With its large number of users, Instagram has become an inevitable tool in any digital marketing agency repertoire. However, it is essential to revise your marketing strategy often and thoroughly. It is the only way to be able to really take full advantage of it and get the most significant return on investment, be it for organic or paid posts. The key to knowing in which direction you should go next with your strategy for Instagram is knowing which steps you have already taken work and which do not. To do this, try these five ways to measure your Instagram marketing results.
How to measure the marketing results on Instagram?
Instagram as part of your marketing strategy
Even though it focuses on visuals (or perhaps exactly because it does), Instagram is the best social media platform for engaging with the audience and building a solid brand. There are 112.5 million Instagram users in the US alone. It is particularly popular with younger users; 67% of young adults aged 18-29 in the US use the platform regularly. Its demographic makeup is quite different from other platforms you might be using. The accent on visuals and some of its other characteristics influence the form your marketing efforts will take to be effective. It is important to take all this into account when coming up with a strategy. No matter what combination of platforms you are using to promote your website, always remember that each social network requires a different approach, so keep that in mind when developing a strategy.
1. Measure engagement
Checking your own engagement for any given Instagram post is easy enough. Instagram Insights will provide you with detailed feedback that includes the number of likes, comments, shares, and saves. Staying on top of engagement within your account will show you the type of content your audience appreciates the most. However, it is crucial to view your engagement in the right context. Your engagement percentage should always be calculated relative to the number of followers you have.
2. Compare engagement with your competitors
Looking at what your competition is doing is a great way to measure your Instagram marketing results. It can also provide you with ideas for content and different directions you could take. In addition, using one of the available tools for surveying your competition’s engagement will show you how your profile fares within your particular industry or niche. You should take followers into account here as well. You want to compare yourself to someone of similar size, not with an industry giant. Luckily, different social media tools can help you automate this process to ease the management of social media.
3. Monitor your follower count
Besides using them to put engagement in context, the changes in your follower count are another telltale sign you are doing something right (or terribly, terribly wrong). Some might consider regularly checking your follower count somewhat vain. However, it is an important metric as it pretty much determines the potential reach of your content. As mentioned above, it is also essential when analyzing engagement. Having low engagement for your follower count can be a sign of recent missteps in the published content.
Ideally, what you would be seeing is a gradual increase, telling you that you are on the right track. If this is the case, simply stay true. However, sudden spikes or drops require a more thorough analysis. It is imperative to look at the context of these changes. Were there perhaps paid ads or one-time promotions that could account for these developments, positive or negative?
4. Use and track hashtags
Instagram’s algorithm can often put your content at an unfair disadvantage. Hashtags are one way to remedy that as this social platform is quite hashtag-friendly. Using the appropriate hashtags can ensure your content reaches an audience beyond just your followers. They can also help measure your Instagram marketing results.
Part of the post insights you have access to will show you how many impressions your post got due to its appearance in the hashtags you attached to it. The best way to determine the right ones is to use various hashtags on your posts and see which ones work the best. There are also different tools you can use to help you do this. Instagram posts allow up to 30 hashtags and stories up to 10. However, you may notice that less is often more when it comes to hashtags. So try them all out, compare and contrast them, and figure out the right approach.
5. Drive traffic
Though it can often seem like it was made to be used for digital marketing, Instagram still has some flaws. One of its major faults is the inability to post links anywhere besides the bio section on a profile or the swipe-up function in Instagram Stories. To increase the amount of traffic your Instagram content drives to your website, you first have to determine the kind of content that does this for you.
Google Analytics will come in quite handy here. The first step is to set it up, if you haven’t already, and give it some time to collect enough data so that you have something to work with. While this tool cannot help you measure analytics within your Instagram account, it can definitely measure your Instagram marketing results as they pertain to your website’s traffic. Looking into the option Behavior Flow and picking Instagram from the Source drop-down menu, you will be presented with data on all the traffic your web page garnered from Instagram. It is particularly important to measure this if you use Instagram links to lead to landing or product pages. Setting up the right UTM parameters to measure traffic from Instagram can be quite tricky. This is one of those times when hiring a top-quality digital marketing agency is invaluable.
Conclusion
Instagram is an essential part of building a brand and a successful marketing strategy. Tracking the efforts of that marketing strategy is impossible without using different tools to look at how your content behaves. Without knowing how to measure your Instagram marketing results, you will be hard-pressed to provide your audience with appealing content that will lead to engagement and conversions.
About the author
Sarah Pearson is a freelance writer with extensive experience in digital marketing. Following innovations in this field is one of her passions and she is glad she gets to write about them for a living.
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