6 Best Instagram Analytics Tools to Track Your Success

Neil Patel
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Author: Neil Patel | Co Founder of NP Digital & Owner of Ubersuggest

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Instagram is known mostly for engagement. But how do you track it? Let’s cover some Instagram analytic tools you need to be using.

Here’s the deal: People love interacting with brands and other individuals. Without engagement, social media doesn’t exist, and engagement matters more on Instagram than most other platforms.

In fact, Instagram’s engagement has been measured anywhere from four to twelve times that of other social channels.

So while you can sell on Instagram, this channel is better known for its benefits at the top of your sales funnel.

The problem with that is your marketing efforts don’t always link back to sales.

That means you’ll have to develop other ways to measure performance to justify all of the time and money spent on Instagram.

So, how do you do it? Luckily, there are a few tools that can help.

I’m going to show you some of the best Instagram analytics tools and why they are worth your time.

1. Iconosquare

There’s going to be some analytics overlap in a few of these tools.

Iconosquare kicks off by helping you understand how your posting frequency relates to or drives either new followers or lost ones daily.

iconosquare instagram analtyics tools

Iconosquare also gives you a Buffer-like tool to manage how you post across several different accounts at one time.

That makes it a perfect tool for freelancers or agencies that want to save time when managing multiple clients (or even multiple departments within the same company) from the same dashboard.

instagram analytics tools

Iconosquare will even show you comments and interactions on each post so you can keep the conversation going without ever leaving.

But that’s not even the best part.

My favorite Iconosquare feature is that they offer a library of awesome content that you can pull from at the ready.

You can quickly search the media library and grab beautiful, high-resolution images to use within seconds.

iconosquare instagram analytics

Iconosquare also features an editorial calendar view so that you can schedule posts out ahead of time. It’s easier to manage social media when you plan out content in advance.

iconosquare instagram analytics editorial view

Next, you can use it to search for influencers who might help you get the word out about new campaigns and posts.

It will even let you compare influencers based on their own follower and engagement metrics, so you know what you’re dealing with before reaching out to them.
iconosquare instagram analytics, search for influencers

All of this sounds great, right?

But we haven’t even touched on their Instagram analytics yet.

You can measure tags and mentions and get access to in-depth engagement insights.

You can also see how your individual hashtags are performing, view the best days and times to post, and benchmark your engagement rates against the competition.

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Iconosquare has a 14-day, no credit-card-required free trial. Play around with the analytics before you commit to it with your cash.

2. Sprout Social

Sprout Social is similar to Iconosquare in that it combines Instagram analytics with content creation and management tools. They also have a powerful Instagram analytics platform.

It has a fully-featured editorial calendar for scheduling new content across multiple social account platforms (including Twitter and Facebook).

sprout social instagram calendar instagram analytics tool guide

Sprout Social is perfect for larger organizations with rigid guidelines, too, because it has a centralized media library to manage with built-in editing tools.

When a piece of content is ready, you can use the push notification tool to update the person responsible for taking the next step (like moving it from draft to preview and from scheduled to published).

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Sprout’s tool set includes a social CRM that will funnel conversations into a central ‘smart’ inbox. Gaining access to this feature can help you boost conversions over time.

You can also dive deeper into individual hashtag performance or even locations that have been geotagged. Pay careful attention to how your performance compares across each.

instagram analytics tool sprout social

Then you can compile all of this insight into “presentation-ready” reports that can be exported or downloaded by clients and bosses alike.

sprout social instagram analytics reports

You can also take a spin with the free trial to preview all of these features before paying a single cent.

3. Keyhole

Each Instagram analytics tool we’ve looked at so far will give you daily reporting features. You need those metrics to track your progress.

However, Keyhole prides itself on giving customers real-time feedback. For example, you can drop in a specific hashtag, keyword, or account to see what trends are starting to emerge.

instagram analytics tools keyhole

Keyhole will also help you figure out which of your own internal trends provide the best results, giving you at-a-glance data into what activities are driving the most follower growth over time.

instagram analytics tools keyhole

You can also create a feed that will automatically track your competitor’s Instagram accounts to see what’s working for them versus what’s not (then capitalizing on the former while avoiding the latter).

Plus, you can save time by selecting a few predefined KPIs to track. Keyhole will automatically report on those, organizing your data into an easy-to-read dashboard that you can share with team members.

4. SquareLovin

SquareLovin (spelled like McLovin) combines both aggregate data (like overall views and follower counts) with individual metrics on each post (by ‘scoring’ the overall engagement).

squarelovin instagram analytics tools

One of my favorite features, though, is the deep dive it gives you into the best-performing times to post.

Like some of the Instagram analytics tools on this list, Keyhole tells you the best time frames for posting based on metrics. However, this tool also explicitly lets you know when you shouldn’t post. This data can be just as valuable, especially if you’re posting all the time.

You might want to constantly test a few of the ‘best’ times to improve performance. However, this way, you’ll always know exactly what hours of the day to avoid like the plague.

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5. Minter.io

Many of the Instagram analytics tools already featured give you information about how your Instagram account or your individual posts perform based on your specific KPIs.

Minter.io takes the next step by providing tactical insight into the content decisions you’re making.

For example, this tool can help you figure out which photo filter performs best among your audience based on a comparison of multiple metrics. Instead of using a single piece of data to decide which filters to use, compare several data points.

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I also love how this tool can break down your post engagement into performance rates.

Here’s what I mean.

If you see that you have 1, 10, or even 100 comments on a post, you’re probably pleased with yourself. But when you stop to think about it, there’s not a lot of actionable insight to draw from comment numbers alone.

Let’s say one account has 100 followers, and another has 1,000 followers. Each account gets 10 comments on a single day.

Now, which one is performing better?

The first one, right? That’s because it’s getting a 10% engagement rate on that post instead of only a 1% engagement rate. That makes a huge difference at the end of the day!

Minter.io helps you track these performance metrics over time and create benchmarks to see if your audience’s quality is growing as quickly as the quantity.

instagram analytics tools engagement rate screenshot

All social platforms use internal algorithms to determine how many of your posts will be seen by your audience.

That means that, if your engagement is low, the social network might artificially ‘restrict’ how many of your own followers end up seeing your content on a given day.

That’s why we constantly talk about the importance of engagement in social media.

Minter.io will also help you pinpoint big players who are already part of your audience. It’s a great way to identify potential influencers who might amplify your brand message.

For example, followers are split down into several different ‘buckets,’ including:

  1. Mass Follower
  2. Potentially Normal
  3. Normal
  4. Popular
  5. Influencer

instagram analytics tools

Finally, this Instagram analytics tool also gives you insight into how active your followers are on the platform.

For example, you can see how many posts each of your followers push live each day so that you can mimic the frequency you know your followers are comfortable with.

If you’re only posting twice a day, but the bulk of your audience posts four times per day, you can easily start increasing your posting frequency without fearing any backlash from your community.

instagram analytics tool privacy of followers

6. SocialRank

SocialRank provides detailed audience metrics for both Instagram and Twitter.

Many of the other Instagram analytics tools listed above focus on hard data or your posts’ individual performance metrics.

SocialRank will do some of that, but it’s more concerned with identifying follower patterns so that you can better tailor your content updates to your audience.

That means it will provide details like the most popular words used in your followers’ bios and posts. You can even see the most popular emojis among your target market.

Let’s say you’re trying to find certain types of people, like bloggers or influencers. You can search prospects’ bios based on keywords.

You might also use it for local marketing. Filter your target users by location so you can reach out to potential candidates for local live events and other engagements.

instagram analytics tool screenshot

Follower filters help you narrow down the audience into small segments based on some criteria, including the number followers they might have, specific companies, gender, and any combination of those.

social rank instagram analytics tool screenshot

Once you pull up a segment, you can then rank or prioritize these people based on their own engagement with you or their own popularity (by follower count).

sort instagram analytics tool data

These filters come in handy when you’re trying to pull precise lists of followers.

For example, let’s say you’re opening a new location in a new city (or simply just visiting a new area for an upcoming conference).

You can overlay these filters together to find people who’re using certain hashtags (such as #craftbeer) and located within a specific city (like San Diego).

instagram analytics tool filter

Then you can pull these follower lists into an Excel or PDF document for easy sharing with your team.

instagram analytics tool save and export

It’s incredibly powerful but not among the cheaper options listed here. I’d recommend using it for larger influencer or PR campaigns. It works best when you need deep audience insight to build buzz around your latest launch.

Conclusion

Social media is fairly simple at the end of the day.

First, you need to understand what your audience wants and is looking for. Second, you need to give it to them consistently.

In reality, it’s a lot tougher than it sounds.

But not if you’re using the right Instagram analytics tools to tell you what your audience is already interested in, talking about publicly, and reacting online.

Instagram is a powerful marketing tool to reach new audiences, increase your brand visibility, and deepen relationships with the people you already know.

Unfortunately, you can’t always track those things back to new Goal completions inside Google Analytics.

They’re ‘soft’ goals used to move people along your sales funnel instead of ‘hard’ goals that result in a new lead or sale.

That doesn’t mean they’re any less important. It simply means that you need to look for different ways to measure progress and results.

While Instagram’s built-in analytics are helpful, the Instagram analytics tools listed here go far beyond those metrics. You’ll be able to quickly identify your target customers, figure out what they’re interested in, and learn how to better serve them with new stuff.

After all, that’s what Instagram analytics tools are for, anyway. Not long, in-depth reporting that takes you hours to compile. You’re often better off with quick insights so that you can take action, update your marketing campaign, and grow faster.

What are your favorite Instagram analytics tools to track metrics?

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Neil Patel

About the author:

Co Founder of NP Digital & Owner of Ubersuggest

He is the co-founder of NP Digital. The Wall Street Journal calls him a top influencer on the web, Forbes says he is one of the top 10 marketers, and Entrepreneur Magazine says he created one of the 100 most brilliant companies. Neil is a New York Times bestselling author and was recognized as a top 100 entrepreneur under the age of 30 by President Obama and a top 100 entrepreneur under the age of 35 by the United Nations.

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Neil Patel

source: https://neilpatel.com/blog/top-instagram-analytics-tools/