How to Write Social Media Guidelines for Your Team: 8 Examples

Social media guidelines are a must for all businesses and brands. Whether or not you use social media at the corporate level, your employees are certainly using social in their private lives.

Since work takes up such a large portion of our waking hours, it’s not surprising that people post about their jobs on social media. But if they do so without guidance, they may put both themselves and their employers at risk.

Bonus: Get a free, customizable social media guidelines template to quickly and easily create recommendations for your company and employees.

What are social media guidelines?

Social media guidelines are instructions and recommendations for how people connected to a company should represent themselves – and the company – on social media.

Think of social media guidelines as a brand-specific manual of social media best practices. They apply to everyone who has a professional relationship with your brand. Employees are usually the primary audience. But anyone else you’re working with can benefit from these best practices too. Share them with people like your corporate partners, marketing agencies, or influencers.

Your social media guidelines should outline how to behave on social media in a way that’s positive and safe. Consider the needs of the company, employees, and customers alike. The guidelines can apply to both your employees’ personal and professional social media presence.

Social media guidelines are different from your company’s social media policy. They’re also distinct from your social media style guide. However, it’s a good idea to keep all of these documents in one place for easy access and reference.

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Why you need social media guidelines

Protect your brand

Clear social media brand guidelines can help mitigate a whole host of risks. Especially when combined with a well-thought-out social media policy.

Start with the very basics (brand reputation). Work up to the extremely serious (compliance requirements). At each stage, social media guidelines make it clear how employees’ actions on social media impact the brand.

Stay in line with official regulations

Brands in regulated industries like healthcare and finance are well aware of social media laws and regulations. And they know that those regulations encompass employees’ social media use as well as content from the brand’s official accounts.

Employees of retail, service, and other brands may be less aware. But federal regulations still impact the ways they can talk about their jobs online.

For example, a little later in this post we’ll talk about FTC social media guidelines on disclosure. These impact what employees can say about your brand on social.

The FTC social media guidelines also require clear disclosure when an influencer or other third party receives compensation of any kind for a social post.

Include any relevant regulations in your social media guidelines for employees. Add specific examples that make the requirements easy for everyone to understand.

Encourage brand advocacy

Every employee is a potential brand ambassador. But not every employee is a social media expert.

Social media guidelines are your chance to help the whole team hype you up positively, inclusively, and respectfully. And to hype up their own work, too. Solid social guidelines help team members feel confident about sharing their work stories.

What should a social media guidelines document include?

Here’s a rundown of core sections you should include in your social media guidelines. Go ahead and tailor any part of this to fit your brand. After all, every industry is different.

In fact, every company is different. So before you lock in your social media guidelines for employees, you might want to check in with … your employees. Ask for team feedback to make sure you address their questions or concerns.

Or, start with our free social media guidelines template, which you’ll find linked below.

Intro: The 5 W’s

The 5 W’s are the question words: Who, what, when, where, why. It’s a good idea to include a quick introduction to your social guidelines that touches on all these points to get everyone on the same page:

• Who. This is anyone who works with your company. Think employees, contractors, agency partners, students, or influencers. Be clear and specific so there are no doubts.
• What. Generally, the “what” is social media usage for anything company-related. That includes on both professional and personal social media accounts. It may also include the use of personal accounts on work time or equipment.
• When. Include a last revised date in your guidelines so everyone knows when revisions take effect.
• Where. This could include an inventory of social platforms, official accounts, and branded hashtags. Or, it could be a more general definition of what you mean by social media. Beyond traditional social networks, you may wish to include social platforms like Reddit and Quora.
• Why. People are much more likely to stick to the guidelines if they understand why you created them in the first place. Touch on any specific compliance requirements that apply to your industry (like HIPAA or FINRA). Indicate the importance of the guidelines to protecting both employees and your brand.

High-level dos and don’ts

In an ideal world, every employee would read and internalize every word of your social policy and social guidelines. And every word of every update to those guidelines. In the real world, this is unlikely to happen.

So, it’s a good idea to put a quick and punchy list of your most basic social media code of conduct right upfront. Don’t go into too much detail here – you’ll do that in later sections.

Here’s a sample list you can copy and paste or tweak for your specific needs:

• DO mention the company as your employer in your social media bio (if you talk about company matters)
• DON’T engage with competitors or customers in an inappropriate way
• DO share company social media posts, events, and stories
• DON’T share company secrets or confidential information about your colleagues or customers
• DO express your own opinion — just make sure it’s clear you’re not speaking on behalf of the company
• DON’T comment on legal matters pertaining to the company
• DO report harassment you’ve experienced or noticed
• DON’T engage with trolls or negative comments

Disclosure and transparency

It’s great when team members proudly mention in their social profiles that they work for you. But to protect you both, it’s a good idea to ask them to clarify that they’re not creating social media posts on behalf of the brand.

Adding a disclosure to their social profile or bio is a good start. Something like “All opinions expressed are my own” helps make it clear that these are not official viewpoints, like this university strategist and instructor does here.

Source: @WahibaChair

When employees discuss company-related matters on social, they are required by law to identify themselves as employees. This one’s a rule, not a friendly suggestion.

In fact, the Federal Trade Commission requires the identification to occur in the relevant post. Just noting it in a bio is not enough. Get some specific language vetted by your legal or compliance team for your social media posting guidelines. Include a couple of sample disclaimers that are easy to copy and paste.

Privacy and confidentiality

Remind your team that confidential company information is confidential off the clock, too. Some of the biggest no-nos for sharing on social are:

• info about coworkers or customers
• financial disclosures
• upcoming products that haven’t been officially announced
• private communications
• research and development intel

Clarify that privacy and confidentiality should be respected across all social media platforms.

That includes photos taken at your workplace or workplace events. These can be especially challenging for organizations subject to HIPAA or FERPA.

Copyright guidelines

Include a reminder in your social media posting guidelines to respect ownership governed by:

• intellectual property
• copyright
• trademarks
• and other relevant laws.

When in doubt, the rule of thumb is relatively simple: if it’s not yours, and you don’t have permission, don’t post it. (Except through native resharing functions.)

We’ve got a full post on image copyright guidelines that you can link to or learn from.

Cybersecurity

Your employees may already be vigilant about phishing scams and the like. Still, it never hurts to review cyber-safety basics. Especially if you collect information about customers or clients.

Social media was the top contact method for fraudsters targeting everyone up to age 70 in 2023, according to the FTC. If your employees are taken in by a social media scam or otherwise jeopardize cybersecurity, they put both themselves and your organization at risk.

Source: Interactive FTC graphic

We’ve got a whole post on social media security that can help you craft your social media guidelines on this front. Here’s a quick refresh of cyber security 101 for employees:

• Choose strong passwords
• Use a different password for every social account
• Never share passwords with others – create separate access credentials for all team members who access corporate accounts
• Use two-factor (or multi-factor) authentication to login to social networks
• Limit the personal and professional information you share – and avoid those online “quizzes” fishing for password hints like the make of your first car
• Use personal credentials for personal accounts (rather than your corporate email)
• Make sure your Internet connection is secure – be wary of free wifi
• Do not download or click on suspicious content
• Only activate geolocation services on apps when necessary

Accessibility and inclusivity

It’s important for every employer and brand to promote accessibility and inclusivity on and off social media. Encouraging your employees to do the same is a way to show that you care about them, too.

Accessibility and inclusivity guidelines for social media may include:

• Use inclusive pronouns when appropriate (they/them/theirs/folks)
• Provide descriptive captions for images and subtitles for video
• Be thoughtful about representation in social media imagery. This includes stock imagery, emojis, and branded visuals.
• Don’t make assumptions about gender, race, experience, or ability
• Avoid gender- or race-specific emojis
• Feel free to share your preferred pronouns (and always respect the pronouns of others)
• Use title case for hashtags (this makes them more legible for screen readers)
• Report and remove any comments deemed sexist, racist, ableist, ageist, homophobic, or hateful to any group or person from your owned social channels

Find more accessibility and inclusivity resources here.

How to respond to negativity

Guidelines commonly remind staff to be kind on social media.

On the flip side, it’s important to define your policy for dealing with trolls or bullies. Should staff report them, ignore them, or block or ban them? In any case, clarify whether and how employees can respond to negative feedback about your brand on social media.

Your content moderators, who respond to comments on your owned accounts, should have a more codified content moderation policy to help guide them on this front. You can link to it here if appropriate.

But make sure everyone covered by your guidelines knows how to report issues they may have seen or experienced. If support is needed, tell employees how and where they can get it.

Providing protocol and tools helps your team nip problems in the bud before they grow into a full-blown social media crisis.

Links to relevant policy documents

You should definitely link your social media guidelines to your social media policy, social media style guide, and community guidelines. You might also want to include links to your overall brand identity documents and employee handbook.

If you offer social media training or resources, include those as well. Finally, link to your employee advocacy program so staff can access pre-approved content and participate in any incentives for sharing.

Free social media guidelines template

Bonus: Get a free, customizable social media guidelines template to quickly and easily create recommendations for your company and employees.

Social media guidelines examples

To get a sense of the different kinds of social media guidelines out there, we’ve broken these examples out by industry.

Education

Like many other post-secondary institutions, the University of Northern Georgia notes that its social media guidelines apply both to employees and to students. They hit a lot of points we mention above.

Of particular note is the clear way they highlight the basis of transparency and disclosure: “Whether you intend to do so or not, if you identify yourself with UNG, you become a de facto spokesperson of the university.”

Source: McGill

McGill University gets into some finer detail, but they start their guidelines out with “The basics: Use common sense. Be aware of privacy issues. Play nice, and be honest.” This could essentially serve as the TL;DR version of all social media guidelines.

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Government

Source: Government of British Columbia

The B.C. government social media guidelines are presented in an easy-to-read graphical format that helps conquer the challenge of getting employees to engage with the guidelines. The guidelines start with a statement that addresses several of the 5 Ws:

“These guidelines will help employees make appropriate choices about the use of social media for personal use both in and out of the workplace and understand the potential impacts of its use in the context of their employment.”

Source: Ontario Public Service

The social media guidelines for the Ontario Public Service are broken down into four different use categories. They include common-sense guiding principles backed by this important caveat:

“Even if you use disclaimers like ‘the opinions expressed are my own,’ you are still responsible for what you say. What you say publicly may impact you professionally.”

Healthcare

Source: Horizon Health Network

Notice that your social media guidelines don’t have to be long to be comprehensive. Horizon Health Network’s guidelines are just one page but fit in a lot of solid principles and guidance. In particular, “If you wish to identify your affiliation to Horizon (on any social media site), make sure your activities are consistent with the high principles of your profession and Horizon.”

Source: Providence Health & Services

Providence Health & Services combines their social media policy for official use and their social media guidelines for personal use in one central location. Here’s how they address the elephant in the room: HIPAA.

“It’s important to remember that you can be held personally and legally responsible for the publicly made opinions and comments you make, even on personally maintained sites and pages … You are required to maintain patient privacy by following Providence Privacy and Security policies and standards and HIPAA rules at all times.”

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Other brands

Source: Chanel

Chanel’s social media guidelines provide a master course in disclosure guidelines, with details about the appropriate ways and places to disclose sponsorship or any other connection to the brand:

“#gifted, #freeproduct, #comped, or #hosted are insufficient as they do not explain who provided the gift or that certain stuff was free (the FTC does not believe any of these are specific enough).”

Source: Bystronic

Bystronic, a supplier of specialized sheet metal cutting software and equipment, encourages employees to share on social media, saying in bold letters, “You are our brand ambassadors.” At the same time, their social media guidelines for employees caution that, “The separation of private and professional use of social media channels is not always straightforward.”

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The post How to Write Social Media Guidelines for Your Team: 8 Examples appeared first on Social Media Marketing & Management Dashboard.

* This article was originally published here

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2024 Instagram Demographics: Top User Stats for Your Strategy

Rule number one of creating a great Instagram marketing campaign? Know your audience. Which is where these Instagram demographic statistics come in handy.

You might already have a pretty good idea of who your followers are on the platform, but with these Instagram audience insights, you’ll have the cold hard facts to prove it.

Understanding Instagram’s demographics will allow you to identify your target market, plan relatable content, drive engagement and create winning social media campaigns. So let’s get to know the 2 billion monthly active users who might be checking out your brand’s Instagram account.

Get our 2024 Social Trends report, and dig into the juicy data that’ll help you reach your goals in 2024—which is shaping up to be social’s best year yet.

Instagram age demographics

People from all age groups use Instagram—teens, grandpas, everybody’s here. But there is definitely a concentration in the 18 to 34 age range. Millennials and Gen Zers love the ‘Gram, it seems.

Here’s how the Instagram audience breaks down by age, according to Statista:

• 13-17 years old: 8%
• 18-24 years old: 30.8%
• 25-34 years old: 30.3%
• 35-44 years old: 15.7%
• 45-54 years old: 8.4%
• 55-64 years old: 4.3%
• 65+ years old: 2.6%

If you’re crunching these numbers at home, you may have realized that nearly 85% of Instagram’s audience is younger than 45. So, yes, Boomers and Gen Xers are represented here amid Instagram’s 2 billion users, but not in huge numbers. You might be better off honing your Facebook marketing strategy if this is a target market for you.

Source: Statista

On the opposite end of that spectrum, a mere 8% of Instagram users are teens. If reaching that demographic is important to you, this might not be the best place to do it. (Though half of teens who are on Instagram use it at least once a day… and 10% report that they visit Instagram “almost constantly.”)

While TikTok has a higher number of youth users than Instagram, Insta remains the preferred social platform for users ages 16-34. GWI reports that 44.4% of female internet users in this age group rank Instagram as their favorite social app; 40.7% of male internet users agree.

Instagram gender demographics

Instagram users are split pretty evenly by gender, which isn’t always the case with social media platforms—for instance, X (formerly Twitter) has an audience that’s 63% male, while 76.2% of Pinterest users identify as female.

Source: Statista

On Instagram, 51.8% of global users identify worldwide, while 48.2% identify as female—basically half and half. That being said, the gender divide isn’t consistent through age groups—for users aged 35 and up, for instance, women outnumber men, and in younger brackets, male users pull ahead.

Interestingly, different countries have different gender splits. In the U.S., for example, women make up a higher portion of Instagram’s user base—56.9% of American Instagram users are female-identifying. In India, on the other hand, 73% of users are male. So the location of your audience will impact just how many male and how many female users are likely viewing your content.

And if you’re wondering where non-binary users fit into all of this… well, we are too. Unfortunately, this male-female info is the only gender data we have available at this time. But if you look at the #nonbinary hashtag results on Instagram, it’s clear there’s a thriving community here of Instagram users who define their gender outside of those identities. Go get ‘em, tiger!

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Instagram location demographics

Yes, yes, the internet is a global village and we are all citizens of the metaverse or whatever, but the people who are using the internet have to reside somewhere on this terrestrial plane. So where in the world do the most Instagram users live?

While Instagram reaches 2 billion users globally, when you break it down by country, the largest regional audience is in India. (If you’re holding a big foam finger that says “U.S.A. NUMBER 1” then… I’m sorry for your loss.)

The United States is actually the second largest regional audience, but India takes the crown with a wide margin: India has 223 million users, while the U.S. had 143 million and counting. The runners up from there? Brazil comes in at number three (113.5 million), followed by Indonesia (89.15 million) and Turkey (48.65 million).

India is part of one of Instagram’s fastest growing markets: the Asia-Pacific region accounts for one-third of Instagram users total, in fact.

Source: Statista

Interestingly, while Instagram is the second most-visited social media platform in the country (Facebook is still #1 for Americans), it’s not a major source of news for residents. Only 16% of U.S. adults regularly get their current events from the app — a far lower number than those who report getting news from Facebook or Youtube.

Source: Pew Research

So if you’re looking to connect with a U.S. audience, it would be wise to keep things light and fresh. This is a platform people come to for entertainment, not news. Need some creative content ideas? We’ve got you covered.

Instagram income demographics

They say it’s uncouth to discuss money — but this is the Hootsuite blog! We’re the “bad boys” of the social media marketing world and we play by our own rules! Just try and stop us! Ideally with a big payout! Because we have no shame in talking about money, as previously discussed!

The most recent data we have on this is from 2021, so it’s possible things have changed in the last few years, but according to Pew Research, only 35% of households with an annual income of less than $30,000 USD use Instagram, while 47% of Instagram users have a household income of more than $75K.

The takeaway? Instagram audiences come from a wide range of financial backgrounds (in the U.S. at least) but are slightly more likely to be from higher-income homes. This makes it a prime avenue for ecommerce and sales, so perfect those social media calls to action and consider exploring Instagram Shopping.

Instagram education demographics

Though Facebook famously was once exclusively available to college students (Mark! You rascal!), today, social media platforms are open to almost anyone. Doesn’t matter if you are currently attending correspondence witch school or holding a PhD from Harvard: Instagram is for you.

The wide range of education completed by Instagram users proves just that. According to Pew Research data from 2021 (again, not the most up-to-date numbers, but we’re working with what we’ve got here), nearly half of Instagram users are college graduates.

Here’s how it breaks down:

• 30% of Instagram users have a high school degree or less
• 44% have some college education under their belts
• 49% of users are college graduates

Why doesn’t that add up to 100%? I personally do have a college degree and feel I should know this.

Your specific audience for your brand will probably skew in one direction or another, but given the broad range of educational experiences on the platform, it’s wise to keep language accessible. Simple, clear, concise! Unlike the long, rambling sentence I just wrote!

Instagram regional demographics

Whether you live in a high-rise metropolitan penthouse or are squatting in a barn: if you have an internet connection, Instagram is at your fingertips. But it turns out that the social media platform is really mostly popular with urban and suburbanites—country folk are less interested. (Maybe too busy finding love on the FarmersOnly dating app?)

According to that same 2021 Pew Research poll:

• 45% of Instagram users live in urban areas
• 41% of Instagram users are suburbanites
• Only 25% of users live in rural regions

Knowing that Instagram’s demographic is primarily located in city centres (or close to!) can help inform the types of campaigns you run and references you make. Like… uh… jokes about elevators?

Instagram interests demographics

Trends on Instagram shift over time. (That’s why they’re called ‘trends’ and now ‘laws.’) In its 2024 trend report, Instagram has identified fashion, beauty, wellness, finance, celebrities and lifestyle as the main interests for Gen Z users.

If we take a look at overall top hashtags, we can get a peek into the interests of Instagrammers as a group. #Fashion is the third-most popular tag (1.1 billion) with #photography and #art not far behind. #Nature and #travel both make a prominent appearance on the list, indicating that people like to share and view content from the wide world out there… so maybe get outside, sometimes? #Beauty, #Fitness and #Food also are highly ranked. See our full list of the top 100 Instagram hashtags here.

More broadly speaking, 50% of Instagram users love to see funny content on the app, while 46% are thrilled to see creative Instagram posts. 41% like informative content, while 37% want relaxing Instagram content and 36% are looking for inspirational posts and Stories. Hard to disagree with any of those preferences… I mean, who would vote for “boring ugly” content as their fave thing to consume on the app?

Source: Statista

Want to learn even more juicy, juicy stats about Instagram to help put your next social media campaign into perspective? We’ve got 35 illuminating data points here. And when you’re ready to actually dive in and start creating content for your well-defined Instagram audience, check out our ultimate guide to Instagram marketing.

Ready to turn these Instagram statistics into action? Start building your Instagram presence using Hootsuite. Schedule and publish posts directly to Instagram, engage your audience, measure performance, and run all your other social media profiles — all from one simple dashboard. Try it free today.

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The post 2024 Instagram Demographics: Top User Stats for Your Strategy appeared first on Social Media Marketing & Management Dashboard.

* This article was originally published here

20 Essential Instagram Metrics Every Marketer Should Monitor in 2024

Instagram is one of the most popular social media platforms following TikTok. And that won’t change soon.

If you're considering promoting your business on Instagram, you're on the right path. However, you need to keep track of analytics data to find out what works and what doesn't.

Instagram metrics will offer you the actionable insights you need to develop a better social media strategy for your brand.

So let's have a look at 20 essential Instagram metrics you should be tracking in 2024.

Key Instagram metrics to track

1. Why you should track Instagram metrics

2. Top most important Instagram metrics to look at

   2.1 Instagram post metrics

   • Engagement rate by followers
   • Engagement rate by reach
   • Reach
   • Impressions
   • Followers growth
   • Audience demographics
   • Top-performing posts
   • Top-performing content types
   • Best time to post
   • Saves
   • Tags on branded hashtags
   • Traffic
   • Profile interactions

   2.2. Instagram story metrics

   • Retention rate
   • Exit rate
   • Completion rate
   • Story link clicks

   2.3. Instagram Reels metrics

   • Instagram Reels engagement
   • Instagram Reels reach
   • Instagram Reels views

3. How can Socialinsider help you track your Instagram metrics

1. Why you should track Instagram metrics

When trying to increase brand awareness on Instagram, you need to keep tabs on all clarity Instagram metrics to measure growth.

Through Instagram analytics, you can keep tabs on key Instagram metrics that offer you valuable insights on how to further proceed with your social media strategy.

These metrics help you:

• Measure your performance

You can easily track users’ interactions with all your Instagram content and assess how they resonate with your posts. High engagement, increased reach and a significant follower growth are all good indicators that you're on the right path.

• Get to know your audience

To create a social media strategy that converts, you first need to learn as much as you can about your audience. What are they searching for? What needs do they express? And, most importantly, how can you satisfy them?

By checking Instagram metrics with the help of a third-party analytics tool, you get to see data for audience demographics.

This is how you find out where your audience is located and at what time they are most active.

• Consolidate your strategy

When you look at Instagram metrics and check top posts to see how they’ve performed, you figure out what type of content attracts most of your audience.

This is what will determine you to consolidate your social media strategy, focusing on certain aspects that have already been proven effective.

You will be able to create engaging content based on what you know works best for your brand and increase brand awareness, leads and ultimately, sales.

• Identify trends

By keeping an eye on Instagram metrics, you manage to learn more about the latest trends in your industry and keep up with them.

You have to always be aware of the latest trends and incorporate them in your content to attract a wider audience.

• Make data-driven decisions

The insights provided by your Instagram metrics should motivate you to adjust your social media strategy based on what data indicates.

This way, your content will rely more on effective and efficient types of posts that have already proved to bring great results.

You will notice that your brand’s performance on Instagram will increase, while also increasing ROI.

• Develop social media reports

By focusing your attention on Instagram metrics that matter, you can easily create social media reports.

Based on the data in your social media report, you can further optimize your strategy to improve performance and increase metrics’ values.

2. Top most important Instagram metrics to look at

2.1. Instagram post metrics

• Engagement rate by followers

While engagement represents the total number of likes and comments you’ve earned, the Instagram engagement rate shows what percentage of your followers resonate with your messages, and have taken an action to show it.

The engagement rate is a helpful Instagram metric to analyze than purely the raw engagement number because it’s correlated with your follower count, helping you to evaluate your performance more accurately and realistically.

Do keep a steady eye on your Instagram engagement rate per post by followers, as it indicates what type of content is closest to your followers' hearts, and what they most often resonate with.

• Engagement rate by reach

The reason why social media managers usually track engagement by followers is that the engagement rate by reach is an Instagram metric available only for owned accounts.

Since a brand can compare its performance with its competitors only through the engagement rate by followers, it is understandable why that Instagram metric is usually reported when it comes to engagement on Instagram.

And benchmarking against your closest competitors is actually highly recommended.

But, if you want a more in-depth look into your performance, you can always take a look at your engagement rate by reach.

Here’s how you can calculate it:

👉 In Socialinsider, you have access to a variety of engagement data for the Instagram profiles you manage. You can find all the insights in the Engagement section:

• Reach

In a nutshell, this Instagram metric tells you how many people have seen your content, counting only the unique views.

Furthermore, rather than counting every person that your content was delivered to, you can check your average reach rate, which will display a percentage that will be much easier to analyze in correlation with your fan count.

To calculate your average reach rate, you'll have to divide the total reach of a post by the total number of followers and multiplying the result by 100.

This is a particularly important Instagram metric you’ll need to track - especially for those campaigns whose main objective is to generate brand awareness.

Also, if you’re looking for ways of getting your content viral, constantly monitoring your reach and adjusting your strategy accordingly is a must-do.

👉 In Socialinsider, you can find all the reach data you need, including organic and paid reach, reach evolution, reach rate, Stories reach and more, in the Reach section.

• Impressions

Impressions stand for that Instagram metric showing the total number of views a piece of content has had. Which means, impressions include repeated views of a single user.

If you're looking for ways to increase both your reach and impressions, trending hashtags can be of great help. That's because they can increase your visibility potential when people search for particular hashtags.

Tracking impressions is easy in Socialinsider. Just navigate to the Impressions section in the app to discover all the insights you need.

• Followers growth

Since it's often considered a vanity metric, followers growth should not be your number one priority when creating your marketing strategy.

Of course, every businesses’ dream is that its audience shows interest in their brand. But you should always focus on quality over quantity.

In the end, a massive following is not so valuable if users don’t actually engage with the brand’s posts.

Sometimes, business accounts with smaller audiences are the ones that can benefit the most out of their social media efforts.

For the times when you need to create a social media report with noteworthy Instagram metrics to showcase different results, you can check the native app for helpful insights.

👉 For a more in-depth analysis of your account, you can rely on a social media analytics tool like Socialinsider to track your follower growth. You can find follower count and growth data in the Audience section of your Instagram analytics dashboard.

• Audience demographics

Tracking the growth of your Instagram audience is useful, but it doesn't tell you the whole story. In order to create the best kind of content for your followers, you need to find out more about them.

That's where audience demographics come in. Through audience demographics, you can tap into useful insights such as geographics distribution, language, age and gender to figure out exact who you're sharing content for.

👉 In Socialinsider, you can find in-depth audience demographics data in the Audience section.

• Top-performing posts

Since Instagram Reels are the new trend on Instagram right now, when doing a post's performance analysis, you may discover this is some top-notch content for your account.

By analyzing your best-performing posts, you may discover, for example, that focusing more on Reels is likely to increase your engagement. If so, continue in that direction!

👉 An Instagram analytics tool, like Socialinsider, for example - displays plenty of insightful Instagram metrics, including your top-performing posts, based on engagement.

Your top performing posts can be found in the Content section of your Instagram dashboard.

• Best-performing Instagram post types

Since Instagram now allows and encourage posting different content types (image, posts, Reels, Stories), it's wise to understand which one of these types of content perfoms better.

Looking at your top 3 posts can give you some pointers, but seeing which content type is the most popular amongst your audience will tell you everything you need to know about the future of your strategy.

👉 To access this data for your own Instagram profile, you need to navigate to the Content section of your Instagram dashboard in Socialinsider.

• Best times to post

In order for you to deliver your message to your target audience, you must first find them when they’re online.

And social media analytics tools are your best friend when it comes to establishing what’s the best time to post on Instagram in order to maximize your social media efforts.

👉 With Socialinsider, you can analyze your current and optimal time schedule alongside all the other important Instagram metrics to improve your social media strategy.

Simply look for the best time to post chart in the Engagement section.

• Instagram Saves

Most referred by marketers as being “the new like”, this is the hottest, newest Instagram metric that brands are setting their sights on.

Through the pressing of the save button, people show you they really appreciate what you have to say, that they find your information useful, which is a win-win situation.

By including saves into the list of Instagram metrics that you need to track you’ll get a hint on the type of content that your audience resonates to, and adjust your content planning accordingly.

When calculating engagement, besides liked and comments, some platforms also include saves. However, this is an Instagram metric publicly availably only for owned accounts.

• Branded hashtag performance

Since hashtags are one of the topics that interest people the most when talking about Instagram, I thought they deserve a special spot in this list of top Instagram metrics.

Because, it is, after all, a way of measuring your business’ success, right?

For the sake of clarity, we're focusing on branded hashtags here.

Using a branded hashtag is an excellent strategy for raising awareness for your brand, especially when conducting a user generated content campaign.

The great benefit of having branded hashtags is that you can see what people are saying about your business.

Every time someone posts something on Instagram and includes your hashtags, you’ll be able to see those posts and the results they generate.

A very important thing to know is that you can get Instagram insights about hashtags' performance only through an Instagram analytics tool.

For example, with Socialinsider, you can get an overview of the total posts that use the hashtags, the engagement and impressions received, posts evolution, and other top hashtags used together with your hashtag and their average engagement.

• Traffic

Marketing may have a lot of goals, but ultimately every brand’s main objective is to get conversions.

And since you want to know which ways can help get more leads, which channels are the most powerful to use so that you increase your revenue and what it’s worth investing into, you have to always monitor your traffic.

For Instagram there are not so many options of including your website’s links, except for the link in bio and those in stories.

By injecting some code pieces, which are called UTM parameters, you can link your Google Analytics account to your Instagram and track how many people land on your page from it.

• Profile interactions

Profile interactions, another key Instagram metric, account for the number of views on your profile.

When a user reaches your profile for the first time after searching a certain hashtag, chances are this user can become your follower if they think the content and aesthetics are appealing enough.

Quality content that aligns with your brand's story can enhance brand recognition.

The number of visits on your profile will increase if they sense consistency and posts that reflect a well-built strategy.

2.2. Instagram story metrics

After the feature was first introduced on Snapchat, Instagram has seen the user’s growing interest in stories and soon launched this feature on the platform as well.

After this release, Instagram stories started to steal the spotlight, and became one of the users' favorite ways of interacting with brands.

Given the audience’s interest and investment in a brand’s Instagram stories, it becomes undeniable that a couple of insights about this Instagram feature should be analyzed before conducting any social media campaign.

Here’s what you should consider when analyzing the performance of your Instagram stories:

• Retention rate

Keeping your followers engaged enough to view all the stories you’ve posted is not an easy job. It requires excellent content, tailored to your audience’s preferences.

But the good news is that you can actually draw powerful insights about what type of content stirs your audience’s interest by looking at your retention rate.

The retention rate is an Instagram metric that displays, under percentage form, how many people have watched your stories from the beginning to the very end.

• Exit rate

If enough people abandon watching after the first story, this is a huge warning sign that something fails at delivering people what they expect from your brand.

And here’s where the story's drop off rate steps in. Thanks to this Instagram metric you can calculate how many people are quitting after seeing your first Instagram story (in case there’s more than one, of course).

If you’re lucky and that percentage indicates a low number, congrats! It means you’re doing something good.

But, in the opposite situation, you should start taking another angle on your Instagram stories, because the current approach is clearly not working.

The good thing is that you can always count on data to help you improve your social media presence.

If you understand how to properly analyse it and adapt your efforts based on that, the results surely won’t take long to appear.

• Completion rate

This Instagram metric is important to analyse in order to discover how many people from your audience are your loyal fans, show interest and listen to everything you have to say.

The story completion rate is an Instagram metric that measures what percentage of viewers watch the entire length of your story slide, without clicking away, in fast-forward mode till the end.

It is calculated by substracting the number of exits from the number of impressions and then dividing by the impressions number.

• Story link clicks

Instagram Stories are often the first type of content with which your audience interacts.

This is why you need to focus on creating stories that convince users to click on your profile and find out more about your product or services.

Including clickable links in your Instagram Stories can increase your traffic – which is awesome.

By clicking the links in your Instagram Stories, users will reach your website, where they can find out more about your products.

Once users get to your website, the chances of them completing a purchase are significantly higher.

2.3. Instagram Reels metrics

Every marketer should use content that suits their brand and appeals more to their viewers.

Depending on the number of followers, carousels and reels work best for certain profiles.

Reels attract more viewers, increasing the number of visits to the profile, even if they do not necessarily interact with their posts.

Therefore, the content of your Reel must be unique, sprinkled with helpful information and many relatable situations to make the audience feel connected to your brand.

• Instagram Reels engagement

The Reels engagement metric accounts for your video's total number of likes, comments, shares and saves.

You should take advantage of the popularity of this new Instagram feature to explore new content strategies.

To ace Reels engagement, you have to take advantage of the new trends.

Posting Reels on topics people are already interested in, will help you increase your engagement rate.

You should also be ready to experiment with new ideas, depending on your audience’s interests.

To establish your engagement rate on Instagram Reels, you need to divide the number of Reels interactions by the number of Reels Plays and multiply by 100.

If you pay attention to what’s popular on TikTok, you will manage to have viral Reels by integrating what’s trending.

When analyzing Reels analytics, you should look at the most crucial metrics, like engagement, views, and reach.

👉 To keep track of Instagram Reels stats, you can check engagement and impressions via Instagram analytics tools, such as Socialinsider.

• Instagram Reels reach

Instagram Reels can be considered a fun type of content because they are reliable in building brand awareness.

Since Instagram Reels is a new feature, they have a greater chance to become viral because users tend to choose more visual content than posts filled with texts.

Usually, Reels have a higher reach compared to carousels and photo posts.

Moreover, Instagram Reels improve the aesthetic of your profile, making everything look professional and creative at the same time.

• Instagram Reels views

The total number of views on your Reels shows how many Instagram users have looked at the video, irrespective of whether they are your followers or have simply seen your post in their newsfeed.

Your Reel’s watch time is an important metric that shows for how long users look at your content. Since no one has much time to watch long Reels, you need to make sure you build suspense to determine users to stay on your Reel until the end.

To make your Instagram Reels viral, there are a few tricks you could use to increase the number of views. Using targeted hashtags can really change the game for your brand.

Your Reels will get noticed by a larger audience based on hashtag searches. Hashtags help you aim a certain group of users who will be interested in your content.

When posting your Reel, you have to be aware of the best posting time to make sure your post reaches users’ news feeds just in time.

3. How can Socialinsider help you track your Instagram metrics

Once you have your list of clarity metrics to check on Instagram and you know exactly how to calculate them, it’s time to see how a third-party tool can help you stay on top of them at all time.

By using Socialinsider, you can check a variety of metrics for different content types. First, make sure you add your Instagram profile in your Project.

In the Summary section, right at the beginning, you can see a series of Key Metrics. You can customize this dashboard to show only the Instagram metrics and charts you're interested in.

From here, you can navigate to each one of the sections displayed in the left sidebar: Content, Engagement, Reach, Impressions, Audience, Posts, Stories, Ads to discover and track useful insights about all the Instagram metrics we explored above.

Final thoughts

The use of Instagram metrics when crafting or adjusting your marketing strategy is a blessing since you can roll out a better strategy.

By checking analytics, you will learn what changes are needed in order to increase brand awareness and attract a wider audience.

Hopefully this list of crucial Instagram metrics helps you understand what to look at when developing your social media report and what your focus should be.

Frequently Asked Questions about Instagram Metrics

1. Can you download Instagram metrics?

You can download a report covering key Instagram performance metrics that are relevant for your brand's strategy. As your Instagram reporting tool, you can use a social media analytics app like Socialinsider.

2. How do you see Instagram metrics for Stories?

You can see some data for your Stories in the native app (such as reach, engagement and navigation analytics) but for more in-depth, aggregate insights you should use a professional tool like Socialinsider.

* This article was originally published here