Four Important Instagram KPI’s to Track for An Effective Social Media Strategy

“I want more followers.”

This is what I hear from clients over and over again. The issue with this statement is it only focuses on one metric. In reality, there are many social media metrics that are extremely important to track if you want your social media strategy to be effective. You should be tracking them all and assigning equal importance to each.

“Digital Marketers are data analysts and every number can tell a story.”

1.     Impressions:

Impressions include the total number of times your post has been seen. Seen does not mean ‘liked’ or ‘engaged with’, it just means… seen. If your impressions are high but your engagement is low, you’ve got yourself a problem. Many people are viewing your content, but it is not engaging enough. If your impressions are low but your engagement is high, then your content is engaging but you’re not getting it in front of enough eyeballs. This is a good time to invest in paid ads to boost the number of people viewing your already engaging content. If your impressions are high and your engagement is high, then you’re in a good place and you’ll want to continue your strategy.

2.     Reach:

Your reach is an estimate of the number of unique accounts that have seen any of your posts. Therefore, if you look at your own account 10,000 times a day like most of us, your reach will not change – it only includes unique accounts. This is a good gauge of how many real accounts are actually viewing your content. If this number isn’t steadily increasing, consider investing in ads to reach new audiences or partnering with other businesses or influencers to utilize their audiences.

3.     Interactions:

Interactions are the set of insights that measure actions people take while engaging with your content. They include profile visits, website visits, and email clicks. The story we find here is simple – how many people care about what you’re posting? As mentioned before, if your reach and impressions are significantly higher than your interactions… we have a problem. On the other hand, be easy on yourself. It’s not realistic that EVERYONE that sees your content will want to engage, although we would all love that. A good engagement rate should be around 2 – 5% of your impressions. If it’s more than that, great! If it’s not, focus on improving your content strategy.

4.     Story Impressions:

It’s no secret that your Instagram story strategy is just as important as your Instagram post strategy – if not more important. These quick 24-hour content windows provide a real opportunity to engage your audience. Story insights include interactions, impressions, follows, and navigation. Navigation is the most telling to understand how your story strategy is performing as it shows you how many people pressed forward, moved to the next story, and exited out. If a majority of people are exiting and clicking out of your story, rethink your strategy. Why isn’t it capturing the audience and how can you make it more digestible, fun, or interesting in order to do so?

Overall, you now have an understanding of how your Instagram social media metrics are working together to tell a bigger story. Just like different ingredients make up your favorite recipe, these metrics must all be concocted in the same pot in order to digest what is really happening. By only looking at one metric, such as followers, you miss important details that can ultimately help you better propel your Instagram strategy to the next level.

Brooke Milo

Founder, NGNG Agency