What KPIs (key performance indicators) to measure on Instagram.
Creating social content as a business, without regularly checking your insights, is like travelling on the tube without looking at the tube map. 🙈
Insights are so helpful, and can help guide you to what is working. But it's important to know what to actually measure.
Reach? Web clicks? Followers? Let's break them down a little ...
Reach – The number of individual accounts that have seen your content. This measures your brand awareness. Instagram breaks down new followers and existing ones, which is super helpful for seeing which types of content perform for which audience. Currently, Reels are excellent at reaching new people, stories for reaching existing followers, and grid posts have a mix somewhere in between. But you’ll need to check what is working on your own account. You'll want to be creating different content depending on which audience you want to reach.
Impressions – The total number of times that all your content has been seen, because some people see your content more than once. For example, sometimes someone won’t engage with your carousel when they are shown the first image, but will when they are shown image two. This would be two impressions, but one audience member. A helpful metric to show overall visibility, but personally, I think it's most helpful combined with other measured metrics.
Profile Visits – The number of users that have visited your Instagram profile. This helpful metric measures how many existing followers have searched for your profile and ended up on your grid, and how many new people have seen it. It also measures how many people found you in other ways and got to your profile. Measuring the overall growth of this combined with your followers, is a helpful insight on how well your profile is converting. Lots of profile visits but not many new follows, -might- be an indication that the profile needs work. It might also mean that they were existing followers, so use them as guides only!
Website Clicks – The number of users who have clicked on the link in your bio. Great content and brand awareness are super important, but getting your audience off of Instagram and into your wider content ecosystem is key to being able to take your hard-built relationships and share your offer that you know will help them further. Website clicks are like measuring the effectiveness of your Instagram funnel. Also helpful that if you are getting a lot of website clicks, but no sales, then there is either an issue with your service, or that the people you are attracting are not your ideal client.
Accounts engaged- Measuring your reach is amazing as you are essentially measuring brand awareness. But this metric lets you record HOW they are responding to your brand.
Combine this measurement with an overall % for a comprehensive look at how your brand is translating online.
These websites have handy tools to calculate for you ⬇
www.phlanx.com/engagement-calculator
www.influencermarketinghub.com/how-to-track-instagram-follower-growth/
Follower count- The one metric we all wish we didn't care about!
You do need your audience to grow, reaching a new client base is of course essential. However, it should never grow at the expense of the followers you already have. So it's always a balance of growth PLUS serving your existing followers.
Measuring your follower count can help you to monitor the need for your services, the relevance of your brand, and your brand positioning in your market.
But when you measure it, think of it as the long game, and just record the growth each month. A simple percentage growth record will mean you can see the trends, so you'll know what's normal for your account, without focusing on each individual follow or unfollow.
If the thought of going through your metrics is a task that is just one too many, perhaps we should chat, and see how I can support you in your content creation and implementation.
www.sheldon.social/contact