Insta Insights

PR and marketing professionals rejoiced last summer when Instagram came out with its own native analytics, Instagram Insights. “Finally,” we all thought, “a way to measure our Insta successes!” And while the tool is better than nothing, I am of the opinion that it could use a major upgrade.
At HMA Public Relations, our broad scope of work includes managing social media accounts for many of our clients. We are also responsible for managing the social media accounts for the Public Relations Global Network. One of our key initiatives involves Instagram.
Every month, we compile a social media report, detailing for our client the account’s impressions, post reach and engagement. Facebook and Twitter analytics are pretty easy. But when it comes to their Instagram account, the task takes a nasty turn down a road called Mind-Numbing Tedium, thanks to Instagram’s native analytics capabilities.
Instagram Insights offers all of the information that I need, but in order to find out each post’s metrics for that month, you have to click on every photo in order to see them. And the photos are not sorted by date, which means that you will be selecting just as many photos from that specific month as you will photos from other months. After this is all done, you add up all of the impressions that you’ve gathered from each of the pictures and average them out. Voila!
Apart from the fact that Instagram Insights are far less comprehensive than its cousin, Facebook Insights, they are only available within the Instagram mobile app (for business accounts only). In addition to this, there is no way to export the data, or make it scalable when pulling reports.
It’s a shame, if you think about it. Not only is Instagram my favorite social media platform (that’s right, I said it), roughly 6 – 10 percent of Instagram followers are currently being reached by posts, which is higher than what Facebook’s content is currently seeing at around one percent.
These numbers seem to hint towards the fact that Instagram seems to be a favorite among many other people. Too bad its analytics aren’t up to snuff.
For those who are Insta Insights savvy, I welcome YOUR insights. Do you have any useful tips or do you use another free Instagram analytics tool? I’m all ears!