Top Tools for Measuring Instagram Success

In a previous blog, we explained why your business needs to be on Instagram. After setting up and maintaining your Instagram account, it’s crucial that you measure your success. With the right tools for Instagram, analyzing your results will allow you to see what type content works best for your audience, increase your engagement and followers, and ultimately grow your brand.

So what should you be tracking?

Top Metrics to Analyze on Instagram

Depending on your specific business goals, here’s a list of top metrics you should be analyzing:

• Followers (growth and loss)
• Likes and comments
• Hashtag usage
• Click-through rates of your bio URL
• Mentions
• Frequency of posting
• Demographics of engagement
• Engagement according to day and time of posting

Instagram Algorithm

Earlier this year, Instagram announced that they are now using an algorithm to prioritize what’s shown in users’ feeds, making tracking these analytics even more crucial. With this algorithm, Instagram determines what content users are most interested in, and users are shown the most relevant posts at the top of their feed, regardless of how many people you follow or the time zone.

Best Instagram Tracking Tools

The right tools for Instagram can make tracking these metrics much easier, resulting in higher engagement, and therefore remaining relevant in your audience’s feeds. We’ve outlined a few of our favorite tracking tools below:

Iconosquare

You can test out Iconosquare with a free, two-week trial of the complete platform. The analytics feature of the platform includes: Overview, Rolling Monthly Analysis, Content, Engagement and Optimization.

• The Overview page provides you with a basic look at your account over the last seven days, including follow growth and engagement stats for your latest posts.
• Rolling Monthly Analysis allows you to see similar data from the overview tab over the past month.
• Content shows you how much you’ve posted throughout the years, your daily density and your most used filter hashtag. If you’re having trouble consistently posting on Instagram, seeing your posting habits can be very beneficial.
• Engagement provides a bar chart with your average like/comment per post growth history. It also gives you your top liked and commented photos.
• Optimization offers data on best posting times, filter impact, and top hashtags.

With the two-week free trial, you have access to all of these analytics to determine whether or not Iconosquare is right for your business. If you choose to move forward, there are various paid plans that include additional features, such as daily email reports, comment trackers and more analytics.

Union Metrics

The free version of Union Metrics uses algorithms from its paid analytics tool to provide a free Instagram report for users. The report answers the following questions:

• What’s the best time to post on Instagram?
• What hashtags should you use to get the most engagement?
• What should you post more (or less) of?
• Who are your top fans?

The report analyzes the last month’s worth of activity. It also picks out a few metrics and posts and compares them to your average, helping you identify patterns and themes. You can then refresh the report once every 24 hours, continually comparing your newer posts to the average.

Squarelovin

Squarelovin is a free tool for analyzing your Instagram metrics. The platform is only accessed via desktop, and offers weekly analytics on likes, comments, best performing content, best times to post, filters that work best, demographics, follower growth and followers you’ve lost. You can breakdown these analytics monthly and see a history or specific posts broken down into year, month, day and hour. You can also manage your Instagram account from the platform, liking and commenting on other posts.

When analyzing your Instagram metrics, it’s important to not only know what to analyze, but why this information matters. These numbers allow you to gain insight, learn the best days/time to publish—so you can increase engagement and followers—stay relevant in your users’ feeds, and gain an edge over your competition.