Written by Brittany Prats
Edited by Allison Herrera
Have you ever looked at your Instagram Insights & thought, “Okay…now what?!”. Don’t worry, we’ve all been there. Insights are definitely not the easiest thing to get a grasp on, but once you do, your strategy & content development will flourish like never before.
Likes & comments mean SO MUCH more than just their face value. Trust us when we say you gotta dig a little deeper.
Instagram Insights are an absolute crucial part of your marketing strategy – that is, if you analyze them in the correct ways. Just read between the lines a bit, but we’ll give you a head start by breaking it down for you.
Let’s start with Likes. Everyone wants ‘em, but no one really knows why. Sure, it makes you feel good to get a like from that boy you think is cute, or that brand you love – but have you ever stopped to think what that actually means? If we’re being honest, that piece of engagement that everyone craves is pretty much the least valuable bit of information when it comes to analyzing your stats. In fact, while gaining a lot of likes helps you to gain visibility, that’s really all it does. I mean, yeah, you can tell that your followers enjoyed that type of content, but more than likely – you already knew that. We need to focus on the more unique engagements in order to truly up your social media game.
Comments are similar to likes, as far as understanding insights goes. But, they do give you a bit more information about why your audience likes or dislikes your content. With comments, you’re able to receive genuine feedback. This can be super helpful when trying out a new strategy. Also, evaluating how many comments you’re getting can also help you to increase your visibility. If your comment section is blowing up, then you must be creating some type of buzz. This buzz brings new people into the conversation, thus helping you to get objective feedback, along with more exposure.
Shares are incredibly valuable when trying to increase your brand awareness. If you’re sitting there thinking, “I don’t really care about increasing brand awareness”, I hate to break it to you, but you need to. Growing brand awareness is the most vital aspect of any strategy. An increase of brand awareness equals an increase in loyalty, trustworthiness, & (most importantly) sales! Evaluating how many shares you got on one post will help you to see how many new profiles you’ve been exposed to. It’s basically like getting to post your content on other people’s profiles, meaning you’re exposing yourself to thousands of new people. Seems pretty cool to us.
An underrated (but equally as important) insight is, of course, saves! People either forget about them, or think they don’t really matter in the grand scheme of things. However, saves are an extremely important part of engagement to take into account. This means someone values your content so much that they want to save it to look at it later. In our opinion, that’s way more of a confidence boost than a simple like. These people literally want to go back to your content after they’ve already looked at it once – how wild is that? They value you & what you have to say. This not only shows that people are noticing & respecting your brand, but it also shows that they don’t want to forget you.
Listen, we get it. Everyone is always going to be “like” obsessed…& THAT’S OKAY! We just want you to better understand what these engagement numbers actually mean. You need to grow, & in order for that to happen, you need to understand what your audience is trying to tell you.
Hey, it’s fine if you still don’t get it – this type of stuff takes time, but guess what? You just so happen to have some really cool & fun social media experts at your fingertips RIGHT NOW **cough, cough**. If you’re picking up what we’re putting down, give us a call – we can give you even more insight on your content analysis than you could ever dream of.
