Your First Look at Instagram's New Analytics

Originally published on LinkedIn.com on May 13, 2016 By Taylor Loren

New Instagram Business Profiles now show you the most popular times and days that your followers are on Instagram, along with follower demographics, post impressions, and more.
Earlier this year, Instagram confirmed that they were developing new business profiles to help brands and small businesses succeed on Instagram. Last week, we shared the first screenshots of the new Instagram business profiles being tested, and today we’re able to share more screenshots about a major feature that’s being tested: Instagram analytics. And they look amazing!
Similar to the analytics for your Facebook page, these new Instagram analytics (or, Insights as the app calls them) gives you valuable data about who your followers are, when they’re online, and how many people viewed your Instagram post. Here’s a peek at what they look like on iOS, with more details below:

On the new Instagram business profile, there is now a chart icon in the right hand corner which gives you access to your Instagram analytics, along with a simple “Contact” button that appears besides the “Following” button, a linkable location tag, and a category for your Instagram profile. You can learn more about the new Instagram business profiles here.

Instagram Follower Analytics
Instagram is giving marketers everything they could ever ask for: follower demographic analytics. Now, you’re able to see where your followers are located, their gender, and their age.
Location: You can are able to view follower locations by country, or for a more narrower scope you can view by city. Not only is this information incredibly useful for marketers to understand your audience, it also gives you a better sense of which time zones you should be posting in to reach the majority of your followers, so you can schedule Instagram posts for the best time.

Gender and Age: Next, you’re able to break down the gender and age of your followers. Instagram will tell you your total amount of followers, including how many new followers you’ve gained this week. You can then view a breakdown of your male to female follower ratio in a circle graph. To see the breakdown in ages below, you can view age range by both genders or separate them by men and women.

Instagram Post Analytics
Besides the “Followers” section, there is also another analytics section called “Insights,” similar to Facebook Insights. Here, you can view data on impressions, reach, website clicks, and follower activity. Impressions shows you the total number of times all your posts have been seen, Reach shows you the number of unique accounts that have seen any of your posts, Website Clicks tells you the number of accounts that have tapped on the link in your profile.
Follower Activity: The new Instagram analytics also show you the most popular times of day your followers are using Instagram. The “Follower Activity” module is viewable by hours or days and displays “the average time your followers are on Instagram on a typical day,” or you can sort by day of the week. By knowing when your audience is most active on Instagram, this data will help you schedule Instagram posts for optimal times.

Top Posts: You can sort Instagram posts by the top posts for each Insights category. As seen below, you’re able to view the top posts sorted by Impressions for both a 7 day and a 30 day period, with the total number of impressions as an overlay on the photo. This information is valuable because now you are able to understand exactly how many people saw your post, instead of just “liked” it, which will give you a more accurate engagement rate.
You can also see how many Instagram users view a post in relation to how many followers you have, and you’re able to understand how your content performs over the short vs long term. For example, Makaia has about 23,000 followers, but her posts are being viewed by less than half with a 7 day life span. But analyzed over 30 days, and that number almost doubles, indicating that older Instagram posts are still relevant.
Assuming that this data is coming from Facebook, this is the most accurate information we have seen so far with Instagram analytics, allowing marketers and businesses to truly understand their audience for the first time. By knowing where their followers are located, how old they are, and when they are most likely to be on Instagram, businesses will be able to create better content on Instagram and market themselves more effectively. What do you think of the new analytics? Let me know in the comments!
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If you want to stay up-to-date on breaking Instagram news, join our Facebook group here. Thanks to our community member Margaret Browne for the tip (again!). You can see Makaia’s new Instagram profile in action here (if you’re one of the lucky ones!). Cover image by @aurelycerise

Taylor Loren
Content Marketing Manager at Later
Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
Marketing and Advertising