In today’s digital landscape tracking analytics on social media platforms like Instagram is increasingly important for businesses. They provide invaluable insights and data to execute your strategy and increase your growth potential.
Almost 90% of Instagram users follow a business profile, and 44% shop on Instagram every week—showing how useful Instagram can be for business owners of any size.
Let’s dive into Instagram analytics for businesses, looking at the key metrics to track, leading analytics tools, and more to maximize Instagram’s power.

What are Instagram Business Analytics?

Instagram business analytics are a set of tools and metrics to track and analyze an account’s performance. Analyzing Instagram analytics can give you insights into your IG business activities, like follower demographics, post engagements, reach, impressions, and profile visits.
This helps you know your audience better, identify trends, and measure the effectiveness of your marketing strategy. Also, it allows you to optimize your ad spend and maximize ROI by providing data on the performance of paid advertising campaigns.
With these insights you can make informed decisions to grow your Instagram presence, drive engagement, and boost conversions.

2 Types of Instagram Business Metrics

These metrics show how you’re doing on Instagram, how popular your content is, insights into your posts’ performance, and help identify which content you should be posting. There are two types of Instagram metrics you can use for business:

Account Metrics

Account metrics provide insight into your overall performance and audience demographics. The metrics usually include follower growth over time, follower numbers, reach, impressions, profile views, and demographics of your audience, such as age, gender, location, and active hours.
You can identify areas for improvement and tailor your approach to better resonate with your target audience by measuring the success of your content strategy.

Post Metrics

Post metrics primarily focus on how individual posts perform on Instagram. Metrics such as engagement, reach, and impressions give insights into the popularity of each post.
A post’s key metrics include likes, comments, shares, saves, reach, impressions, and engagement rate.
They can help you discover which types of content perform best, understand audience preferences, refine content strategies, and optimize future posts.

How to Check Instagram Analytics

To check Instagram analytics, you first need to set up a professional account. Go to Settings > Account > Switch to a Professional Account. Here are 2 ways to check your metrics:

Instagram Analytics on Mobile

In the mobile app click the hamburger menu icon in the upper right corner of your profile. Tap “Insights” to view them.
Another option is to go to your profile and click on Professional Dashboard. Tap “See all” next to Account Insights for a detailed overview of your Instagram stats. The main Insights page displays your account’s activity for the specified time period, adjustable using the dropdown menu.
It consists of two main sections: Overview and Content Shared.
In the Overview section, you can see a summary of key stats like the number of accounts reached, engagement metrics, and total followers.
The Content You Shared section shows the posts you shared over the period, categorized by type, and directs you to individual posts for in-depth analysis.

Instagram Analytics Desktop

When checking Instagram analytics on a desktop, you can see individual post insights and track overall account performance.
Log in to your profile page and select a specific post to analyze. Below the post you’ll find options such as Like, Comment, and Share, along with “View Insights.” The latter gives you detailed analytics about the post, including metrics such as reach, impressions, and interactions.
Beneath your bio View Insights gives stats about your reach based on content type, top content based on engagement, followers, most active times, and other key metrics.
Additionally, you can get detailed Instagram Insights on your desktop with Meta Business Suite. You can use the data to understand your followers better and optimize your content strategy. It’s a full suite of tools tailored specifically to help you monitor and analyze your Instagram performance in-depth, offering features such as audience insights, content insights, and activity insights.

How to Check Instagram Competitor Analytics

Competitor analytics let you compare your strengths and weaknesses to others in your market space. That means analyzing their business from all angles, such as brand overviews, sales, and market strategies.
It’s easy to check Instagram competitor analytics using several methods and tools.
One method involves manually analyzing competitor profiles to assess their audience demographics, content strategy, and engagement levels. By closely examining their posts, engagement metrics (such as likes, comments, and shares), and follower growth, you can see what resonates with your audience and where you can improve.
Third-party Instagram analytics tools can automate the process and offer more comprehensive insights beyond Instagram insights.
These tools help you analyze competitors’ performance metrics, benchmark yourself against them, and discover valuable information about their strategies. The more diligently you monitor and analyze competitor analytics, the better results you’ll get.

How to Use Instagram Business Analytics

Instagram business analytics are vital to optimizing your Instagram presence. First, make sure your account is set up as a business account. You can find analytics by going to Profile > Hamburger menu > Insights.
In Insights, you can track a variety of metrics, including audience demographics, post engagement, reach, impressions, and profile visits. You can use these insights to identify trends, analyze content and marketing strategies, and better understand your audience.
Also, you can minimize your ad spend and maximize your ROI by analyzing the performance of your paid advertising campaigns.
With regular monitoring and adjustment to your Instagram marketing plan, you can enhance your presence, increase brand awareness, and drive engagement and conversions.

Are Instagram Analytics Free?

Yes.
The native tool, Instagram Insights, provides free analytics. Every Instagram business and creator account can use this tool free of charge. IG Insights offers a range of analytics, such as audience demographics, post engagement metrics, reach, and impressions.
The Instagram mobile app or desktop website gives you direct access to these insights. Instagram Insights provides a good starting point to monitor and optimize your profile, while third-party analytics tools offer more advanced analytics.

The Best Instagram Analytics Apps for Business

Listed below are the 3 best Instagram analytics apps you can use to grow your Instagram business.

SocialDog

SocialDog is a comprehensive social media management solution. It provides a one-stop platform for scheduling, monitoring, and reporting Instagram activity. SocialDog can help you refine your content strategy by tracking engagement metrics, reach, and impressions.
In addition to Instagram, you can also gauge engagement across Twitter and Facebook.
The SocialDog dashboard provides an overview of your followers, accounts you follow, and account activity. It gives you detailed engagement metrics like likes, comments, and reposts for each post type. You can conveniently track posts that contain images or videos using its media analytics feature.
With SocialDog you can share content at the right time for maximum engagement by analyzing time-of-day analytics. It lets you manage up to 10 social media profiles seamlessly while scheduling unlimited posts, getting insights over time, and gaining historical data.

Sprout Social

Sprout Social gives you complete insights into your Instagram account, including engagement metrics, audience growth, and hashtag effectiveness. By using predictive analytics, you can anticipate trends and adjust your strategy accordingly, increasing content delivery efficiency. It provides solid analytics, allowing you to gain valuable insight into campaign performance, track progress, and refine your approach.
You can use Sprout Social to identify popular hashtags and leverage them to increase visibility and reach a larger audience. To maximize content impact, you can measure likes, comments, and shares and identify peak engagement times.
You can also assess your performance against industry rivals, learn their strategies, and examine the successful posts of your competitors with Sprout Social’s competitor analysis.

Hootsuite

Hootsuite offers a powerful analytics tool for optimizing performance. It allows you to track important metrics like engagement metrics, audience demographics, and content performance.
Through Hootsuite, you can get a visual overview of your key metrics over time, including likes, comments, and shares. You can also get detailed audience insights, providing insight into the demographics, interests, and behaviors of your followers.
With a content strategy planner, you can track your content strategy and schedule posts for engagement by simply dragging them to selected days/dates. You can schedule and publish Instagram posts, Stories, carousels, and reels directly from the dashboard.
Hootsuite’s standout feature is its ability to track hashtags, monitor their effectiveness, identify trending hashtags, and optimize hashtag strategy to increase visibility and engagement.
You can also benchmark your performance against rivals and identify competitive advantages with Hootsuite. Using its AI writer and hashtag recommendation feature, you can create posts, captions, and more for your campaign.

Conclusion: Grow Your Business With SocialDog Instagram Analytics

Instagram Analytics tells you everything you need to know about your Instagram audience, helping you develop an effective content strategy and boost engagement.
While Instagram Insights offers valuable free analytics, not all metrics are covered. By integrating third-party analytics tools, tracking metrics becomes more efficient and easier. These tools can help you plan promotions, evaluate content strategies, analyze your competition, and identify marketing channels. Additionally, you can evaluate all your marketing campaigns in one place.
SocialDog offers detailed insights into how to optimize your Instagram. Try SocialDog’s 7-day free trial of the Enterprise Plan to lift your Instagram marketing efforts to new levels. SocialDog’s many features and analytics capabilities make data-driven decisions easy and make Instagram successful for your business.