Instagram Insights for STR Hosts
Why should marketers use Instagram?
For two major reasons:
- To reach a huge audience: The audience size of Instagram is estimated at 1.2 billion in 2020
- For high levels of engagement with the audience: It has been known for long that âa picture is worth a thousand words.â Graphics engage audiences far more effectively than text narratives. And Instagram is primarily a visual media of photos and videos
Instagram Content Types
Instagram has been evolving adding interesting types of content that can engage with audiences better. The medium accommodates:
Posts: Posts can be photos or videos and can include text. Filters can transform the images to give them a professional look. Instagram offers 40 different filters
Stories: These are the little circles appearing at the top of your feed. They are posts that disappear after 24 hours. However, you can save your stories as Stories Highlights so that they remain on your account
Instagram Live: These are live broadcasts that you announce in advance. Promote these with short clips or posts beforehand so that your followers know about them
IGTV: IGTV is Instagramâs standalone video platform, similar to YouTube. You create an IGTV channel and upload your videos to it. While regular video posts on Instagram are limited to one minute, IGTV videos can be one hour long.
- Reels: A newer addition to IG, Reels are Short clips up-to 60 seconds no doubt to combat the growing trend from rivals. Here’s an example.
Stickers and Quizzes: These are enhancements that you can add to your stories to increase engagement.
Instagram Insights
Just posting some photos/videos on Instagram is unlikely to produce results you wish for. Instead, you have to check who is seeing your content and how they are responding to it.
Instagram Insights tell you three key things about your Instagram content:
- Reach: How many people have the content reached?
- Interactions: How did these people respond to the content?
- Audience: What were the characteristics of the people you reached?
When you know these things, you will be better able to get desired results from your Instagram campaigns.
Just as in the case of Facebook Insights, Instagram Insights is available only to âprofessionalâ users, i.e., people who use Instagram for business or other specific purposes.
They can gain insights into how well their efforts are resulting in achieving the purpose.
How do you Access Instagram Insights?
To access insights, you need a professional account. How do you get one?
First, you should have a personal Instagram account. You should also make your personal profile âpubic.âÂ
Below, we list the steps to create a professional account. These steps are specific to desktop.
- Login into your Instagram account
- Click the Edit Profile link.Â
- In the left column, you will find a Switch to Professional Account link. Click it
- You will land on a page titled Get a Free Professional Account. Click the Next button
- You will reach a Select Category page. Choose a category that best describes what you do
- Choose between Creator or Business. Creator is best for public figures, content producers, artists and influencers. Business is best for retailers, local businesses, brands, organizations and service providers
- A Contact Info page comes next. Provide Contact info or click the âDo not use contact infoâ button
- Your Instagram professional account will be ready.
Professional accounts must have a linked Facebook page. If your Instagram account has not already been linked to a Facebook page, you will also be asked to do the linking during the creation process above.
You can do the linking separately before creating the professional account. Just follow the steps outlined on this Instagram help page.
Â
Â
You can also navigate to your Account Settings and Switch your account type at the bottom. Choose either “Business” “Creator” or switch your account back to “Personal”.
Using Instagram Insights
Once you have a professional account, you can access insights both from your mobile and desktop.Â
Through the Insights page, you can view the following:
- Reach: This section answers questions like:
- Impressions: How many times was your content displayed?
- Profile visits: How many people clicked to your profile page?
- Taps: How many visitors clicked on the website link? How many clicked on the call-to-action button?
- Tops: Which of your posts was most visited? And which of your stories was top?
- Details: Click on an individual post and then on View insights. You will get detailed statistics about that post â numbers of Likes, Comments, Saves and Shares. And also the number of times people clicked to your profile page or website from that post.
- Discovery: This section shows you from where the visitors came. They could come from Hashtags or other reference sources.
- Interactions: People interact with your content in different ways. These interactions reveal how they see the content:
- Likes: If a visitor is impressed with your content, that person might click the Like button. By checking the number of likes for each post, you can get an idea of what type of content your audience wants to see
- Comments: A visitor can also respond to your content, favourably or unfavourably, by posting a comment. Comments provide more specific insights into the way visitors see your post
- Saves: They might save a piece of content for referring back later
- Shares: A visitor can share your content among that personâs own contacts
- Engagement: In the case of videos, a visitor might watch it in full, or in part. Information about this activity can give you an indication of how interesting visitors found your video
- Audience: Your audience consists of your followers. Visitors who are not âfollowingâ you are not analysed in detail:
- Total followers: This gives you an idea of how many people are following you
- Recent growth: Shows how many new followers you got during the past seven days or other period. And also how many existing followers decided to âunfollowâ you (your content will not go to their news feeds any more)
- Location: You can see the five most popular countries and cities from which your followers come
- Age and Gender: You can analyse your followers by age range and by gender
- Time active: Shows the hours of the day when your followers are most active on Instagram. This helps you schedule your posts to these times so that they are more likely to see it
In a nutshell
Instagram is a social medium that has acquired a billion-plus audience around the globe. It is also an intensively visual medium that makes it easier to engage with your audience. You can post different types of content to Instagram and its video channel, IGTV.
If you are using Instagram to promote your business, short-term rental, hotel, AirBNB, or some creative endeavor – you will need insights into how your content is performing. The Instagram Insights section provides key information about the contentsâ reach, visitor interactions and the audience the content is reaching.
