These days, there are tons of folks on Instagram telling us which numbers matter in the online space. This can make things confusing, especially when you're getting started in the social media marketing community for the first time.
Metrics to be wary of are the "vanity" metrics, these are often goals like wanting to obtain X number of followers in a month or X amount of likes on a single post. These talking points are common, you hear them everywhere, but there's no room for improvement in them: Once you hit the goal you've set, you're golden. This doesn't allow for a qualitative roadmap of how your business is growing, or what you can improve on.
In this blog, we're breaking down 3 social media analytics to keep an eye on for your business' Instagram that will both clearly break down how your account is performing and give the talking points that will prove how great things are going for you!
Follower growth rate
Here, we put a focus on tracking the momentum of followership. This is also a great way to track how often you gain new eyes on your profile, and if you're catching the attention of folks outside of your immediate community.
This analytic is particularly important for monitoring the growth and awareness of your brand, and for mapping out low-engagement months versus peak months. It also gives you a good indication of how your account is standing up next to the industry average; which is currently sitting at 2%. So how do you calculate your follower growth rate?
With this information, you're able to tailor and curate your content with those benchmarks in mind and move past the concept of wanting to gain 100 followers in a month to a more consistent rate of growth. Using a percentage is also helpful so that you can quantify your success based on your previous historicals. Remember, it's a marathon, not a sprint; gaining followers slowly over time with quality content is a lot better than gaining a bunch all at once through a giveaway, especially when followers will likely hit Unfollow once the contest ends anyway.
Engagement rate
This is the most talked-about analytic because it pertains directly to the content you're putting out. Engagement rate is a snapshot of how your content is being interacted with; this can look like comments, likes, and shares.
Monitoring your engagement rate essentially hands you a road map on what content to post. With this knowledge, you get to know what kind of content your audience wants to see from you. At the end of the day, you want your content to be relevant to your brand, but you also should be creating with your audience in mind.
The current engagement rate benchmark for Instagram is 1.22% is for post engagements, you can follow this formula to calculate yours:
Engagement rate analytics allows you to see which posts gel with your audience the best, giving you more opportunity to emulate those posts with the most eyeballs on them more often in your feed. This is better than sticking with a goal of 500 likes on a post, because it allows you to really hone in on what content your audience wants to see, making your connection with your audience more genuine. It's also more relative to your page's success! For example, a post with 100 likes and 1 million followers is a terrible ranking, but a post with 100 likes and 50 total followers? Incredible stuff. This is why engagement rate is better than simply choosing a goal of X number of likes.
Click-through rate
This one is essentially what it says on the tin, we're measuring how often your audience switches gears from a passive viewer to an engaged potential sale or client. When you're running social for your brand, while it's exciting to have a post do really well, or hit that next follower benchmark, at the end of the day you want actual sales and clients. The industry average click-through rate (CTR) is currently 0.22% and here's how to calculate yours:
Keeping an eye on your click-through rate can give you hints on when your messaging is working and can give you the indication you may need to drive traffic to your link-in-bio with post messaging. It's also a great way to quantify success further than just social media attention, it shows how traffic is driven to your site.
If you choose to delve deeper into the analytics given to you by Instagram, you'll get a better understanding of your audience and what they want from you. However, to ensure your business is hitting the correct demographic targets and social media benchmarks you've set, constantly check back on your KPIs to keep your content engaging and relevant to your audience.
On the hunt for a social media partner? Super Duper Studios is a digital branding agency in Toronto. We specialize in game-changing visual identity, websites that make sense, and double-tap worthy social media content. Nice to meet ya! Email me at rebeca.mackinnon@itssuperduper.com and let’s chat.
Rebeca MacKinnon Community Manager at Super Duper Studios.