If you want to grow your Instagram account, measure its marketing success, and optimize posts for maximum impact, monitoring Instagram analytics are a great place to start.
With analytics on your side, you can target the right audience, refine your content strategy, ace your goals, and benchmark your success against competitors.
This article walks you through everything you need to know — including key metrics, tracking methods, reporting templates, and the best Instagram analytics tools.

What are Instagram Analytics?

Instagram analytics collect and measure data to evaluate the performance of your Instagram account. They help you better understand your audience and make more informed decisions about content, posting times, and more.
You can track several key Instagram metrics, such as likes, comments, followers, impressions, hashtags, reach, stories views, shares, saves, engagement rate, profile visits, and more. These help you analyze content performance, audience engagement, and account growth.

Why Should You Use Instagram Analytics?

Over 200 million Instagram business profiles exist worldwide, and 90% of Instagram users follow at least one brand.
Benefits of using Instagram analytics:

• Identify the most popular posts among your followers
• Discover the best days and times to post
• Analyze demographics based on gender, age, location, language, etc.
• Determine what’s working well and what needs improvement
• Understand patterns, growth trends, and success factors for campaigns
• Review the growth over time for deeper insights

If you don’t use Instagram analytics, you might:

• Target the wrong audience
• Drive irrelevant traffic to your account
• Post in excess or insufficiently or at non-optimal times
• Miss brand engagement opportunities

How to Read Instagram Analytics

To get Instagram Insights or analytics you need a professional account. On your profile tap the 3 lines in the top-right corner, and click on “Insights.” Review metrics in the overview section, including accounts reached, content interactions, total followers, and specific content sections, like stories, photos, IGTV, and promotions. Explore each section to learn what content drives profile visits, follows, and peak interaction days.

What Can You Track With Instagram Analytics?

Instagram analytics give you a comprehensive look at your account’s performance. Here are some of the analytics you can track on Instagram:

Profile Analytics

Profile analytics give you insight into your account’s overall performance and demographics. You can track metrics like reach, impressions, profile visits, and website clicks. Demographic data such as age, gender, and location can also be used to tailor your content for better engagement.

Follower Analytics

Follower analytics provide a detailed picture of your followers, including their demographics, interests, growth rates, activity, and online habits.
Identifying your audience demographics allows you to create content appealing to their interests and preferences while also determining the best times to post to maximize engagement.

Post Analytics

Post analytics let you see how your posts are performing, including reach, impressions, engagement (likes, comments, shares), and saves.
By analyzing the performance of your posts, you can identify what types of content resonate with your audience and which posts drive the most engagement, making your content strategy more effective in the future.

Reel Analytics

Instagram Reels analytics provide insights into the results of your Instagram reels, such as views, likes, comments, shares, and saves for each reel.
With reel analysis, you can identify trends, preferences, and effective storytelling techniques to create more engaging short-form video content.

Story Analytics

Instagram Stories analytics let you track metrics like impressions, reach, exits, replies, and taps forward/backward for your Instagram Stories.
With an understanding of how users interact with stories, you can experiment with different formats, stickers, and interactive features to keep your audience engaged.

Hashtag Analytics

Hashtag analytics help you track hashtag performance on your posts by providing metrics such as reach, impressions, and engagement generated by each hashtag.
They also help identify trending hashtags relevant to your niche so you can incorporate them into your strategy.

Can You Check Instagram Analytics for Another Account?

No.
Instagram users cannot check analytics on another account unless they are authorized users. Only the account owner or those with authorized access can check Instagram analytics. The restriction ensures the privacy and security of account holders and their data.
Although third-party tools and trackers can provide some insight into another account’s analytics by using public data such as follower count and engagement metrics, they’re not as comprehensive or accurate as the account owner’s data.
Whenever you access and analyze analytics data on Instagram, you must respect privacy and adhere to the platform’s terms of service.

Are Instagram Analytics Free?

Yes, Instagram analytics are free, but they are limited to business or creator accounts. By converting your account, you will gain access to Insights, which gives you valuable info about account performance, audience demographics, and engagement.
Your Insights profile provides a summary of key metrics such as reach, impressions, profile visits, and follower growth. As well, tap metrics give you a deeper look at post performance, audience demographics, and engagement rates. Instagram analytics are free but you can use third-party tools with more features and capabilities to enhance your Instagram presence.

3 Ways to Track Instagram Analytics

Here are 3 effective methods for tracking Instagram analytics:

Instagram Insights

Instagram Insights is the native analytics tool for professional accounts. It provides a comprehensive overview of profile performance, audience demographics, and engagement on posts. It lets you see metrics like reach, impressions, profile visits, and follower demographics.
You can get Instagram Insights by navigating to your profile, clicking the 3 horizontal lines, and selecting “Insights.” From there, you can check out Overview, Audience, Content, and Activity to learn more about your account.
While Instagram Insights can be a helpful tool for understanding your audience and optimizing content within the app, it does have limitations in terms of advanced features.

Google Analytics

Even though Instagram offers some traffic statistics, it’s only half the picture. Integrating Google Analytics into your account gives you a more comprehensive view of your presence.
Although Google Analytics mainly tracks website traffic, you can also use it to track Instagram traffic and conversions. When you include UTM parameters in the links in your Instagram bios or posts, you can track how well Instagram marketing drives website traffic, conversions, and sales. By using Google Analytics, you can get a detailed understanding of how Instagram traffic interacts with your content and if it contributes to purchases or sign-ups.
You can also access reports under Acquisition > All Traffic > Source/Medium in Google Analytics. From Instagram referrals, you can view data on users, sessions, bounce rate, and more. If you tie Instagram activity to website engagement, you can gain valuable insights into the behavior of your audience and optimize your marketing strategies accordingly.

Third-party Tools

Third-party tools provide more advanced features and capabilities for tracking Instagram analytics than Instagram Insights.
SocialDog, Sprout Social, and Brand24 are some popular third-party analytics tools for Instagram. These tools help analyze competitors, track hashtags, segment audiences, and report performance details. You can also manage your Instagram presence more efficiently with their scheduling and publishing features.

3 Ways to View Instagram Account Analytics

There are 3 ways to view Instagram account analytics:

On Desktop

To view Instagram analytics on a desktop, you need to connect your Instagram business profile (or creator profile) to a Facebook page. From Creator Studio, select Instagram at the top of the page, then click the Insights tab on the left.
It displays data on account activity, follower’s demographics, content library, and monetization in a user-friendly dashboard. With insights into reach, impressions, interactions, and follower growth, creators can optimize their strategy and track the effectiveness of their content.
The data is displayed in the same way as on your mobile device but in a slightly different manner. Alternatively, you can select a specific period to view insights.

On Mobile

On mobile log in to your Instagram professional profile and tap Insights below your bio section. You’ll see a mobile-friendly dashboard with who’s following you, when they’re most active, and what content they like.
Instagram’s mobile interface makes it easy to monitor analytics on the go, giving users quick access to important information anytime, anywhere.

Instagram Analytics Reports

Instagram’s native analytics tool is useful for tracking your account’s performance and provides a good overview of your results. But there’s no way to get it into a report, sharing data is difficult, and some data disappears after 90 days, so use Instagram analytics tools for detailed reporting.
Reports help you track specific metrics over time, compare performance, and create visually appealing presentations of your data. You can also get an Instagram analytics report template, which typically offers customizable formats to present Instagram data. You can build your own template with tools like Google Analytics or Google Sheets, tailoring the report to your needs.

The Best Instagram Analytics Tools

Keeping tabs on Instagram performance monitoring and analysis, several tools stand out for comprehensive features and user-friendly interfaces. Here are the 3 best Instagram analytics tools:

SocialDog

SocialDog offers robust Instagram analytics designed for digital marketers.
It provides a detailed dashboard to gauge your account’s status, including followers and accounts you follow at a glance. Among the features of SocialDog are the ability to track post analytics over time, media analytics, engagement analytics for posts containing images and videos, and follower acquisition analytics for long-term analysis.
Additionally, you can create and schedule posts in bulk, making it a one-stop solution to manage and optimize your Instagram.
You can also manage your Facebook and X (Twitter) accounts with SocialDog.

Brand24

Brand24 is an Instagram monitoring tool for tracking mentions of public accounts across dozens of sources, such as social media, forums, videos, blogs, and podcasts.
Brand24 offers insights into what Instagram users are saying about your brand, prepares a list of trending hashtags, finds top public profiles, analyzes sentiment, determines your online presence score, and compares your brand with your competitors.
Combined with your Instagram analytics data, Brand24 gives you a complete picture of your audience, impressions, likes, and comments.

Sprout Social

Sprout Social is a comprehensive tool for managing and monitoring social media and offers detailed reporting on Instagram activity. It offers cross-channel social listening features to contextualize and analyze topics, hashtags, and keywords. It also shows you the results of your tagged content, both inbound and outbound.
With its visual and intuitive reports, you can see how your content performs across social networks, including daily follower growth, most popular hashtags, engagement, and more. In the long run, Sprout Social can help you develop your hashtag strategy into a social campaign.

Conclusion: Get the Most Out of Instagram Analytics With SocialDog

A top-notch Instagram analytics tool is one that not only analyzes data but deciphers it and reveals actionable insights to enhance your campaign. It allows you to explore what truly connects with your audience, both within your industry and beyond.
With this knowledge, you can make informed decisions, enhancing the effectiveness of your Instagram strategy. SocialDog helps take this to the next level, offering data-driven insights into your account performance and propelling your Instagram marketing efforts forward.
While native analytics can be helpful, SocialDog provides deeper insights that translate into actionable steps to boost your Instagram.