Auditing Your Instagram Content For 2021
Previously we went over how to audit your Facebook content to focus in on what types of posts you should be bringing with you into 2021 (and which ones can stay behind in 2020!). Now it's time to take you through auditing your Instagram account.
Instagram stores all of their valuable post metrics in the Instagram App under the Insights tab, so open up that Menu button at the top right corner of your screen and tap on the Insights tab. Please note the Insights tab is ONLY available if you are in your Business Account! Regular Personal accounts don’t have this option.
Getting Content Insights from Your Feed Posts
Here you can see the Engagement all your posts are receiving. There are some handy filters you can use to look at a certain time frame, post type, or metric. We want to filter to Engagement for the past 3 months to get a recent selection of posts. With that filtered view go through your posts and note which ones are getting the highest and lowest engagement. For the high engagement posts look at what you were posting (product shot, behind the scenes, promotional, etc.). These are the types of posts you want to keep doing in 2021. Note the same details for the low engagement posts – stop doing these!
If you’re using Instagram Stories you’ll find the same data here in the Content tab under your Feed Posts. Do the same analysis for them to see what types of Stories your followers like the best!
Find the Best Time & Day to Post in the Activity Tab
Next to the Content tab you’ll find the Activity tab. This will show you when you’re getting the most engagement on your Instagram profile. The main info we want to get here is what days of the week we’re seeing the most action on our posts. Those are the days to focus most of your posts.
Strangely the hour of the day you see the most engagement is not on the Activity tab. Instead, you have to go over to the final tab – Audience.
Here you can get key information about who your audience is that you could then use to inform your targeting in other advertising channels or in Instagram itself. You also can see what hours your followers are most active. Combine this with the best day to post and you’ll be hitting your followers right when they’re most likely to be scrolling their Grams!
Conclusion
If you invest a little time to doing a simple audit like this every quarter (not just at the turn of the year!) you’ll constantly evolve your posting strategy to meet the needs of your followers. It may be a bit laborious at the beginning but after a couple of times you’ll be auditing like a pro. The gains in user engagement will be more than worth the time invested. Good luck in 2021!
**Edit 2.8.21: Instagram just released their Professional Dashboard which shows a lot of the above data. You can get details on Instagram Professional Dashboard here.
