A comprehensive understanding of social media analytics is crucial for businesses seeking to improve their sales, customer service and community engagement. Instagram analytics is one of the many tools you can use to uncover more about your audience on social media. Whether you’re an analytics vet or feeling a bit overwhelmed by the data and aren’t sure where to start, this deep dive into Instagram analytics will teach you everything you need to know.

What are Instagram analytics?

Instagram analytics refers to the collection of data and performance metrics for your posts and account. Instagram analytics help you better understand your audience from when they’re most active to what type of content they enjoy engaging with the most. For example, you can view likes, impressions and other metrics with Instagram analytics. Monitoring these analytics are an essential part of creating your Instagram marketing strategy.

Benefits of using Instagram analytics

There are several benefits to using Instagram analytics from informing new content to monitoring your competitors. Instagram analytics allows you to track your performance, learn more about your audience and spot trends through important metrics like engagement, reach and content interactions. You can also view hashtag analytics. Wrangling these IG analytics insights empowers you to take control of your data.

Learn what content your audience wants on Instagram

Consider the challenges of an ever-changing landscape in social, like the Instagram algorithm. Understanding what really resonates with your audience starts with your analytics. Recreate top performing content based on what your audience responds to most. Explain your account growth and performance to teammates, managers and stakeholders. You can also view demographics like age, location, etc. so you can understand even more about your audience from their preferred content types to when they’re most active on the platform.

Spot Instagram performance trends

Reviewing Instagram analytics helps you identify growth trends and downturns in your content strategy, engagement and reach. For example, are Reels outperforming your posts? Is your follower growth consistent? What about your publishing frequency? Your numbers will clue you in on how to approach your account.

Analyze your competition on Instagram

Show how you measure up to your industry peers by monitoring your competition on Instagram. Marketers are expected to justify their decisions with hard numbers and an Instagram competitors report can help you identify content gaps and opportunities for your brand. For example, if you notice your competitors’ accounts rarely engage with comments, it might be a sign to prioritize interacting with your audience.

22 key Instagram metrics to track

The dozens of dashboards in front of you might seem a bit intimidating. Don't panic, though! Let’s explore 22 common Instagram metrics and walk through what they mean. Here's a summary of what you can see via Instagram Insights and/or using an Instagram analytics tool:

Awareness metrics

1. Reach or content reach: The total number of unique viewers a post has. Reach is often confused with impressions because they are similar, but here’s a quick explainer: If you were to see a post three times, that’s considered three impressions, but you would only count as one person reached.

2. Impressions: The number of times an individual piece of content was displayed to users. Instagram impressions can indicate how well you’re promoting your account, content, campaigns, ads, etc.

3. Content you shared: This includes any content you have posted and shared across Stories, feeds and video.

4. Content interactions: Any action users take when they like, share, save, comment or reply to your content.

5. Saves: The number of times a post has been bookmarked.

6. Shares: The number of times a post/content was sent to another user via Instagram.

7. Reel Shares: How many users shared your Reel.

8. Plays: The number of times a video plays on Instagram, which includes when the video plays automatically or if someone clicks to play the video.

9. Instagram stories views: The amount of people who viewed an Instagram Story. You can also see replies, impressions and navigation for each slide on a Story.

10. Watch through rate or completion rate: The percentage of people who viewed content from beginning to end on Instagram Stories and Reels.

Engagement

11. Engagement rate: This metric refers to the percentage of your following that has engaged with your content whether it’s liking, commenting, sharing or saving.

12. Accounts engaged: This refers to the number of unique accounts that interacted with your content. This includes demographics information from the profiles you reached, including gender, top cities and countries, and age ranges.

13. Accounts reached: The number of unique accounts that have seen your content at least once. This includes the demographic information on the accounts you reached such as top cities and countries, age ranges and gender. It also includes your followers and non-followers.

14. Live interactions: The number of comments and shares for a stream on Instagram Live.

15. Peak concurrent viewers: This refers to the busiest point of the live stream when there were the most viewers.

16. Accounts reached during broadcast: The number of profiles that came across the live stream.

17. Most engaged hashtags: Your top performing hashtags with the highest engagement. Instagram hashtags encourages engagement and provides another lens on your audience and what they are searching for on the platform.

Other metrics to track

18. Total followers: The sum of every profile that follows your account, View your follower growth, top locations, age ranges and times they’re most active on Instagram.

19. Audience growth over time: The amount of followers you lost or gained over time.

20. Audience demographics: The age, gender, location or other characteristics of your followers. Instagram’s native analytics data include audience demographics (age, gender, location). These data points can highlight whether you're getting in front of your target audience via Instagram or not.

21. Traffic: The number of visitors Instagram drives to your website.

22. Instagram ad analytics: This refers to the performance data available for Instagram advertising. The platform provides multiple ways to check Instagram ad analytics including the Ads Manager, which allows you to see your campaign performance overview, demographics, delivery data, campaign spend and cost per result.

How to view your Instagram analytics

You can access native Instagram analytics on the app, or use a social media management solution, like Sprout.

How to view Instagram analytics using account insights

You need to have creator or business account on Instagram to access your account insights. Note: You will only be able to see insights for content you’ve posted since you converted to a business/creator account.

If you have a creator or business account already, follow the steps below to access the data:

  1. From your profile, tap ≡ in the top right corner.
  2. Then, tap Insights.
  3. Tap the metrics underneath the Overview section or specific content you’ve shared for more details. From here, you can also view your audience overview, content summary, top-performing posts, etc. You can also view insights using a custom timeframe or preset.

The overview provides a big picture view and understanding of your IG presence and growth. That said, it's only a taste of what you can learn from your numbers. Your Instagram audience insights are a treasure trove of data to help you boost your engagement and grow your account.

And boom, you’re done! Let’s cover how you can use Sprout.

How to view Instagram analytics using Sprout Social

Here are the steps for accessing Instagram analytics using Sprout:

1. Log into Sprout.

Sprout Social's log in screen.

2. Click on the Report icon on the left toolbar. From the Reports home, click Profiles by Network.

3. Click Instagram Business Profiles. From here, you will see an overview of your Instagram business/creator accounts. View organic and paid impressions, engagement rate, audience growth, publishing behavior and more. The Instagram Business Profiles dashboard also has tabs for benchmarking, demographics and profile data.

Sprout's Instagram Business Profiles Report. In the screenshot, you can see a dashboard with several tabs like the Overview tab, which shows a performance summary of several metrics including impressions, organic and paid engagement rates and profile actions.

You can use Sprout’s features to dig deeper so you get more out of your social media analytics to create real business impact. Our platform gives you a holistic view of your social media data and marketing presence, along with the ability to publish and cross-post content and messages.

For example, you can assess your Instagram analytics alongside your entire social presence by exporting different reports for a side-by-side comparison of performance to get a better understanding of how your IG presence stacks up against other platforms.

Sprout Instagram Business Profiles report showcasing top performing posts.

3 Instagram analytics tools to use

There's no shortage of Instagram analytics tools out there. Here are three Instagram analytics tools you can use to uncover insights.

Sprout Social

Instagram's native analytics features are granular and easy to use, so we give well deserved credit to IG’s features. But we encourage brands to dive deeper into into their analytics so they can take action based on those insights.

Take a look at our Competitors Report below. This report highlights your share of voice alongside hashtag performance. These insights offer specific, actionable ways to fine tune your content strategy and positioning.

Having a central place for your social channels means you don’t have to bounce between platforms, saving you time and effort. Sprout also enables you to view which content types and networks are performing best. Consolidated analytics and cross-posting can be a game changer for busy brands.

Sprout Instagram Competitors report showcasing various metrics including net follower growth, engagements per post, published videos and comments.

Sprout's suite of comprehensive Instagram listening features enables brands to actively track competitors, key terms, preferred content format, sentiment and more. You can also review your share of voice and the Instagram hashtags you’re dominating.

Sprout Social Listening home screen. Several listening templates appear at the top of the dashboard. Active and archived topics also appear on screen.

Experience Sprout’s Instagram analytics tools by signing up for a free trial. 

Iconosquare

Iconosquare also allows you to view your social media accounts on one platform. They offer over 100 metrics for your social media content strategy. You can view your most influential hashtag users, top performing content, follower location and much more. They also offer publishing, media management and competitor analysis tools.

Iconosquare's homepage and trial buttons. The landing page title reads, "Understand your performance data-driven decisions."

Phlanx

Phlanx offers a variety of Instagram analytics tools including an engagement and post likes calculator, along with a competitor tracking tool. You can view a variety of metrics including engagement rate by video view, total weekly interactions and engagement by latest post.

Phlanx's Instagram Calculator Analytics page. The page features several calculators including engagement by reach, engagement rate by latest post and total weekly interactions.

Level up your Instagram analytics

To grow your presence faster, you need to get knee-deep in your Instagram data. While you can learn a ton from native analytics, a tool like Sprout will uncover more insights you can translate into action and scales your social media presence. Enhance and transform your social business strategy with Sprout’s Instagram analytics.