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Is your business ready for Instagram's algorithm?
Looking for tools to analyze your Instagram engagement?
Tracking engagement will help you serve quality content that keeps you at the top of the Instagram feed.
In this article you'll discover three tools to track and evaluate how people respond to your content on Instagram.
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Instagram's Feed Algorithm
Last week, Instagram announced that they'll be releasing an algorithm that will prioritize what's shown in users' feeds. This algorithm will determine what content Instagram believes people will be most interested in and then show the most relevant posts at the top of the feed, regardless of how many accounts users follow or what time zone they're in.
If you do content marketing on Facebook, you know how important it is to make sure you're ranked highly within a social media platform's algorithm. Algorithms that prioritize content in a user's feed can (and will) inevitably affect your business on those platforms.
When the Instagram algorithm kicks in, maintaining high levels of engagement will help keep your content on top, whether you're a small company or a large one.
Why You Need Instagram Analytics Tools
As the algorithm launch approaches, it's important to use analytics tools to see which portion of your Instagram audience is interacting with what content, what content is performing best, and which audience segments you may be missing. As you learn from these analytics, you can create stronger and more relevant content that your audience will be more receptive to.
Though Instagram shares the same ad platform as Facebook, the platform does not yet have an analytics tool like Facebook's Insights and Audience Insights. Fortunately, there are a number of third-party Instagram analytics tools available for businesses and marketers to measure their marketing efforts.
The following three tools will help you to track and evaluate the success of your content and overall marketing efforts on Instagram.
#1: Simply Measured
Simply Measured advertises its analytics tool as being the “end-to-end analysis of all your social media networks,” and this includes Instagram. It can be a great tool for marketers.
Simply Measured offers a variety of reports and analyses, some of which are free and some are available only with a paid plan.
When you first visit the site, you can get a free user report on any Instagram account (with up to 25,000 followers) in exchange for following the company on Twitter. This user report provides an in-depth analysis of the past two months, including your top post, best days and hours for engagement, top photo tags, top filters, and the amount and types of engagement you've received on your posts.
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Additional analytics tools come with pricing plans starting at $500 a month, and include features like cross-platform analysis, social brand and hashtag monitoring, and the ability to add unlimited users to the account at no additional charge.
#2: Iconosquare
Iconosquare is a go-to tool for anything Instagram, including contests, management tools, and so on. It's also true for analytics.
Iconosquare's analytics allow you to track important metrics like follower growth and losses, best times to post for maximum engagement, engagement rates, and engagement growth. It also shows your best performing content, both in terms of likes and comments.
Iconosquare offers a 7-day free trial, during which you can access the analytics information to see if the tool is right for you and for your business's needs. The plus plan is currently $28.80 a year and includes features like daily email reports, comment trackers, and analytics on the key Instagram metrics discussed above.
#3: Sprout Social
Sprout Social is a popular tool that many businesses already use, and it offers detailed reporting on a profile's Instagram activity.
You can find analytics under the Reports section. You can see detailed information on daily growth in followers (and how much that number increased or decreased in the past month), the number of posts you're sharing, your most used hashtags, your most engaged hashtags, and the number of engagements (both in total and the rate of engagement per medium).
The only downside to Sprout Social compared to the two analytics platforms above is that it only accumulates Instagram data for the analytics once your profile is connected. It doesn't pull up past data, as the others do.
Sprout Social offers a 30-day free trial, and the comprehensive reporting is available with the Deluxe plan, starting at $59 per user per month.
Final Thoughts
Instagram analytics tools can be important to your long-term success with Instagram marketing. This is especially true with the upcoming news feed algorithm. The three analytics tools in this article can give you all of the information you need to create higher-performing content, both immediately and in the long run.
What do you think? How do you feel about the upcoming Instagram algorithm? Do you use any of these Instagram analytics tools? Do you use one that didn't make the list? Share your thoughts, experience, and knowledge in the comments below!
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