Businesses around the world are driving proven results with Instagram. There’s no shortage of marketing tools on Instagram. You can use posts, ads, and stories to market your business to over 1 billion Instagram accounts worldwide. Instagram will help you tap into people’s passions to create deeper relationships with your business and connect to new customers and strengthen relationships with existing ones.
Did you know approximately 80% perfect of accounts follow a business on Instagram? Instagram is a growing social networking service owned by Facebook that businesses shouldn’t be afraid to use. So how can your business get the most out of social media marketing to grow your business and Instagram account?
Creating a Business Instagram Account
When you first sign up for Instagram you’ll have a personal account by default. You’ll need to switch to a business profile in order to be recognized as a business. Switching your personal account to a business profile will allow you to get insights about your posts, stories, and followers.
The first thing you need to do is connect the account with your business’s Facebook page. So go to your profile, tap on Settings, tap on the switch to the business profile, and follow the in-app prompts. You can also click here for more information on how to set up a business profile on Instagram.
Below is a quick guide on Instagram metrics for small businesses.
How to Use Instagram Metrics to Increase Followers & Engagement
1. Measure Your Engagement Rate
Engagement rate is the percentage of likes and comments that your Instagram posts get. So your engagement rate becomes one of the most important Instagram metrics to track. This metric helps you understand how your posts resonate with your followers and how many followers are engaged with your business.
However, Instagram doesn’t calculate your engagement rate for you. In order to calculate the engagement rate, you’ll need to divide the total number of likes and comments by the reach number. Go to your posts and tap on view insights to see the total number of likes, comments, and reach.
According to Influencer Marketing Hub, the average Instagram account has an engagement rate of 3%. If you have an engagement rate of 3% or higher, this means your followers are engaged with your business.
Below is the average engagement rate on Instagram in 2017.
2. Optimize Your Instagram Hashtag
The discovery section in your Instagram insights will help you know where your audience came from and how they found your post. Go to your posts and tap on view insights to see the discovery metrics: reach, impressions, and hashtags.
Reach
Reach relates to the number of views, but it narrows it down to unique views. For example, if you have a follower who looks at your posts several times, that follower is only counted once in your reach results for those posts.
Impressions
Impressions are the number of times your post has been seen by users scrolling by in their feed or clicking through to your business’ profile to view photo.
Hashtags
The number of hashtags will tell you if your hashtag strategy is working. Hashtags will help people discover your posts through hashtags they follow or searched for on the explore page.
3. Know-How Many New People You’re Reaching
Reach is also an important Instagram to track. Reach will help you know how many new people you’re reaching outside of your existing follower. This is important if you want to grow your Instagram account. In order to track your reach by week and day, go to your insights and scroll down to the discovery section.
4. Know When People Stop Watching Your Stories
Stories are similar to Snapchat. You can show off your brand’s personality by sharing multiple photos and videos using Stories. It has so many features such as location suggestions, mention stickers to tag accounts, and question and poll stickers to help boost engagement with your audiences. You can also add music, filters, and effects, and play around with type mode and new fonts to add personality to your Instagram stories. You can click here for a complete guide to Instagram Stories.
One important metric about Instagram Stories is the next stories metric. The next stories metric is the total number of people who have swipe past and moved onto the next account’s story. This will help you understand how interested your audiences are in your Stories and what type of content your followers love or hate. If you have a high next story metric means your viewers didn’t engage with your content, so you should try to experiment with different types of content such as adding questions and poll stickers.