Follows
A follow is someone saying “I’m your customer and I want to see what you have to say”. Your customer has decided that they like where you’re going and they want to see what you have for them next. This is your most captive audience and an opportunity to convert sales.
Likes
Instagram may have removed your audiences ability to see them, but the number of times your followers click that little heart under your post still matters. More likes pushes your content up the Instagram algorithm as the platform assumes this is something people are liking to see. Likes tell you that your content has struck a chord with your audience. Consider them a simple metric that tells your brand more of this, less of this.
Interactions
A comment is the number of times users have written something underneath your post, including when they tag a friend. When a user saves your post using the little bookmark tab at the bottom right corner of the post they’re telling you, this is valuable in some way and I want to come back to it. Add the number of comments with likes and saved posts to find the total interactions on a post. These are more of a commitment than just hitting the like button so they’re more valuable metrics. Comments and saves are highly regarded by the algorithm for this reason.
Impressions
The total number of times your posts or stories have been seen, including those who come back to the story multiple times. If Sally has looked 5 times and Jenna has looked 3 times, your impressions for the post will be at least 8.
Reach
This is the number of unique views or individual people who have seen your story or post. For the same post as above, your reach will be 2. This is a great brand awareness metric.
Profile Visits
How many times have users viewed your profile? This counts people who click through from a post or appear from your website. Anytime they ‘walk’ through your virtual doors. It’s worth considering profile views vs follows and website clicks. You want these numbers to line up as much as possible, otherwise you can deduce that people visiting your page aren’t engaged enough to take another action. Why not?
Website Clicks
So your users have viewed your profile, now they decide to click the link to your website that you have (of course) left in your Instagram Biography. Hello sales channel.
So what?
We get a lot of questions about the right number of likes and followers on social media. If we told you we got 60 likes on an Instagram post would you think that was good? Perhaps this sounds like a lot compared to your numbers, or perhaps it doesn’t. Looking at the numbers without any context makes it difficult to make an assessment, so we always recommend that you make yourself your best benchmark.
Pushing these numbers up all comes back to your marketing strategy. Who is your target audience? How can you get their attention and engagement in what your brand is doing? Let’s work that out. Learn about our digital marketing strategy services here.
