It is a known fact that small business owners rely on Instagram to show what they offer to their valuable customers, boost brand awareness, connect with their target audience and drive sales. But to keep track of what strategies are working and which ones need to be adjusted, it is crucial to measure your actions through metrics. 

In this article we will show you the main types of Instagram metrics that you must pay special attention to in order to optimize your social media efforts, make informed decisions, and achieve your business goals.

Reach and impressions

Let's start with the basics. We can define reach as the number of unique accounts that have seen any of your posts. By expanding your reach, you end up attracting a wider audience, which translates into more potential customers. 
Impressions, on the other hand, are the total number of times your content has been viewed. It is ideal to boost impressions if your goal is to increase awareness and brand visibility. 

Engagement metrics

Engagement metrics measure the commitment and level of interaction that your audience has with your posts. Some common examples of engagement metrics include likes, saves, shares and even reach.
A good way to track the engagement is through the engagement rate. This metric measures the effectiveness of your content based on likes, comments, saves and shares as a percentage of your reach/ impressions. If you want to foster a loyal community, you should aim for the highest engagement rate possible. 

Growth metrics

When discussing growth metrics, we can identify two clear examples: follower growth rate and hashtag performance. The first one measures the rate at which your followers increase over time, while the second one evaluates the effectiveness of your hashtags in driving engagement and reach. 
Whether you want to verify how much your audience is expanding or which hashtags are more popular with your followers, these metrics will help you better understand your potential customers.

Content metrics

Instagram heavily relies on videos and stories to captivate users. Leveraging the power of videos to deliver compelling messages is always a smart move, and with the video views metric you can measure the number of times your videos are viewed and understand how well received they are.
Instagram stories, on the other hand, offer a unique way to engage and create a sense of urgency. With story views you can track the number of times your stories are seen by your audience.

Website and conversion metrics 

Last but not least, we have the website and conversion metrics. Some of them, like profile visits and website traffic can help you measure the number of times people visit your profile or click on the website link in your bio. 
But if we must talk about this type of metrics, the most important one is the conversion rate, which measures the percentage of visitors who take teh desired action on your website. 

Understanding these Instagram metrics is the key to unlocking your business’s potential on social media. So, if you want to achieve Instagram success, you should start measuring these metrics and use the information to apply it to your social media strategy.