Tracking Your Content Performance on Instagram: Why You Want To And How To Start
Social media marketing has revolutionized the way small businesses create awareness around their products and services. Instagram is one of the most popular social media tools among businesses and for good reason. There is incredible potential to not only build a strong brand presence on Instagram, but also generate quality leads that help you grow your business. Most small businesses spend all of their time planning and creating content to share on social media, and some even know how to apply strategy to their content and marketing efforts in an effort to produce growth. But few know how to analyze content performance. It’s one thing to be consistent with publishing content on social media, yet it’s another thing to know how to understand and review performance metrics. Today, we are going to look at why we want to pay attention to our content performance insights and how to start tracking our analytics. Let’s dive in.
It all starts with goals
Before you even begin reviewing and tracking your analytics, you need to begin by defining what your goals are for your Instagram platform. This goes for any online platform you are using to market your business and share branded content on. Defining your goals is an important first step because, without defining them, it will be difficult to understand your analytics and what you are looking for.
Below are the most common goals that small businesses typically set in regards to their social media content presence:
Increase brand discoverability and awareness
Grow an online community around your brand
Nurture relationships that boosts engagement and interaction
Form a memorable customer experience that builds interest in your offers
Attract leads
Increase conversions and click throughs
After looking at the above common goals, consider for a moment what the current purpose is for you publishing content on social media. Identify what it is you want to see happen from creating and sharing branded content, aligning a goal with that intention. You may notice that you have multiple goals attached to creating and sharing content. This is normal! What is important to do if that is the case is to clarify what goal needs to be focused on first. If you are a newer founder or budding online brand that is just starting to get your presence established, then chances are that you want to focus on the first 3 goals on the above list before trying to begin attracting leadings and generating conversions. Remember the value in investing time into cultivating an unforgettable customer experience. We do not want to position our brands in a way that leaves us just selling and promoting all day long, as this does not form a very memorable experience for our social media community. When establishing goals, it’s important not to get too ahead of yourself. We have to put in the work to build a strong customer experience.
Defining your KPIS
Once you begin to understand what your goals are for publishing content on Instagram, let’s now get more specific with those goals by defining your KPIS. KPIS stand for Key Performance Indicators. They are the metrics we can track to help us understand whether we are moving closer to or further away from our ultimate goals. KPIS are the measurements we want to focus on and keep in mind when reviewing our analytics. Let’s break down key performance indicators for the common goals listed above.
If you are wanting to grow brand discoverability and awareness, the KPIS you want to track can include:
Profile views
Top-performing content types and topics
Organic reach by both followers and non-followers
Reach by content type
Engagement by new followers
New followers and retained followers
Hashtag efficacy
Copy, keyword, and messaging efficacy
If you are wanting to grow a community around your brand, the KPIS you want to track can include:
Reach by current followers
Engagement by current followers
Content interactions (likes, comments, saves, shares)
Instagram story views and replies
If you are wanting to boost engagement and interaction, the KPIS you want to track can include:
Content interactions by type of content and topic of content
Participation in engagement features such as polls, quizzes, etc
Follower retention rates
Click through rates
CTA usage efficacy
Hook usage efficacy
Content quality assessment based on multiple factors including word length, readability, formatting, SEO ranking
Accessibility & usability score
Feedback and reviews from community
If you want to build interest in your offers in a way that generates leads, KPIS you want to track can include:
Website visit frequencies
Email button frequencies
Engagement by current followers
DM inquiries
Comment section questions and inquiries
Types and topics of content that get the most interactions (comments, saves, shares, likes)
If you want to increase conversions and clickthroughs, KPIS you want to track can include:
Conversation rate to see what pieces of content drive the best results
Website clicks
Email button clicks
Inquiries about offers
Sign ups and sales
Conversion strategy (what it took to get X results)
Tracking analytics
Now that you have your goals set and you have aligned what KPIS to track based on said goals, you are much more prepared to begin analyzing and tracking your analytics with purpose! The next part is to begin establishing a strategy for tracking your data. During this phase it is important to first and foremost take the time to establish a clear content strategy and marketing direction for your content. Otherwise, you may begin tracking your analytics but lack an understanding of what you are testing strategy wise to help you get your desired results.
Defining your KPIS helps you understand what metrics you are focused on tracking, but now you want to determine what actions are going to help improve your content performance thus move you closer to your goals. Having a strategy that is aligned with the goals you have established is going to help you see much more sustainable growth. If you are confused as to what a content strategy is or how to implement a content plan that aligns with your marketing goals, please do reach out as I would be happy to help!
Once you have clarified your content strategy, you can begin implementing said strategy while tracking your analytics along the way. The key here is to establish a consistent method for how and when you collect analytics data on an ongoing basis. Personally, I pull analytics at the end of each week for the client accounts I manage. Each Friday is designated as Reports Day within my Studio, where we pull analytics for our client accounts, review it, study it, audit their content performance for the week, and then adjust our content strategy based on the feedback. Our analytics reporting each week helps us asses whether or not we are on track to hit our goals. The KPIS we are tracking help us know what metrics to look at the closest as well as what parts of our strategy need to be the strongest.
An example:
if you are working to increase engagement for your Instagram account as your goal… you may begin to track your content performance in the lens of likes, comments, saves and shares you receive. You may also implement a strategy into your content plan that has you utilizing engagement features on the platform to help you boost engagement from your community. You may also be focused on clearly tracking the types and topics of content you create, specifically measuring the types of CTAS and hooks you use to see which ones generate the best engagement. When looking at your analytics each week, you will then want to heavily focus on content engagement by current followers, content quality assessment, and overall participation. You will look for what created the most participation vs what did not based on your content strategy implemented. This will help show you what worked versus what did not based on the actions you took to support your goals and KPIS.
Tweak and update strategy as you go
The final part of this process of tracking your analytics is all about reflecting on the data you analyze, updating and tweaking your content strategy to help you improve your overall content performance. This does not have to be a complicated process. Tracking your analytics can be doable and simple. It all depends on the way in which you set yourself up for success. I use Notion to track all client analytics and record data on a weekly basis. We have a content performance document we use for all clients that records their weekly insights and includes a breakdown of our findings. Then, we provide our clients with a review of what worked vs what didnt, what the data means, and what we will be implementing in the future to improve overall content performance. Tracking your analytics can be as simple as setting up a spreadsheet that you record your data weekly. Schedule a time you pull data each week and have a spot you record it!
One of my favorite things I have implemented into this process of analytics tracking is a SWOT analysis. After reviewing the data, I then reconnect with the clients goals and KPIS we are measuring. I break down the goals and KPIS into a SWOT analysis, where I review our strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and strategies moving forward. This provides the client with a clear picture of whats working vs where we have room for growth and what we are going to do as their media manager to get them where they want to be.
As you can now see, tracking analytics does not have to be a complicated process. The benefits of doing so outweigh any of the learning curves that may come with beginning to implement this sort of system into your content strategy. What I have found from doing this is that our overall content strategies are much stronger and our marketing campaigns see far more results. We also move closer to our goals in a much more consistent and sustainable way. Overall, our clients love receiving their weekly analytics reports and it helps our clients feel like we have their back in being fully invested in supporting them in achieving their goals.
If you have any questions about tracking your analytics for Instagram or any other platforms, I am happy to chat more. Our studio also track analytics for other platforms such as Pinterest, Facebook, Email lists, and websites.
Until next time…
Natalie Brite
