BY CORA VELTMAN
All social media platforms provide some in-app social media metrics. There are also many ways to read and interpret the numbers- it all depends on what your goals are and what you are measuring against. Here are some tips to point you in the right direction.
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LISTENING SOFTWARE:
There are 101 different companies that are trying to sell you social listening software, odds are that you don’t really need any of it. I have been a professional social media manager for years and I have yet to find better data analytics than what is already provided in the app.
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Instagram (make sure you have a business profile) > profile page> Insights button under under your main profile bio.
WHAT TO LOOK FOR:
Depends on what your goals are. Deciding on one or two metrics to start with will help focus your strategy. Here are only some of the common important metrics
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Follower Count - how many followers have signed up to see your content
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Engagement - Likes, shares and comments added together measured as an average divided over number of posts
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Growth Rate - how many new followers in a time frame
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Impressions - how many accounts have seen each piece of content
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Link Clicks - how many times someone was directed through your social account to the link you gave them
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Media Views - for video content, how many times the video has been watched
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Avg. View Time - how many minutes most viewers watch the video content
Before you get overwhelmed, remember that all ships rise with the tide, success in one or two of these categories will often help raise all the other metrics as well. You can always refocus what your strategy is to fit new goals. As time passes, you will have more data to see. As you try different strategies, your metrics will tell you if they are working or not- a month is usually a good minimal amount of time to see if your plan is working.
WHAT DO YOU MEASURE AGAINST?
Yourself. Yourself. Yourself. At least at first. Your own numbers are the ones that matter the most. It’s ok to keep an eye on the competition and the accounts that inspire you - but just remember you don’t know what their goals and intent are, so you can’t measure your numbers against theirs. Focus on your own numbers and help your business be the best version of itself it can be.
