Instagram ambitions tend to vary from brand to brand, but across them all, one common factor emerges. The bottom line, or more specifically, your brand’s Instagram ROI.
Many brands now allocate budget to social media marketing and content creation. However, if marketers hope to increase their activity and achieve bigger results, it’s essential that they first demonstrate their value to the business.Instagram metrics range from the tangible to the intangible, and we’ve listed a few below.
Tangible Instagram metrics
Key performance indicators (KPIs) are the vital stats of the marketing world. These numbers are cold, hard facts that prove the worth of all the work you’re doing. However, if you flat line on these metrics, your campaign won’t see results and your brand will be at risk.
1. Reach
Your brand receives organic impressions every time another account mentions you in a caption or tags you in a photo. This is also known as earned reach or brand exposure, and is key to achieving positive Instagram ROI.
Organic reach is key to influencer marketing. The more your reach increases, the better your influencer campaign has performed, as the influencer’s followers take note of your brand.
Social media competitions also often focus on organic reach. Posts that ask for likes, follows, comments and tags for a chance to win a prize effectively open doors between brands and their existing followers’ wider circles.
2. Growth
The speed at which your audience is growing can be defined as your growth rate. Whether this is monitored daily or benchmarked on a monthly basis, it’s one of the most useful Instagram metrics.
Growth rate reflects on everything you do, including the quality of your existing followers, engagement with your content and the effectiveness of your overall strategy. New followers are proof that
Growth rate should also go hand in hand with organic reach. This signals authentic growth by real and engaged followers, rather than bot accounts that will do no good in the long run.
3. Engagement
The more comments your Instagram posts get, the more engaging your content and the more invested your followers. Monitoring engagement with individual posts will show what’s resonating most so you can adjust your strategy accordingly.
However, comment volume will differ depending if your account has 1,000, 10,000 or 100,000 followers. Calculate average content engagement by dividing all likes and comments by your total number of followers.
A high engagement rate tells social media algorithms that your posts are important, and worthy of sharing in user feeds. This can have a snowball effect on Instagram ROI.
4. Clicks
Behind every great Instagram profile is an informative bio, and it’s important to measure the interactions you receive outside of your individual posts. Followers can call, email, visit your website or even find directions to you through your business Instagram profile.
Instagram metrics such as content engagement might determine your success on Instagram, but clicks can indicate potential conversions. This is where marketing can move to sales in a click of a button.
To maximise clicks, you’ll need an engaging call to action. For this reason, many brands share links to competitions, special events or new releases in their bio, rather than simply linking to their website homepage. Give your visitors a reason to click through.
Intangible Instagram metrics
However, a successful social media strategy can also include some more elusive metrics.
1. Awareness
Every brand wants to be discovered, and customer behaviour is rapidly shifting from checking corporate websites to finding brands on social media. Instagram is a major discovery tool, as users follow accounts whose content they like, while hashtags encourage people to stumble upon accounts they’ve never seen before.
It’s therefore possible to achieve great Instagram ROI by tapping into current trends within your industry, utilising popular hashtags and search terms to increase brand awareness.
2. Communication
There’s no greater gift to marketers than a direct line of communication with consumers.
Instagram allows your brand to have direct conversations with followers, but also enables you to communicate with them more subtly through well-crafted imagery and messaging.
As Instagram metrics go, this indirect communication is almost impossible to measure – but the more individuals relate to your brand, the more likely they will remember you.
3. Loyalty
Visual communication is a great way to build emotional connections. Photos and videos tap into a different part of our brain than the written word, and can help brands to develop a loyal and deeply engaged following. As a result, you can achieve impressive Instagram ROI if you share visual content that really connects with your audience,
4. Brand image
The visual nature of Instagram is perfect for building your brand reputation. The right imagery can support your core brand strategy and develop your audience’s perception of your value and desirability.
