Go deeper: How to see Insights on Instagram

“Insight” is a buzzword for a reason. Many of us make educated choices in our professional lives by analyzing situations and harnessing insights. Whether you’ve recently seen this word in an article about mental health or heard it in a business meeting, one thing is true: the term merits the buzz. Analytics help us make better choices.

Instagram Insights is the social media app’s feature for compiling data for business users to analyze. These metrics show the results from a business’s social media marketing strategies and engagement with users.

While users with personal accounts may gather insights by tracking their most-liked posts, those with IG Business and Creator accounts gain access to the Instagram Insights dashboard. If you have one of these accounts and this feature is news to you, keep reading. We’ll explain how to see Insights on Instagram so you can get to work analyzing your data.

What do Instagram Insights show?

Before we show you where to find your account’s data, let’s walk through what you can expect to find there. Your Insights show you basics like the number of accounts reached and engaged and total new followers, plus more pointed information on individual posts, Stories and Reels, such as engagement and interactions data.

How to see Insights on Instagram

While you can see your insights on individual pieces of content, we’ll first explore how to get a general overview of all your content from the Instagram analytics tools:

1. Open the Instagram app and navigate to your profile page.
2. You’ll see a button to view your professional account above the option to edit your profile dashboard. Tap on it.
3. Here you’ll see an overview of the accounts you’ve reached in the last 30 days, any influencers who’ve requested a collaboration, an option to find new potential customers and a rundown of the app's tools.
4. If you want more detailed data, click on the blue See all options next to Account insights' at the top of the page. You’ll see an overview showing you how many followers you’ve gained in the selected timeframe and the accounts you’ve reached and engaged.

Underneath your general overview, you can see the content you’ve shared. Click See all to look at the entirety of the content you’ve posted, or click on one of the categories below (Posts, Stories and Reels). When you look at an Instagram post of any type, you can see how many accounts the content reached, the number of people it engaged and profile activity. Here’s the ultimate guide on how to see your Insights on Instagram Stories and other content:

1. Click on Posts, Stories or Reels.
2. Click on the piece of content you want to analyze. If you’re not seeing it, you may need to change the search parameters at the top of the page.
3. Scroll through the data. You’ll first see an overview that includes your total follower growth. You’ll then see specific details on the content’s reach, interactions and profile activity. Confused about what all this data means? We’ll explain below.

How to use Instagram Insights

Data is cool, but have you tried analyzing metrics to boost your success? If you’re a business owner or content creator, you probably have. Now the question is how to read all the data Instagram gives you:

• Reach: “Reach” is another buzzword. But what does it really mean? Reach shows the number of unique accounts that have seen your content.
• Impressions: This term describes the number of times users have viewed content. You can see if the impressions for specific posts come from “home,” your Instagram profile, hashtags or other sources.
• Engagement: Engagement on IG comprises different types of actions. Here are some of the key categories you'll see in your Insights:
  • Interactions: This word refers to actions users take on your content. Content interactions go beyond simple views and include likes, comments, Story replies, saves and shares.
  • Navigation: For Stories, you can see how many people jumped to the next Story and how many watched yours from start to finish and then went back for another look.
• Profile activity: This metric shows profile visits, follows and email button taps for a specific piece of content.

How to boost performance on Instagram

Now that you’ve looked at your numbers, you’re likely thinking about what you can do to boost them. There’s no guaranteed method to get more engagement on IG, but here are a few tactics you can try:

• Post at the right time: Read up on the best times to post on Instagram. Since the algorithm is complicated and shows content to users based on their preferences and engagement patterns, the right time to post on Instagram may look different for every user. But knowing the general best posting times are a good place to start.
• Give the people what they want: When you look at your reach and engagement numbers, consider which content people are vibing with most – and make more of it.
• Engage users with calls-to-action (CTA): Users may choose to interact with your content all on their own, but you can give them a little encouragement with a CTA. Offer entries to a giveaway if they spread the word about your account to other users, or try asking them what they like to see in Stories.
• Use links: Ensure all your hard work to boost engagement pays off by linking to your website or products you sell. You can add shopping links to Stories and posts, and including a link in your bio is a must. If you want to have multiple URLs in this space, get a Linktree that can branch out to several locations on the web.

FAQs

Before we go, let’s address a few lingering questions people commonly have about Instagram Insights:

How do you see Insights on Instagram without a business profile?

You can’t gain access to this feature unless you have a Business or Creator account, but there are third-party social media analytics services that can crunch the data for any type of account.

How do you see more than one week of Insights on Instagram?

Changing the date parameters on the Insights analytics report is simple. In the upper left-hand corner of the screen, click on the current date range to bring up a calendar and pre-set parameter options. You can choose options like the last 90 days or an entire year. Tap Update before returning to the Insights screen.

How do you see Insights on Instagram on a desktop?

You can view Insights on the desktop using Creator Studio. Facebook’s help page for businesses provides a full explanation of how to use this tool.