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How to Use Instagram Insights to Improve Your Brand Collaborations

September 13, 2017
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You already know that analytics are powerful tools for boosting your reach and sparking greater engagement, but did you also know that understanding your metrics can help you secure more collaboration opportunities and demonstrate greater value to brands? Even if you don’t have a traditional blog, or you see the greatest traction on your social channels, you can still access analytics that help you make better content-planning decisions and position yourself in the most effective manner when negotiating with brands. Here’s how to use your Instagram insights to assess these important factors.

First, make sure you can access your insights by switching to an Instagram business account. Just head to your settings and select the option to switch, then connect your account with your Facebook page:



From your business account, you can start to see your account impressions, overall reach, number of “saves” or sends, engagement, and profile website clicks for posts and Stories, as well as demographic information about your followers.

Let’s look at why these metrics are so important, and how they can improve your collaborations.


Analysing Your Impressions

Photo: Instagram 


Your impressions show you how well individual posts and Stories have performed compared to others and across different timeframes, allowing you to assess which types of content spark the greatest engagement and what topics, colors and mood will inspire the same reaction in the future.


But if you take another look, your impressions tell another story as well.

Just beneath the overall impressions number, you’ll see how many impressions are new this week compared to your previous impressions. This can be a powerful metric for demonstrating the long-term value of your content to brands. If your posts continue to attract attention weeks after you’ve posted, brands can expect the same “stickiness.” Not only that, but residual interest shows that your followers are genuine, invested, and valuable. You can also see how many people saved your image indicating a true level of engagement with the type of content your sharing. It's important to look deeper into these metrics and respond with more content that your followers want.


Analysing Your Demographics 

Photo: Instagram 


Just as your Google Analytics show you information about your blog readers, your Instagram insights can give you valuable information about your social following. Understanding the gender, age range and typical geographic location of your audience helps you create content that speaks to your followers and gives you a better understanding of which brands will benefit the most from your audience. We find that many bloggers who post with their own demographic in mind can be surprised by their audience demographics, which makes these numbers worth paying attention to. Our research has shown that 63% of bloggers have followers more than 4 years older than they are, with just 26% of followers their own age or younger -- not what many might expect. It’s also worth comparing your social following with your blog demographics as this too can tell an interesting story about the type of content that might be worth sharing with your blog as opposed to your social.


We have also found that content can have a greater appeal abroad than at home. US-based bloggers have had larger-than-expected following from Australia, and vice-verse. Analysing your demographic insights will help you incorporate references and content that speaks more directly to your followers, which strengthens your follower loyalty.


Analysing Your Promotions 


Photo: Instagram 


As Instagram’s algorithm evolves, organic reach has become less reliable for many influencers looking to continue growing their audiences. By Instagram’s own estimate, only about 30% of your audience will see your organic content. To boost this number, or to inspire a particular action like clicks on a new Story, you may want to consider promoting your content. 


You can now promote Instagram content using parent company Facebook’s Power Editor, which offers specific parameters that can help you target the right audience for a specific type of post. You can target users by age, location, interests and even behaviors such how often they shop online.

New this month, you can specifically target users based on their interaction with your profile, such as viewing a video. By testing different parameters and analysing how different viewers respond, you can discover new audiences and quickly determine where you may have opportunities to grow within different demographics, leading you to new brand opportunities. There’s no need to leave your Insta account to check your results. You can manage campaigns right from your insights. 

Facebook also rolled out a new feature this month that allows brands to promote sponsored influencer posts, which means extra promotion for your content and a win for brands looking to gain their own insights. With Facebook controlling Insta’s ad platform, we expect a similar feature soon for Instagram. Stay tuned!


These are just a few of the ways your Instagram insights can help you better understand your audience and demonstrate your value to brands. We encourage analysing all your available metrics, including Google Analytics, to get the most complete picture of your audience. (Still not sure how to do that? Here’s how!)