Instagram analytics tools are the best way to check if your efforts and the budget you spend on the platform are worth it. This is how everyone, who has a commercial interest on Instagram, gets the information to understand their audience – who they are, what they like, when they are online, and more. Also, Instagram analytics tools can provide you the data you need to prove your ROI on Instagram.
After June 2020, when the old API that allowed creepy spy apps was officially gone, the analytics tools became much more trustworthy. And now we have a question what Instagram analytics tool is the best for marketers and social media managers?
In this post, I’ll show you the best free and premium Instagram analytics apps in 2021. But first, let’s see which metrics to measure to achieve results from Instagram.
How To Get Verified On Instagram
Why Instagram Analytics Matter?
You must have an Instagram profile for your own business. But once you start, it can be difficult to distinguish whether you’re going in the right direction. Without the right metrics, you’ll never know if you could be doing more to engage your audience or attract new ones. And if you manage your Instagram account without ever looking at your insights, you’ll be in trouble when it comes to understanding the results of your efforts.
If you’re not analyzing your Instagram analytics, then you could be:
- Targeting the wrong audience.
- Posting too frequently (or too rarely).
- Driving leads from an ad type that you used only once.
- Ignoring mentions could be leading to future cooperation.
- Posting during inappropriate hours of the day or days of the week.
Tracking your Instagram analytics over time will give you a better understanding of what type of content and overall activities help you achieve your goals.
What Metrics You Should Track to Prove ROI?
The Instagram most commonly used metrics usually center around various forms of engagement, reach, and followers.
1. Engagement Rate per Follower
What this metric means: Engagement with your content relative to your follower count.
The formula for measuring engagement rate on Instagram looks like this:
Engagement Rate = Total Engagements / Followers * 100
Analyzing this metric over time will give you an understanding of overall performance trends. Though you can certainly calculate it for specific posts, as well to get an idea of the types of content that your audience likes.
2. Follower Growth Rate
What this metric means: You’re becoming popular!
Total followers ultimately represent the potential reach of your content. It has a significant impact on the performance of other Instagram metrics like engagement. So don’t stop focusing your efforts around organically growing your audience. It is still as important as ever.
As a bonus tip, you can increase your followers’ base faster by getting a blue badge. Nothing shows “trustworthy” more than an Instagram verified blue tick. Check out PRnews.io service that will help you get verified easily.
3. Comments Received
What this metric means: How engaging your content is.
There’s a big difference between likes and comments when it comes to estimating Instagram performance metrics. This type of engagement, especially positive, is a strong element in community building and establishing a loyal fanbase. It’s easy to double-tap the posts, but those users who go out of their way to comment are the ones to keep an eye on and engage.
4. Reach
What this metric means: How many people are seeing your content.
Don’t confuse reach with impressions. These two metrics are similar but are not equal.
To keep it brief here, all you need to know is that your Instagram reach shows actual views of your content. And impressions mean it was displayed but may not have generated a click, like, or any other form of engagement.
5. Instagram Stories Engagement
What this metric means: Your views tell you how many unique viewers saw your story.
There are two main things you should pay attention to analyzing stories: views and exits.
In general, the longer you’re on Instagram and the more followers you have, the more your story views should boost. Your exits tell you which image people were on when they exited your story. Exits are a good way to see what is interesting for your audiences and what is not. If you notice a lot of exits on one particular image, try to understand why so many people lost interest at that point.
What this metric means: Hashtag performance.
To use hashtags for Instagram successfully, you need to understand exactly how they work and give some thought to its strategy. By using hashtags that are appropriate for your brand and industry, you can help keep reach and engagement in check.
7. Referral Traffic
What this metric means: Instagram’s impact on your website traffic
Referral traffic describes the clients who came to your domain from other sites, without finding you on a search engine. Monitoring the flow of traffic from your Instagram account to your website is very important. This activity is crucial for Instagram because you can’t use links in individual posts.
There are three main points to estimate website traffic from Instagram:
- Monitor the number of people following the link in your bio;
- Monitor the number of people swiping up in Instagram Stories;
- Use UTM parameters in your links.
The Best Instagram Analytics Tools
There’s a big list of Instagram analytics tools out there. Let’s see some top free and premium tools that can provide you with reports to learn deeply the results of your activities.
Why don’t we start with the built-in analytics?
Instagram Insights
Price: free
It’s free, user-friendly, and shows you how your content is performing right now.
Instagram Analytics is only available to business or creator profiles, which is just one of the many reasons I recommend switching to an Instagram business or creator profile.
Instagram Insights reports provide you with impressions, engagement, reach, and top posts among other metrics. You can learn website clicks and call-to-action button clicks – Call, Email, Directions. Post insights will give you information about how people found your post. You can also get some insights into the audience geo, such as top cities and countries, age ranges, and gender. There’s the basic info on when your followers are active too.
It’s not so good if you want to compare performance over 30 days.
Iconosquare
Price: from $49
Iconosquare is an all-in-one Instagram tool for social media marketing. The platform allows you to schedule new posts, keep track of what people are saying about your brand or your competitors, and, of course, track your Instagram analytics. This data show you trends related to engagement, impressions, your posts’ reach, video views, and even how your Instagram Stories are performing.
Iconosquare also includes hashtags and competitor reports, allowing marketers to compare themselves against the people and topics they have an interest in. The platform allows you to get a two-week free trial, as well as a set of free tools such as a full Instagram Audit.
Crowdfire
Price: free
Crowdfire also allows marketers to schedule posts, analyze their performance, and monitor mentions of their brand, as well as curate content related to their business from all over the internet. This service delivers article and image recommendations from other websites, helping marketers expand their effectiveness when considering what content to include in their Instagram strategy.
Crowdfire’s analytics tools visualize your Instagram data in several user-friendly graphics. They also dig down into several advanced metrics that indicate how you’re performing over long periods.
HubSpot Social Inbox
Price: from $45
Working with HubSpot’s Social Inbox, you can easily launch campaigns and publish to multiple social platforms at once.
HubSpot’s social reports tool has several great box reports (audience, published posts, interactions, clicks, shares, impressions, new contacts, sessions, top posts), all of which come with easy-to-read charts and tables. If you need more detailed information, HubSpot allows you to download all published posts and their associated metrics as an Excel spreadsheet.
Also, you can connect campaigns to your social posts, the same campaigns you’re using for landing pages and other content. This helps make it clear to understand the source of the traffic.
Quintly
Price: from €300/month.
Quintly is a social media tool that covers several social networks.
The tool provides Instagram analytics for followers, both of your profile and your competitors. You can analyze your Instagram content, and the engagement generated from your photos and videos. Also, you can see the details on filter usage.
Data collection can be personalized for specific results, making the analysis very accurate. There is also an option for a centralized reporting structure if you have some specific plans. To speed up the reporting process, you can automate the reporting of your social media analysis as well as build custom reports and white-labeled templates.
Sprout Social
Price: $149/month
Sprout Social’s reporting and data analytics features are close to ideal for marketers. The Group Report gives you a summary of your different social media profiles. Sprout Social’s tool allows you to analyze your key Instagram metrics, including:
- Instagram Story performance
- Instagram audience growth
- Instagram post-performance
- Instagram hashtag performance
- And more
This service provides you with competitive analysis through an Instagram Competitors Report to ensure that you’re always ahead of the curve. The Engagement Report starts gathering data from the date you created your profile.
Hootsuite
Price: from $19/month.
With its social monitoring and analytics tools, Hootsuite allows you to learn your Instagram metrics more extensively. You get the opportunity to create an unlimited number of reports and compare historical data to analyze your overall performance.
Also, Hootsuite offers features that enable you to create reports to share key metrics and insights with the team, and even track which employees or departments are posting the content with the highest ROI.
Content Marketing Platform
- 100,000+ media publications;
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Rival IQ | Instagram Analytics Tools
Price: From $199/month.
Rival IQ is a service to help you monitor the most important Instagram metrics. You can use it to review Story taps forward and exit rates, check when your audience is the most active online. It will also show you stats about profile link clicks, follower removes and adds, and so much more for better performance. Moreover, the tool allows you to analyze preferred post types, hashtag performance, and best posting times to help adapt your content strategy in your industry.
Rival IQ offers some of the best reports available. And it’s easy to share with clients via customizable slides, pdfs, or by creating a “portal” for your client to see it.
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Final Word: Instagram Analytics Tools
There’s no doubt that Instagram can be a great place to promote your business. However keep in mind, if you want your Instagram strategy to be effective as well as fun, you’ve got to track the right metrics regularly.
As you can see, there are many Instagram analytics tools available to cater to a variety of needs. Whether you wish to increase your engagement, grow several followers, or discover the top trending hashtags, using these platforms will help you achieve success. By monitoring and learning from the data that these tools provide, you’ll be able to see what’s working, what isn’t, and how to close the gaps.
Did I miss your favorite Instagram analytics app? Which Instagram analytics app do you prefer? Let me know by leaving a comment below.
