If you want to grow your Instagram account, taking a look at your Instagram analytics is a great place to start.
With analytics on your side, you can target the right audience, improve your content strategy, and reach your goals.
In this ultimate guide, we’ll walk through everything you need to get started — including key metrics to track and a free reporting template.
But if video is more your style, check out this YouTube video where we share why Instagram Insights are a goldmine for your social strategy:
What Are Instagram Analytics and Why Do They Matter?
Instagram analytics are the best way to understand who your audience is, when they’re most active, and what type of content they engage with.
This is important for creating a content strategy that drives results for your brand or business — without it, you’re essentially working in the dark.
However, finding the right metrics to track, as well as knowing how to interpret them, can be easier said than done.
Every brand or business has unique goals (from growing a follower count to increasing clicks and conversions) which means that the most important metrics differ on a case-by-case basis.
But once you’ve clarified your goals, you’ll be able to get so much more from your Instagram analytics — as you’ll have clear objectives to monitor in your social media reporting.
TIP: Discover what content resonates most with your audience with Later's in-depth Instagram Analytics Tools — create an account today!
10 Key Instagram Metrics to Track
If you’re new to the world of data and analytics, knowing which Instagram metrics to track can seem like a daunting task.
But once you’re up to speed, understanding and analyzing these metrics can be revolutionary for your brand’s growth!
Here are 10 Instagram metrics to track for a stronger Instagram strategy:
Reach: The number of unique accounts that have seen your post, and therefore how much awareness and value you’re gaining.
Engagement rate: This is a calculation that shows what percentage of your following has interacted with your content. If your followers are commenting, liking, saving, and sharing your content, your engagement rate will show it.
Traffic: The amount of clicks your website, CTAs, and Instagram Stories link stickers drive — a jackpot for understanding what motivates your audience.
Saves: The number of times your post has been bookmarked.
Shares: Shared content indicates how many times a post was sent to another user through Instagram — and that’s a very telling metric.
Audience growth: Thanks to Instagram’s “followed” and “unfollowed” metrics — you can see exactly how many followers you gain and lose each day.
Watch through rate: Your Instagram Stories, Reels, and video watch-through rate measures the percentage of people who followed your content from beginning to end.
Instagram Stories views: Each story slide posted to Instagram will have its own metrics — including replies, impressions, and navigations. You can use the metrics for each story slide to learn what holds your audience’s attention, what they tap back to, and what causes them to skip away from your content.
Instagram Reels engagement: Measures your Reel content interactions. You can calculate your Instagram Reels engagement rate with a bit of math: Reels Engagement Rate = # of Reels interactions / Reels Plays x 100
Best time to post: Posting at your personalized best time to post on Instagram increases the likelihood of followers actually seeing and engaging with your posts. When you post at the right time, you're more likely to see a boost in likes, comments, saves, and shares, because your community is online and scrolling their feeds.
By understanding what engages your audience, you can tailor your content plan around this — and grow your community on Instagram.
With Later's Best Time to Post feature, you'll discover your account's unique best time to schedule content. Start using it now.
How to Find Instagram Insights and Analytics
Let’s face it, growth on Instagram doesn't happen overnight.
To see a spike in followers, engagement, and sales on the platform you’ll need some mighty Instagram analytics tools on your side.
Here are two to help get you started:
Instagram Analytics Tool #1: Later’s Instagram Analytics
Not to toot our own horn but if you’re looking to increase engagement, optimize stories and Reels, and drive traffic, Later's Instagram Analytics feature is your new best friend.
If you’re not yet acquainted, Later’s Instagram Analytics gives you a visual overview of how your posts are performing — all in an easy-to-use dashboard.
The tool lets you track up to 12 months’ worth of Instagram feed posts, stories, and Reels analytics so you can see exactly what's performed best — and filter by key metrics, such as likes, reach, comments, and more:
You can also tap into your Instagram audience analytics and discover where your audience is based, their demographics, as well as when they are most active.
These are all valuable indicators for optimizing your Instagram posting strategy:
Plus, you’ll have access to Later's Hashtag Analytics tools so you can track key insights about your hashtags — including a breakdown of which are driving the most likes, comments, saves, and reach on your Instagram posts:
NOTE: Later’s Instagram Story, Reels, and Hashtag Analytics are only available on Growth and Advanced plans.
On top of those detailed analytics, Later’s Analytics also shows your personalized best time to post on Instagram.
The tool automatically calculates your top seven posting times based on previous activity, that you can use to guide your scheduled posting times:
Simply drag and drop posts onto your Later calendar in the highlighted slots, and voila!
You’ll now be catering content to your community when they’re most engaged and most likely to click-click-click.
Ready to start tracking your performance more efficiently? Sign up to Later and explore the Instagram Analytics dashboard today — available for both Instagram Business and Creator accounts.
Instagram Analytics Tool #2: Instagram Insights
Instagram’s free native analytics tool, Instagram Insights, is also full of useful data.
Whether you’re looking for your Instagram audience analytics or data on specific posts, Instagram Insights has got you covered.
To access the feature, you’ll first need to switch to a business or creator account.
NOTE: Instagram can only show you analytics for content that was published after you switched to a business or creator profile.
Once you’ve taken care of that, tap the menu icon in the top right corner of your profile, and tap “Insights.” This will bring you to a page overview of your account’s analytics.
Here you can peruse a myriad of metrics ranging from accounts reached, accounts engaged, and total followers:
To get a closer look at how your content is resonating with users, tap the drop-down menu from the top left corner and filter by time frame (up to 90 days), and see specific post performance:
This is a great way to gain a holistic view of the content that has performed best over a set period of time — which can help inform your strategy.
TIP: You can also open any Instagram post and tap the “View Insights” button in the bottom left corner to see metrics for that specific post too.
How to Track and Report on Instagram Analytics
As you can see, there are hundreds of Instagram metrics you can track and report on — but trying to tackle them all might not be the best use of your time.
Having a clear view of your brand goals, and the key Instagram metrics that will help achieve them, is often a more efficient approach.
Once you’ve clarified your goals, it’s worthwhile to create a social media report to track your progress in a visually powerful and digestible way.
We’ve created free social media reporting templates available in PDF or Google Slides (Powerpoint).
Just click the button below to create your own analytics report and start showcasing your results:
Tracking your Instagram analytics over time will give you a better idea of what type of content is working, so you can build on your success in the future.
And bonus: You can also download your key Instagram metrics in a CSV file straight from Later’s Instagram Analytics dashboard:
However you approach Instagram analytics, understanding how your content performs can be a game-changer for your content strategy.
Test out different objectives, play around with your tactics, tweak your content, and see what sticks. The results may surprise you — in a good way.
