You’re on Instagram to build your brand and following. But as you’ll quickly learn, IG isn’t all about you. In fact, you need a strategy in place that revolves around interacting with other users to get their attention and potentially, more followers.
But who you engage with on Instagram should be done strategically. You’ll need a plan of action for reaching out to and interacting with the right Instagram users.
To do this, you’ll need to understand the basics of analyzing Instagram accounts, so you’re targeting the right users.
Let’s take a look at how you can pull this off.
Why Does Instagram Analytics Matter?
There’s a lot you can learn by taking Instagram data and analyzing it. For example, if you’re looking to work with influencers in your industry, then you need to ensure you’re targeting ones that match your business goals.
Otherwise, you could end up:
- Targeting the wrong audience
- Driving irrelevant traffic to your site
- Missing opportunities to engage with valuable influencers
- Missing out on high-value followers
So the idea is to use key data points to find influencers (both large and small) to help you reach your Instagram goals.
You’ll also find analytics essential to learning more about your competition. But more on that later.
What Data Should You Analyze?
There’s a lot of data you can gather from user accounts on Instagram. And if you’re using tools like Hashtags for Likes’ Instagram Account Analyzer, then you can make your job a whole lot easier.
Ideally, you want to track the following metrics about Instagram users.
Influencer Engagement
Here’s an obvious metric that every brand should be looking at. Social media is all about engaging with your audience. And when it comes time to search for influencers to collaborate with, you need to know the level of engagement they’re receiving.
It doesn’t matter how many posts they publish each day or how many followers they have. If they’re not getting any likes or comments, then they’re a low-value target.
Why? Because engagement shows the relevance of the user and the content they produce for their audience. If people are liking and commenting on their posts, then it shows they like and value it.
And this is what you want for your brand: users to engage with the posts influencers share about your product/service. Those who engage are more likely to click on links and make a purchase.
We already see that 60% of B2C users discover products on Instagram.
The purpose is to find influencers who have a nice-sized following (in the thousands) and a reasonable rate of engagement. Keep in mind that the higher number of followers they have, the lower their engagement rating will likely be.
When you do the math, you’ll see that a 1% engagement rate can be high for an IG influencer with 3 million followers. That equates to about 30K likes or comments.
Competitor Engagement
Now, what if you’re looking to do a competitive analysis? If that’s the case, then you want to review the engagement of your competition.
Why? Because it’ll tell you how well their IG campaign is doing. If you’re looking for your top competitors, then you want to see who’s getting the most engagement.
You can then view their posts to see why they’re getting all that great attention. See if there’s a pattern so you can try and duplicate their success.
For instance, if they’re doing a lot of Instagram Stories and getting high engagement, then maybe you should consider doing the same. Just do it in a way that resonates with your brand and audience.
On the other end, check to see what they’re not doing. If you see they don’t post often or focus too much on one type of content, then maybe you can add what they’re missing to your strategy.
This will make your feed stand apart and offer something your competition isn’t.
Influencer Follower Count
Engagement plays a critical role in determining which influencers to work with. But this doesn’t rule out follower counts. This is just as important to know because it tells you the reach of the influencer.
You’ll need to use this in your calculation of the engagement rate to see the potential interaction your campaign would receive if you decided to collaborate.
With an analytics tool like the Instagram Account Analyzer, you can see follower evolution charts of Instagram users.
This shows you how many followers a user obtained over for the past month or so.
What you want to look at is whether the follower growth is stagnant, dropping, or steadily growing. Be careful of steep spikes – this may indicate a promotion or contest.
Make sure the growth is steady, which will help to predict future growth.
Competitor Follower Count
When you’re analyzing competitors, it’s good to look at their follower count. This will show how much of a threat they are to your brand.
You’re competing for the attention of the same audience. If they’re getting a steady growth of followers, then it’s a good sign they’re doing something right.
Analyze their strategy to see why they’re getting more followers. And, more importantly, who’s following them? Review some of the profiles to make sure they’re attracting the right people.
There’s also the possibility that competitors are getting fake followers. You can tell by looking at their engagement rate.
To help you analyze all of this, you can usee the account stats summary feature in the Instagram Account Analyzer tool.
This will show you how many followers and uploads for the IG user’s account. And it’ll show the daily numbers for a week, month, or year.
Future Projections
It’s not just the current and past numbers you have to worry about. When you’re analyzing influencers and competitors, it’s good to know future projections for their follower, engagement, and uploads.
With the same tool, you can find out the potential number of followers the user will have within 30 days, 60 days, or even the next year. Plus, it shows how many uploads they’ll likely publish within that time frame.
These numbers are based on historical data and patterns.
But it’s worth considering because it can give you an idea of which influencers to go with. The ideal influencer would be one who has a high potential for growth.
As for your competition, you want to see whether their strategies are projecting decent growth. If not, then you don’t want to emulate their methods.
Top Posts
Trying to find out what influencers and competitors are doing right shouldn’t mean digging through a year’s worth of posts. Instead, you can use the Instagram Account Analyzer tool to flesh out all of their top posts.
These are based on the amount of engagement the posts received. This is an excellent way to identify which type of posts and topics perform the best. Also, pay attention to the day of the week and time of day of the posts to see if there’s a pattern.
There’s a lot you can learn by seeing the top posts of influencers. The analyzer tool will show the top posts from the last ten posts.
Take this and see how many likes and comments they received. Is engagement consistent? Or do specific posts receive more than others?
If so, why?
You may find infographics, videos, or memes get the most engagement.
Mentions and Hashtags
If you want to see who and what an Instagram user is into, then look at who they’re mentioning and what they’re hashtagging.
If an influencer is mentioning brands (or your competitors), then this could be a good or bad sign. The good is that they’re willing to mention brands in your industry.
The bad is that they’re probably already loyal to your competition.
Now, the analyzer will show you the top mentions from the past 10 posts, so you can see who they mentioned most recently. You can also gauge their use of hashtags.
Which ones are they using the most? What does it say about the direction of their content? Do they use similar hashtags to your campaign or that are relevant to your industry?
What about your competitors? Who are they mentioning and which hashtags are they using? See if there are tags you should be using in your posts to help build visibility of your content.
Make Analyzing Instagram Users Easier with the Right Tools
It’s difficult to analyze an IG user just by deep diving through their posts. Not only is this time-consuming, but it’s also tricky to pull off.
Unless you’re a mathematical genius, it’s going to be hard trying to come up with averages for their engagement rate. Plus, you won’t be able to see how their follower counts grow over time.
With the Instagram Account Analyzer tool, you can quickly gather all of this data. The analytics is done for you. All you have to do is look at the numbers and determine if it suits your purpose.
Interested in seeing how it works? Then start using their advanced tool today!
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