What Are Instagram Insights, And Why Are They Important?

While brands and businesses continue to shift their advertising focus more heavily towards influencer marketing, they are beginning to dive deeply into the meaningful analytics each influencer possesses, in order to qualify them as someone that will have a positive impact as one of their brand ambassadors. The type of data that brands and agencies are looking for that make an influencer desirable to their marketing strategy isn’t necessarily spelled out by how many followers they have on Instagram or Twitter or their Facebook fans, but more so how much organic visibility their posts actually attain (impressions), and the engagement those posts subsequently receive thereafter, as well as any demographic information on their followers list - these are the data points that matter, and that will determine how much an influencer’s post is really worth to a business!Once you convert your personal Instagram account to a business account, you unlock the ability to collect and view insights on the content you post, as well as an overview of your audience demographics. Here, we breakdown what each of these KPIs (key-performance-indicators) mean, and why they matter.FOLLOWER INSIGHTSKnowing who’s following you is key information that advertisers want to know in order to determine whether or not your audience comprises of the key target demographic that matches their typical customer profile - the information relating to this that Instagram will provide a business account are:> Gender: % Male and % Female> Age Range: also provides the ability to filter age range by gender)> Top Locations: sorted by either city or country> Follower Activity: Showcases the average times and days that your followers are most active - which in turn should be telling of when you should be posting in order to drive the highest engagementIMAGE & VIDEO POST INSIGHTS> Impressions: Total number of times your post or story was seen - this is not a unique number, meaning if one single user viewed your post or story 3 times, it would be counted as 3 impressions> Reach: is the Total number of unique accounts who saw your post or story - meaning if a single user saw your post multiple times, it would only be counted as 1, in relation to reach> Website Clicks: Represents the number of users that have clicked the website link on your Business Profile, and subsequently visited your site> Follower Activity: Tells you the average times your followers are on Instagram on a typical day - this is a key metric used to vet an influencer’s following and ensure their followers are regular users, but more importantly that they’re real people and not purchased followers/likes > Video Views: Is the number of times your video was viewed for 3 or more seconds - the timeframe of 3 seconds is key to this metric because it tends to eliminate those users who may have seen your video appear in their Instagram feed but didn’t necessarily stop to watch it > Saves: Tells you the number of unique accounts that saved your post> Engagement Is probably the most heavily weighted metric that advertisers want to see - engagement includes the total combined number of likes, comments, and saves that your post received> Multiple photo posts: When it comes to single posts which contain multiple photos or videos, your metrics will still be counted as if there's only one photo or video in your post, and will not count individual impressions or reach if the user scrolls through each of the photos/videos in the post.INSTAGRAM STORY INSIGHTS> Replies: Which is the total number of messages that were sent by users through the 'Send Message' option on your Insta-story> Exits: Represents the total number of times someone swiped away from one of your stories to someone else's story, or exited and returned to their Feed from viewing your story Gaining a fundamental understanding of what these metrics mean to advertisers will allow you to develop content strategies that will drive engagement and visibility, as well as grow your social following, collectively increasing your ability to command top dollar for each post you endorse as a paid influencer.