Understanding Instagram's Insights: A Beginner's Guide

Instagram Insights is a powerful built-in analytics tool that helps creators and businesses understand how their content is performing. By learning how to interpret this data, you can improve your social media strategy, engage better with your audience, and grow your account effectively. 

Below, I have broken down how to understand them using insights and screenshots as examples to guide you through the key features.

1. Post Overview

To begin, go to any of your posts and look just beneath it. You will see an option labelled View Insights, as shown in the screenshot of the wardrobe post. Tapping this will open up the analytics for that specific post.

When you click on 'View Insights' for a post, you will see an overview that includes:

• Views: The total number of times your post has been viewed. For example, the post in the screenshot gained 33,731 views.
• Interactions: The number of actions taken on your post such as likes, comments, saves, and shares. In this case, there were 170 likes, 20 comments, and 17 saves.
• Profile Activity: The number of profile visits, external link taps, and follows that came from the post. For this post, there were 26 profile visits and 1 external link tap.

This data shows how engaging your content is and whether it drives people to explore your profile further.

2. Audience Engagement

Instagram Insights also highlights the type of audience engaging with your content. For example:

• Gender Distribution: The majority of the audience for this post was 96.5% women and only 3.5% men.
• Follower Status: The breakdown showed that 83.7% of the views came from followers, while 16.3% were from non-followers.

This helps you identify who is most interested in your content and whether you are reaching new audiences.

3. Interactions in Detail

Looking deeper into engagement:

• Likes: Indicate surface-level appreciation of your post.
• Comments: Show active engagement and discussion.
• Saves: Suggest your content was valuable enough for viewers to revisit later. This post had 17 saves, which signals high relevance.
• Shares/Reposts: Indicate that people found your content worth spreading, although in this example there were none.

Monitoring these metrics helps you understand what type of content resonates most with your audience.

4. Views Over Time

Insights also display a graph of views over time. For example, the post rapidly gained views around September 15 before levelling off. This shows how long your content continues to perform and whether it has lasting appeal.You can compare your performance to typical posts, which helps track growth patterns and adjust your posting strategy.

5. Top Sources of Views

Knowing where your audience is finding your content is crucial. The screenshot shows:

• Feed (79%): Most views came from followers seeing it in their feed.
• Profile (20%): A significant number of viewers clicked on the account profile.
• Search, Explore, and Stories: Minor contributions, but still worth tracking for discovery potential.

This breakdown helps you see which areas to focus on. If most views are from your feed, you may want to explore strategies to boost visibility on Explore and Search.

6. How to Use These Insights for Growth

• Content Planning: Create more of the content that gets high engagement (saves, comments, shares).
• Audience Understanding: Tailor your content to the demographics engaging most, such as women in this example.
• Growth Strategy: If you want to expand reach, aim to attract more non-followers by using effective hashtags, collaborations, and reels.
• Timing and Consistency: Use the 'views over time' data to see when your posts perform best and remain consistent with posting at those times.

Instagram Insights is more than just numbers. It tells the story of how your audience interacts with your content and how you can improve. By regularly reviewing metrics like engagement, reach, and audience breakdown, you can make informed decisions to grow your account strategically.

The key is consistency, creativity, and always learning from the data Instagram provides.

Want to learn more about Instagram SEO? Read my detailed blog on the subject here to take your content strategy to the next level.