Lots of people want to know how to view insights on Instagram, and they often aren’t sure exactly how to go about it. Usually, they can’t see any insight information because their account is still a personal one, and in order to access Instagram insights, you need to have a business account.
Instagram’s own insight data is very powerful indeed, and it can help you do a number of things, including:
- Find out key information about your audience
- Find out where your audience is coming from
- Find out when your audience is online
- Find out which posts are performing better than others
All of this then allows you to adapt your social media strategy and start posting content in a way that gets the biggest return.
The Best Instagram Insights
There are several third-party tools out there that have been designed to complement Instagram’s existing insights.
Some even have the added bonus of being able to be used even if you don’t have a business profile, like Social Monitor.
Social Monitor is a quick and easy tool that comes with a free trial and offers similar insights that Instagram provides, except it is presented in a more visually pleasing way, and it can be used by any profiles, not just business ones.
Instagram’s Own Insights
Provided you have a business profile, which is very easy to get, you can get complete access to Instagram’s own insights.
These Instagram analytics are very comprehensive and they can really help you nail down and understand where exactly you can improve on your social media strategy.
Since they come straight from the horse’s mouth, these data pieces are reliable, accurate and quick to use.
How To Access Instagram Insights
Accessing Instagram Insights is a breeze.
From your profile page you can hit either the hamburger icon or tap ‘Insights’ under your Instagram bio.
You will then be presented with the Insights Dashboard, where you have three tabs to choose from:
- Content – See a quick overview of your recent posts, Instagram stories and promotions
- Activity – See how many people you are reaching and number of interactions
- Audience – See your audience insights including growth, demographics and more
Instagram Content View
The content view is fairly straightforward and lets you see the reach statistics on your posts, stories and promotions.
It is useful to see a quick snapshot of home many people have seen your posts.
Instagram Activity View
Here is where you can start to dive a little deeper with your analysis.
This lets you see the number of people who saw your posts as well as the number of people who interacted with them.
This information is key so you can find out the best time to post on Instagram for maximum engagement.
Instagram Audience View
This is where you can access detailed information about your audience and what they get up to.
Audience insights are arguable the most useful on Instagram, and they let you track various things like:
- Growth – see people who followed and unfollowed you
- Location – see where your audience is located
- Age – see the age stats for your audience
- Gender – see the gender make up of your audience
- Follower activity – see when your audience are active on Instagram
Using this collection of data you can really dive deep into what your audience are doing and attempt to tailor your strategy in a way that appeals to them.
Instead of just throwing up posts and seeing if they do well, you can now post content at a time when you know that your followers are online.
You can also adapt your content to your follower’s age, location, activity and more.
Summary
Even if you don’t have a business account, there are other ways that you can gain valuable insights into your social media activities, like the previously mentioned Social Monitor.
We tend to use a combination of both to really get to grips with how our accounts are performing and what can be done to improve on their metrics.
If you are serious about Instagram and you have a normal personal account, consider upgrading to a business account and select ‘blogger’ when you do so.
You won’t have to give lots of personal details and you will get access to these very powerful tools that can help your account growth.
