Pay Attention to These 3 Key Metrics When Marketing on Instagram

Social media marketing is one of the easiest places within digital marketing to get caught up in ‘vanity metrics' that don't really matter.

These are metrics that sound nice and plenty of people like to brag about…

…but they aren't necessarily valuable.

To make it worth your while, you need to be able to tie your efforts to the real end game: your bottom line.

And that takes some time.

Especially for solopreneurs, social media is something you need to get the hang of. You figure out what works and what doesn't over time, then use that information to continually refine your strategy.

For a lot of brands, Instagram has a ton of potential.

It's one of the biggest social media sites right now, and chances are, it's someplace where your audience hangs out. A presence on Instagram can be an indispensable tool.

There are numerous metrics you can use to try to quantify your success on Instagram.

But the question is, which ones actually matter?

Which ones, in the end, will do the most to help you make more sales and make more money?

At Sprout Social, blogger and inbound marketing expert Dominique Jackson has the answer.

1. Comments Received

What this metric tells you: How engaging is your content.

The first metric most brands look at to measure social media engagement on Instagram is the number of likes for their photos. Likes are nice, but comments are an even stronger indicator of engagement.

When your followers go beyond double tapping your photos and take the time to leave a comment, it’s because they resonated with it. Comments, whether positive or negative, are the result of a person feeling some type of emotion for your content, your brand or both.

2. Most Engaged Hashtags

What this metric tells you: Which hashtags you should use.

Hashtags and Instagram go together like peanut butter and jelly. Not only do Instagram posts with hashtags get more engagement, but hashtags also make your posts more discoverable.

There are a few different Instagram metrics you can track when it comes to hashtags, but measuring which hashtags are getting the most engagement is your best bet.

3. Engagements Per Follower

What this metric tells you: Your engagement relative to your audience size.

When this metric is increasing, it shows that your followers are resonating with your content, and that your page is a priority for them since they’re liking and commenting on multiple posts. If this number is low or shrinking, it means users are engaging with your content every once in a while but probably not checking your page regularly.

In order to boost this number, you can try posting more exciting content so that people look forward to checking out your page every day.

You can learn more about tracking your Instagram success over at Sprout Social.