Instagram has a staggering 1 billion users on its platform making it a powerful and effective place for individuals, brands and businesses. It is possible to measure your performance on Instagram but to do this you need to understand what the metrics mean, which ones are important to you, how they can be measured effectively and how to use them to indicate success or failure. One of the most important things you can do on Instagram is to measure your performance and if you are new to the app and are unsure about how to do this, here are a few tips to help you out:

What is KPI?

KPI or key performance indicator is a metric that measures the performance of a social media campaign. KPIs are analytics that are essential in helping you track your business performance and key goals. Instagram measures KPI by looking at the following:

• Follower growth rate.
• Engagement per follower.
• Website traffic.
• Comments per post.
• Instagram stories engagement.

Tracking KPIs are important because it gives insight into your performance and tells you how you need to possibly adjust your strategy to achieve your goals.

Engagement

This metric tells you the number of people who engage with your content out of your followers. Engagement simply measures the performance of your account by looking at how many of your followers have liked, commented, or saved your posts. 1-3% engagement rate is considered average and 3%+ is considered very good and shows that your followers are engaging with your content. It is important for engagement to be measured because you need to know whether or not your posts are being seen, especially with the new updated algorithm on Instagram. A great benefit to Instagram is that there are growth services like Growthoid available where you can buy organic Instagram followers. Tracking your engagement also reveals how interested your followers are in your content and it benefits you to track your engagement if you are considering a partnership with an influencer.

When measuring engagement, be on the lookout for the following:

• Engagement per follower.
• Follower growth.
• Comments received.
• The most engaged hashtags.
• Instagram stories metrics.
• Referral traffic.

Reach and impressions

Your reach is the number of people who have seen your content. With Instagram, it is not a guarantee that your followers will see everything that you have posted and this is because of the Instagram algorithm. Knowing your reach helps you determine how many of your followers have seen your posts. If you aren't receiving a lot of engagement, it could be because your followers are not seeing your posts.

Impressions on the other hand measure how many times your post has been served by other users.

Both reach and impressions should be measured because it one of the keys to brand success.  Increased reach and impressions equal increased engagement which is the goal of social media. When looking for reach and impressions, look for the number of people who see your content and the number of times your content is displayed.

Follower growth

Follower growth tells you how many people have followed you and shows the reach of your content. This stat impacts the performance of other IG metrics such as engagement. Your follower growth should be measured because it tells you whether or not your business is expanding its reach to new people. When tracking your follower growth you need to be looking at these areas:

• New follower count.
• Follower/following ratio.

Engaged hashtags

Engaged hashtags are the ones that have been used the most in separate posts. Hashtags are an important part of a social media strategy because they help to grow your following and boost engagement. Measuring your engaged hashtags tells you which you should be using in your posts and can tell you the hashtags that are trending. Measuring engaged hashtags can also help you identify the success points of a campaign in terms of keeping your audience interested.

When measuring engaged hashtags, you will want to focus on the following things:

• The social media reach of a hashtag.
• The volume of engagement.
• Other popular hashtags.
• The volume of mentions.

So there you have it. 5 areas that you need to familiarise yourself that explain how performance is measured on Instagram. Remember, KPI, engagement, reach and impressions, follower growth and engaged hashtags.