Social Media Measurements for Instagram

Let’s face it, most people are visually stimulated and so the use of videos and photos are crucial when it comes to social media. That’s where Instagram comes in, which recently reported that “Interest in short-form video content has grown significantly in 2013 following the launch of Vine and video for Instagram.”

Instagram, for its part, now boasts 150 million active users.

Of course it’s not enough to just have an Instagram account. You need to offer value, as well.

Although Instagram is far being the largest social network in terms of users (13% of the total number of Internet users have accounts) or businesses on social media, but using it effectively will help your business make an impact.

To help you make the most of your Instagram use, here are the best measurement tools you can use:

Statigram

This is a tool use to create a Facebook profile photo using your Instagram shots, and at the same time has fantastic statistics for your account on the amount of photos you have, likes received, comments, followers, etc. What makes it brilliant is that it shows you the photos with the highest engagement, the day and time that your users are most engaged, your most engaged followers, and your growth and loss in followers. Plus, you can manage contests using this tool, too. How cool is that?

To get measurements on your account, click on the Statistics tab. It will then who you:

• An overview of your total photos, likes, comments, followers, along with scores of your love rate (how much your followers like your photos), talk rate (how many followers comment on your photos), and spread rate (engagement from non-follows);
• A rolling month analysis exactly a month from when you started viewing your stats. You will see the amount of content you posted during that period, engagement in likes and comments, and follower growth;
• Analysis of your content from your very first Instagram post that includes total photos per month, a monthly and weekly comparison along with what day of the week and hour you post the most, filter usage, tags, and geolocation;
• Statistics on your engagement  like the percentaage of comments and  likes from followers and nonfollowers, comments compared to growth history, and most commented photos, likes compared to growth history, most liked photos;
• Optimisation of your frequency of posting and filters, and how they affect your engagement —  probably the most useful feature of Statigram. There’s a fab chart that would display your posting habits for each day and times, in comparison to when your followers actually engage with your photos. Where those intersect are then your optimal posting day and time. There will also be a chart on the lifespan of engagement of a photo, which is basically how fast people comment after you’ve posted an image. A graph on the filters you used will also be presented that’s compared to comments and likes. Optimsation also takes a look into your tags, on those you use as compared to the most popular ones; and
• Community statistics on your followers, particularly on those whom you have not followed back, who have not yet followed you back, and whom you are following and follow you back. And of course, your follower growth.

SimplyMeasured

This tool lets you download analytics on several social media profiles, including Instagram, free of charge, on the condition that you agree to share a tweet to promote it. No biggie. You can also download a very detailed Excel document that would even show you the engagement your photos have acquired outside of Instagram. Woot! Woot!

If you share to Facebook and Twitter from Instagram, SimplyMeasured will also show you which social platform gets the most engagement for your photos.

So say for example you share photos mostly on Instagram, sometimes on Facebook, and rarely on Twitter, then naturally the networks will be ranked in the same order for your engagement. So to get a better idea, it would be best to share some photos on all three sites to see which one give you the most engagement, as far as Instagram photos are concerned.

SimplyMeasured also looks into the engagement among your Instagram activities. That is, likes and comments per photo.  As well as your engagement via Twitter and Facebook (e.g., Facebook likes, comments, and shares per photo and retweets, favourites, and replies per photo). The measurement tool would also show your top photos for the last month, along with a keyword analysis of comments per keyword, and determines your best engagement time and day.

Nitrogram

Unlike the other two previously mentioned, this tool charges fees, with three options to choose from depending on the number of your followers or post. It does, however, offer a 14-day free trial period. It does, however, effectively measures  Instagram accounts mainly through hashtags around your business.

Why measuring the hashtags related to your business is important, is because it lets you see the number of people posting photos about you from their own accounts and how often they do so.  Heaps of other tools concetrate on your followers, but it is more crucial to find out how your audience is engaging with your content, which indicate customer satisfaction and your brand appeal.

Thus, making Nitogram worthy of its cost.

If you are yet to get on Instagram, though, take the advice of Matt Rozen, group manager of corporate social media at Adobe: “Start slowly, but get into the game,” he said. “Find the right conversations, use the right hashtags and stay active listening, commenting and posting.”

Have you set up an Instagram account for your business already? Have you started posting photos and sharing them? How have you measured your Instagram use?

About Christine

Christine is a New Zealand-based professional blogger since 2004 and is a freelance social media consultant and runs her own blog, Very Pinteresting.