reach of your ads and promotions.
Content Reach: shows which type of content reached a greater number of viewers and includes a graph with this information.
Impressions: the number of times your content was viewed. This feature also includes the number of repeat viewers.
Profile Activity: shows the actions that viewers took after viewing your content. This could include website clicks, address clicks, calls, emails, and texts.
Accounts Engaged: This feature breaks down the number of users who viewed your content and interacted with it in some way, whether through likes, comments, shares, etc.
Engaged Audience: shows all the viewers who interacted with your content broken down by follower status, gender, age, country, and city.
Content Interactions: total number of interactions overall and by singular posts.
Total Followers: shows you the number of followers that you gained in this data range you’ve selected.
Also includes views that unfollow, top locations, age ranges, and genders.
Includes the hours and days your followers are most often on Instagram.
Instagram Audit
After you have your business Instagram account up and running, you constantly need to check the analytics and page itself to make sure it is up to date and relevant to your business goals, target audience, and demographics. One way to do this is to perform an audit of your page frequently. “An Instagram audit is much like a health checkup for your account” (Instagram Audit ). Performing an audit is like an evaluation that will help you pinpoint strategies that are successful and areas for improvement.
10 Steps to Complete an Instagram Audit
Identify Goals: think about the overall business goals and decide how you can achieve those goals with your Instagram account.
Audit your Instagram profile and bio: make sure your username and name on the account are relevant to your brand’s voice.
Include relevant links such as website, prices, contact information, address, and recent promotions.
Make your bio short and informative, and make sure it is a clear statement of your brand.
Make sure everything is relevant and up to date.
Audit your Instagram branding visuals: make sure your page and aesthetic flow together and make it align with your brand’s tone and goals. Use your brand's colors and designs to make it pleasing to the eye.
Check content quality and relevance: create eye-catching content; you will lose followers if it's bland and irrelevant. Use high-quality images that are “optimized for Instagram” (Instagram Audit ). Also, do not only post promotional and sales content; “in fact, 38% say the most memorable brands prioritize original content over following trending topics” (2023 Sprout Social Index report). Lastly, examine your top-performing content and audience, and make sure you’re creating content for people who are engaging.
Examine your Instagram content mix: a mix includes both topics and content types. Include videos, reels, posts, stories, live videos. Create promotions, do trends, create original content, and make posts about your employees.
Audit your Instagram captions: when writing captions make sure they flow and match with your brand’s voice/tone. Make sure they are relevant to the content, utilize hashtags, and tag other accounts.
Look at your posting frequency and schedule: You want to post at times and days that your following audience or the demographics you want to reach are active and engaging. Use your insights to make a personal schedule for your brand.
Analyze your hashtags: Research which hashtags are reaching an audience and creating engagement, but be sure to keep them in your brand’s voice. Research new possible hashtags that are successful for your competitors and incorporate them with your brand.
Audit your Instagram engagement: make sure your content is geared towards your target market that you are replying to your audience and creating personal connections interact with anything you’re tagged in, and check the analytics of your content frequently to make sure what you’re posting is still working.
Check your Instagram followers: Filter out fake followers, known as bots, look for influencers that you could collaborate with, and make sure you are posting for those following and those you aspire to be followers.
Some additional tools you could use with your already provided Instagram insights are Sprout Social, Iconosquare, and Upfluence.
Instagram Competitive Analysis
Looking at the other businesses around you is always a great way to find inspiration and research what is working and what isn’t. One way to do this is to partake in a competitor’s analysis. Competitor analysis is when you evaluate your competitor’s activity and get insight into their strengths and weaknesses, it dives into their key Instagram metrics. This is a key aspect of social media marketing because it will inform you about the current market and can help improve your social strategy. It gives you an idea of how your business compares to your competitors, helps determine what content is best for your brand and what to leave alone, and can help you spot what isn’t working for other businesses, and you can stay away from that.
Important Metrics
Followers: The number of followers gives a good idea about audience size and brand loyalty, but also audience engagement. “If an account has thousands of followers, but consistently low engagement, chances are they aren’t truly connecting with their audience. Conversely, a brand could have fewer followers, but consistent engagement, which could indicate they are tuned in with their audience and produce quality content.” (Sprout Social)
Engagement: includes likes, shares, comments, replies, and messages and reflects how the content you’re posting is being interacted with.
Audience growth: as your following count grows, it means more eyes on your brand, which in return means more reach and engagement. Research what content made those people follow you and/or your competitors.
Publishing behavior: watch what types of media your competitors are posting and when they are posting them.
Tops posts: investigate your competitors’ best-performing content and determine why they were as successful as they were.
Hashtags: watch the relevant hashtags in your market, create a mix of successful hashtags, and research what hashtags aren’t working for your competitors.
Lastly, a couple of other tips when researching your competitors are to research content gaps. See where your brand isn’t succeeding and find others who are succeeding in those areas for inspiration. Also, investigate where your competitors are succeeding and stay away from that content. Don’t copy others' work completely, you are only using it for inspiration, add your spin to content that you enjoyed.
Conclusion
Instagram is growing into a great advertising source for businesses all around. Utilize everything that is in front of you with Instagram to grow your brand and get it discovered. Use the insights to see what is working and what needs improvement. Conduct audits frequently to keep your profile and content updated and relevant. Lastly, research your competitors to help improve your brand. In this technology-driven world, use everything available to your advantage and grow that brand!
For more information on improving your Instagram business account, visit my colleague Kaden's blog here.
Resources
Benchmark Performance with the New Instagram Competitors Report. (2017, March 10). Sprout Social. https://sproutsocial.com/insights/instagram-competitors-report/
How to do an Instagram audit that improves your performance. (2020, December 1). Sprout Social. https://sproutsocial.com/insights/instagram-audit/
Zantal-Wiener, A. (2022, January 12). How to Use Instagram Insights (in 9 Easy Steps). Hubspot.com; HubSpot. https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/how-to-use-instagram-insights?hubs_content=blog.hubspot.com%2Fmarketing&hubs_content-cta=blog-nav-media-dropdown-text-link
Comments