Announcing a new connector: Instagram Insights

Instagram, the social network that has taken the internet by storm, has recently surpassed the 1 billion user mark. This platform offers numerous opportunities not only for individual users but for businesses as well. To take advantage of these opportunities it is essential that you leverage your business profile’s Instagram Insights.

Today we are thrilled to announce the Supermetrics Instagram Insights connector for Google Sheets and Google Data Studio. This integration will help you go above and beyond the Instagram native UI, performing advanced analysis of your Instagram account, to identify the target audience and deliver tailored content.

If you want to get publicly available statistics of the other profiles (such as the number of followers or likes), try out our Instagram public data connector.

Continue reading to learn how can you use Instagram Insights in four different use cases and get a free plug-and-play Google Data Studio Instagram Profile Overview template.

Note that to use the Instagram Insights connector, you need to have an Instagram Business Account that is linked to a Facebook page, and you must be an admin of that page. If you need guidance or need help connecting your Instagram account, please refer to this guide.

Let’s get started!

The benefits of Supermetrics Instagram Insights connector

Get a performance overview in a few clicks

Supermetrics integration for Instagram helps you perform your analysis much faster than the native Instagram UI. With our connector, you can easily pull any data you need in a few clicks. No need to switch between different tabs to get the whole picture of your audience insights, content performance, and profile activity analytics! You can gather all those metrics into a single dashboard.

Go beyond the default chart options

In addition, you can effortlessly visualize your Instagram data with multiple different chart options in Google Sheets or in Google Data Studio without being restricted by the default diagrams in your Instagram profile.

Accumulate the historical data in spreadsheets

Instagram Insights allows you to see and fetch data for the past two years. Seeing historical data is key for trend analytics. With the Supermetrics Instagram Connector, you can accumulate your Instagram data in Google Sheets: select “Combine new results with old” from the “Options” section of the sidebar while building a query and set up an automatic refresh for it. This way, you will eventually gather the past data which will serve as an important reference point.

Now that you have learned about the benefits of the new connector, let’s take a look at what kind of reports you can build using the Instagram data fetched with it!

If you need more guidance or need help connecting your Instagram account please refer to this guide.

#1: Monitoring your profile activity

The header of your business profile on Instagram is very important – it is the first thing the users see when they land on your page in the social network. Call-to-action buttons are located below the bio: your page visitors can send an email to your business, get directions or call you.

By monitoring which actions people take you can see what is the best contact channel for your company. If they request directions very often you might want to see how your profile looks on Google My Business and keep the information there up-to-date.

Do they call you more often? In this case, perhaps it would be great to have a number of customer support managers answering the calls.

You can also pull your bio information and see whether tweaks to it have affected the number of contacts to your business.

#2: Conduct extensive content and audience analysis

Instagram has introduced multiple content formats over the past year. Supermetrics provides analytics for the two most important content types: post feed and stories. Stories have become a channel for daily and active communication with the audience and the Instagram feed is a place where to display your product offering. In order to keep both stories and feed up-to-par, you have to continuously perform content and audience analysis.

Feed content analysis

First, take a look at how your content is performing: is it a static photo, image carousel or a video which your audience finds the most interesting? Which posts are the most engaging ones? It is important to monitor not only the number of likes and comments under a particular post but also the number of the unique saves – do your users find your posts worth returning to?

With this analysis, you will identify the key content pillars and drill down to the topics which engage your audience the most. After that, monthly content planning becomes easier and data-driven!

Using the “image preview” option available with our connector, you can immediately see which posts are the most popular or engaging – no need to cross-check the content on Instagram based on the post description only.

Stories content analysis

The introduction of stories has changed the way users interact on Instagram forever. With multiple story formats, such as boomerang, text and special effects you can find a million ways to deliver your marketing message in a creative fashion.

Instagram Insights connector allows to easily build a dashboard to monitor your stories’ performance – which stories encouraged the user to connect with you and which ones were skipped.

See which story performs best and create more content of this type. Is it your company behind-the-scenes or a particular product that generates interest? Analyze and find out!

Profile audience analysis

When it comes to the audience analytics, creating a user persona is key. Easily export your demographic data to see who are your most active audience. You can see their age, gender and location.

In addition to that, find out how actively your profile is viewed on any given day: what are the days when your audience is the most active? You might want to adjust your content posting schedule accordingly.

#3: Analyze which promotional activities bring in the biggest number of active followers

Here comes one the most important parts of Instagram: profile promotion. Of course, solid content quality and posting consistency are where it all begins – but you need to amplify on top of that to build a large follower base.

There is a number of promotional activities you can do to attract followers – for example, a cross-promotion with a blogger who has a similar audience, leaving meaningful comments on popular Instagram profiles or running paid ads.

Regardless of the promotion method you choose, it is important to monitor the number of account followers to see whether you have gained good results. This way, you can see what works and what does not work specifically for your business and adjust your strategy accordingly.

#4 Compare your Instagram Insights and other networks’ data

These days a multi-channel approach is one of the keys to successful marketing: in order to stay on top of your audience’s mind, you need to share your content on multiple different channels. With Supermetrics, you can easily see how your post performs on every channel to identify which platform is better for a particular type of content.

Also, you can perform a cross-channel analysis to see e.g. which social network brings you the most traffic. Is it Facebook, Twitter or Instagram which leads to most visitors to your website?

Analyze your audience: does your follower profile differ between Instagram and Facebook? This will help you to tailor your content to the needs and wants of your audience better on each platform.

Instagram Insights Data Studio reporting template

In order to be successful with the four use cases mentioned above, you need to keep a close eye on how your Instagram profile metrics are performing. One of the easiest ways to do this is to use Supermetrics Instagram Insights’ reporting template in Google Data Studio.

This dashboard will provide you with a complete overview of your Instagram profile. In the top part of this report, you will see a quick overview of the key numbers: impressions, likes and followers.

Below that, you will see charts which will help you perform content analysis easily – identify which posts and what types of content are the most engaging. Next to those charts, you will see the followers’ trend and demographic information. This will help you understand who are your followers and where do they come from.

To get the template, simply choose “Use the default template” option when connecting Supermetrics Instagram Insights integration.

Over to you

Instagram is a fast-growing platform which offers businesses multiple ways to display their product offering and connect to their audience. In order to succeed on Instagram, you have to constantly monitor your profile performance, analyze your demographics and content to deliver engaging content to your followers.

Supermetrics Instagram Connector for Google Sheets and Google Data Studio makes it very easy to collect, analyze and report your Instagram profile data. Now it’s your turn: use Supermetrics to take your profile analytics to the next level and become the Instagram superhero!