If you are not using reels on Instagram to grow your profile and improve the content you publish daily, you should be.
If not, you are missing out on a huge facet of what the mega platform offers. There are currently 1.074 billion Instagram users worldwide.
That’s right. That means you have over a billion chances to get your message out to potential followers, customers, and potential collaborators each day.
Reels can exponentially increase this likelihood. Your reels analytics and metrics can be tracked using Instagram’s Reels Insights. They can allow you to publish content you know strategically will get you the best return on investment for your time.
Source: LaterBlog
Below we will discuss what Instagram’s Reels Insights are and how you can effectively use them to expand the scope of your profile.
At the same, we’ll also provide a way for you to measure various hashtag analytics from your Reels content, something which Instagram Reels Insights does not currently show.
Contents
What Are Instagram Reels Insights?
Reels Insights are a tool that Instagram introduced to allow creators and businesses to better understand and evaluate their performance on the app.
Source: Instagram
They are easily accessed through a creator or business profile, and they update every 24 hours to allow almost real-time information for a creator. Insights provide a wealth of knowledge with metrics that include:
- Plays
- Accounts Reached
- Likes
- Comments
- Saves
- Shares
These combined can paint a broad picture of how Reels are shaping the performance of an account. Instagram Insights are available to every business account on the platform.
Not using them is a wasted opportunity to use data on content, follower demographics, and engagement to your advantage.
If you do not have a business account and use a personal account, you can easily convert your personal account to a business one to access insights.
There is no extra cost, and you do not have to create a new account.
How Can They Be Used to Grow a Profile?
You may look at your profile and not understand why your profile has not grown as quickly as you would like or that your content should be getting a lot more likes and views than it currently is.
It may feel like you are missing something. For your profile to experience accelerated growth, you need to understand what people want and then deliver it.
That is precisely where insights come in. By analyzing the most popular content and how it translates to new followers, you can invest your time and creativity in the kind of content that will convert from a view here and there to a viral Reel with exponential growth.
Below are five examples of how they can be used:
- Differentiating what kind of content gets the most likes or comments – Inspirational, tutorial, lifestyle, or user-generated content. Knowing what works best allows you to deliver more of the most successful content.
- Tracking when your users are most active – Adjusting the schedule of your Instagram Reels to when your users are online most. Maybe Friday nights or Saturday mornings will translate to more views, follows, and shares.
- Showing what Reels perform best – You may spend too much time on a Reel style that does not resonate with users. If your Reels that feature you speaking candidly perform better than staged and edited ones, it can signal to save those staged ones and focus on more candid Reels for your Instagram.
- Figuring out how often you should publish – If you are taking the time and putting in the effort to publish several Reels a day, you want them to all be successful. If Insight metrics show that the only one performing well is the first one you post every day, it can be a sign that you should possibly hold content and limit how often you publish. Reels take a lot of time. You want to make sure they are viewed and receive the likes and shares they deserve.
- Identifying what may go viral – When the Insights show you received a surge of views from non-followers, that very well may mean your Reel was picked up in the home or Instagram search feed. These are gold. If this content tends to always see non-followers flood your profile, you will know you should be making more of the same type of content.
Source: Hootsuite’s Instagram Insights
Without analytics and metrics like these, you may never be aware of any of the above examples and continue spending valuable time and resources on content that is not producing the result you are looking for, which is more followers, and a successful profile.
What About Hashtag Data?
This is a section of metrics that Instagram has unfortunately not included in their Instagram Reels Insights. It can be incredibly beneficial for businesses looking to improve their content and grow profiles.
That is because hashtags drive how many users find content on the platform. Fortunately, there are platforms available that can be used to supplement the insights that are currently available through Reels Insights.
It can find hundreds of hashtags in minutes, and the searches are customized to your specific content and target audience. One of the very cool features is that it allows you to preview top-performing hashtag content while searching.
Source: Flick
This enables you to gauge whether or not your post will match up with content already performing well with that specific hashtag. You can create custom filters and avoid banned hashtags.
It is an excellent addition to the analytics and metrics toolbag provided by Instagram Reels Insights, giving more power to the creator to grow accounts, business, and influence by reaching new audiences.
Instagram Reels Insights can be the difference between 10k and 100k followers for your profile. It may seem like an exaggerated statement, but the most successful content creators on the platform know how valuable following this data is.
A successful profile is a business, and it has to be treated as one. It is all about knowing what users want and then delivering.
Conclusion
Social media is constantly evolving, and so is the latest viral Reel and trends. By utilizing these metrics and analytics that Instagram provides and adding in an Instagram hashtag search platform, you can make sure you produce and publish content with a higher likelihood of garnering clicks, likes, and followers.
