What are Instagram Insights, and how can they uplevel your business?

When it comes to being savvy on Instagram it’s important to be able to take advantage of the platform, and use all of its features. The Instagram analytics tool is the best way to access your audience, and tailor your content to reach your viewers in the most effective way. This is why many influencers, businesses and social media managers use Instagram Insights to find out who is engaging with what, and when.

This means looking at the data from your business’s Instagram page: and using the data to figure out the best time to post, and the best format to post in.

In this article I’ll run you down on the basics: how to access your insights, what they mean, and how to use them for your business.

How to Find Your Instagram Insights

In order to find and access insights you need an Instagram ‘business account’. This can be switched to in your in-app settings. Once you switch your account to business there will be a tab under your bio that says Professional Dashboard. This is where you can find all of the engagement, ad and insight data for your business page.

After tapping/clicking on See all next to Account insights, you’ll be able to access:

• Accounts reached
• Accounts engaged
• Total followers

You can also tap on stories you have shared in the past and their individual insights.

What Does It All Mean?

The features you want to focus on are under the main three tabs Accounts reached, Accounts engaged, and Total followers. and It can be overwhelming at first, so take your time familiarising yourself with each tab and what they mean.

Accounts Reached

Reach is a useful insight for growth, and allows you to see the traffic to your website and email links. It is useful to notice which posts, stories or reels do particularly well in the Reach category to find the best intersection for your engagement and reach.

Accounts Engaged

Under this tab  is all of the information about the engagement of your audience. Engagement includes follows, likes, shares, saves and comments. Within a specific time period you can find the number of followers and non-followers who have engaged in your content, the number of interactions, and your top format for engagement (this is either: stories, reels, posts, videos and lives).

Total Followers

This tab is one to watch, as you can watch your follower growth in direct relation to a post you’ve made. Here you can see a graph of follows and unfollows across a chosen time period, as well as locations, age range, gender and active times. Keep an eye on the Follows and Active times - we’ll be coming back to those below.

How To Use These Insights: The Basics

Instead of deep diving into every feature available I’ll highlight the main ones to keep an eye on. You want to focus on When people are engaging, Who your audience is, and What they like to engage in best.

• To find When look at the Total Followers tab, and the active times of your audience. You want to post within these time frames in order to maximise chance of engagement. If they seem to be engaging at strange hours of the day, like 3am, use a post scheduling app to release your content at the times your audience is active.

• Who your content is speaking to the best can also be found under the Total Followers tab. You want to create content that speaks to the demographic on your page the most. Where they’re from will also affect the kind of community you want to create online. If they’re mostly Australian, you want to make them feel seen by using Aussie slang, or known places (like your cafe!) in your content.

• Probably the most important W is the What. What your audience likes best is going to really dictate what you post. Under the followers tab you can see the specific days on which you have released content, and the direct follow/unfollow correlation. You also want to look at the reach tab and find which type of content is doing particularly well. This can look like Reels having a huge reach to non-followers, and Stories having a grand effect on followers.

This means to keep your followers, and find new ones you need to be releasing two different type of content. Keep an eye on the Website Taps and Profile Visits for particular months, and see if you need to switch up the release schedule.

It can be overwhelming at first, but Instagram insights will completely change your social media game, and will help you create effective campaigns to maximise your audience engagement. And remember the three W’s: Who, When, and What.