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The Ideal Metrics to Track Social Media Performance

Stephanie Mayberry on May 4, 2022

Have you ever heard of a little thing called social media metrics? These marketing tricks help you gauge the effectiveness of your social media strategy, which is pretty important no matter the size of your business. 

In a nutshell, social media metrics help you measure the success of a campaign and the overall impact your social media performance has on your business. And it measures these analytics by tracking things like engagement, sales, clicks, and overall growth.

When most people outside of marketing think of social media, they likely don’t think of strategy and statistics. 

However, it’s hard to know what works for your audience without a plan, goals, and calculated measurements. Without tracking the metrics, every post is like a random shot in the dark. Any marketing without intention (unless you strike some luck) is a waste of time.

So if you’re a business using social media marketing and want to grow your account and make sales, then this post is for YOU . 

Without further ado, there are three important things to consider when measuring your social media metrics. 

  1. What metrics to measure 
  2. Where to measure them 
  3. How to analyze metric performance

And the best part is I’ll be taking you through all of that in this post. By the time you’re done, you’ll be able to track your analytics like a pro.

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So let’s get to it, shall we?

What Metrics to Measure

Social media metrics give you a birds’ eye view of your content’s performance. But what social media analytics should you measure to include any potential blind spots? 

There are four significant factors to keep in mind that’ll help determine the impact your social media presence is making. These four factors will help you see what your target audience prefers and the success of your campaigns. 

Whether you’re a social media marketing manager or an entrepreneur, tracking these analytics will reveal everything you need to know about the success of your efforts. 

1. Reach

There are two different types of reach that should be measured. And if you’re wondering, “how could there be different types of reach?”, don’t worry because we’re friends now, and I’ll explain why they’re different yet equally important.

The first type is post reach which keeps track of how many people organically saw the content since it was posted. This is really helpful in seeing where you’re falling in the algorithm and if people are seeing your posts or not. 

It also helps measure the engagement percentage to gauge the direct impact your content has on its targeted audience. (We’re just scratching the surface on this topic, but I’ll go into greater detail below. )

The second type is potential reach which shows how many people likely saw your post during a certain period of time. When calculating potential reach, there are three factors taken into consideration.

  1. Unique Views – How many people saw it both organically and through re-shares? 
  2. Impressions – How many people interacted with the content? This includes likes, comments, and shares. (Want to learn more? Check out our blog post on navigating Instagram impressions and reach!)
  3. Follower Count – Did anyone follow you after seeing that post? 
  4. Audience Growth Rate – Did you maintain followers or lose any? What’s your overall growth rate? And is that continually climbing, declining, or remaining the same?

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2. Share of Voice

This analysis helps you see how many people are mentioning and tagging your account compared to your competitors. It enables you to evaluate your brand’s visibility and relevance within your market’s niche. 

3. Conversion Metrics

These analytics help you see how effective your social engagement is at converting followers and making sales. Conversion metrics help you determine how engaging your content is and whether or not you’re targeting the right audience.

You can track conversion metrics depending on where the traffic is coming from and what type of content you’re measuring. But these analytics will significantly help you determine the effectiveness of your social media strategy. 

  1. Website Referrals show how many people come from other websites to yours and which websites are bringing them to yours. This is a standard metric used in affiliate programs and influencer marketing. 
  2. Social Media Conversions track how many people visit your website directly from social media, which helps you see the effectiveness of a post or campaign. 
  3. Conversion Rate is your post’s ratio of comments to the number of overall followers. This metric allows you to see if your audience was inspired to add their voice to your content. 
  4. Click-Through-Rate (CTR) tracks how often people click on a specific link you provide for additional content. CTRs are a great tool when determining how compelling the CTA is to your audience. 
  5. Bounce Rate is a marketing term for the percentage of people who click a link and quickly leave the page without taking any action. The lower your bounce rate, the more people are interacting with your page, meaning you’re hitting the right target audience. 

4. Engagement Metrics

These are the most straightforward metrics to track, but they aren’t necessarily the most reliable. Algorithms change frequently, and sometimes a killer post can just get lost. However, the more loyal your audience, the less your content will be negatively impacted by algorithm changes. 

So even though these analytics are more subjective, they’re still critical to consider when determining what is working in your social media strategy and what could use improvement. 

There are several engagement metrics to keep in mind that the apps will track for you. And we’ll discuss that right meow.

  1. Likes – This is the lowest form of determining engagement analytics because it is considered the least effort someone has to put into = engaging with a post. This number will generally be the highest analytic and is just part of the picture. 
  2. Comments – Comments are a better indicator of a post’s success. When someone comments, they feel called to share their opinion, which means they want to engage with your content and be a part of the story. Comments are one of the easiest ways to determine if content hits the targeted audience or not.
  3. Shares – The next level up from comments is someone re-sharing your content as that goes beyond interacting with your content. Re-shares are essentially someone recommending your account to their audience.
  4. Clicks – This was briefly mentioned in Click-Through-Rate and Bounce-Rate. But this essentially shows the percentage of people who clicked on your content.
  5. Applause Rate – This metric takes the total number of actions just listed (likes, comments, shares, and clicks) a post receives compared to your number of followers. It provides valuable information on how valuable your audience found that post. 
  6. Likes – This is the lowest form of determining engagement analytics because it is considered the least effort someone has to put into = engaging with a post. This number will generally be the highest analytic and is just part of the picture. 
  7. Comments – Comments are a better indicator of a post’s success. When someone comments, they feel called to share their opinion, which means they want to engage with your content and be a part of the story. Comments are one of the easiest ways to determine if content hits the targeted audience or not.
  8. Shares – The next level up from comments is someone re-sharing your content as that goes beyond interacting with your content. Re-shares are essentially someone recommending your account to their audience.
  9. Clicks – This was briefly mentioned in Click-Through-Rate and Bounce-Rate. But this essentially shows the percentage of people who clicked on your content.
  10. Applause Rate – This metric takes the total number of actions just listed (likes, comments, shares, and clicks) a post receives compared to your number of followers. It provides valuable information on how valuable your audience found that post. 
Instagram screenshot for tracking reach

(Interested in growing your engagement on Pinterest? We did a study on how to organically grow your Pinterest engagement.)

 Now that we discussed what you should be measuring and the importance of those metrics, let’s go over how to do it. While you may be scratching your head wondering how to keep track of these crucial analytics, sit back and relax because it’s simpler than you’d think. 

How to Measure Social Media Campaign Performance

Tracking several metrics on multiple social media platforms and analyzing performance can be a full-time job. 

Luckily some apps will track all of that data for you and keep it stored in one single place. Social media tracking apps are simple and great for solo entrepreneurs and companies without a marketing team. 

And an app like Tailwind can measure those analytics, saving you from compiling and analyzing the data yourself.

Tailwind allows you to track important analytics for both Pinterest and Instagram, but it has several other capabilities too! 

Tailwind Create allows you to make custom posts from templates made by graphic designers. Hashtag Finder makes it easier than ever to find the perfect hashtags that will get your post the most traction. Smart.Bio allows you to include links to various places and tracks when each one is visited. And Tailwind Communities gives you a space to engage with people in your similar niche on Pinterest. 

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Thanks to social media tracking tools, you don’t need to be a marketer to grow your accounts strategically. Marketing is easier and more accessible than ever.

Tailwind’s blog also keeps our users and readers up-to-date on social media best practices and app changes, like this post on using Pinterest analytics. 

Social media performance doesn’t have to be a mystery!

Next Steps

As you can see, social media metrics and tracking your social media performance don’t have to be a headache. 

And it’s also vital to your accounts’ growth and success. 

Without tracking these metrics, every post is a missed opportunity to learn something from your target audience on what works verse what doesn’t.

While some analytics are easy to see and keep track of, such as likes and comments, an additional app like Tailwind can help keep track of those analytics plus more. Tailwind will also help break the data down into easily digestible information. 

You don’t need to be a marketing guru to leverage social media and convert followers into customers. 

If you’re not already a Tailwind user, you can try our forever-free plan and see if it’s worth retiring some of those rotating hats you have been juggling. Why not see if it can take a load off your plate and give you fewer things to worry about?

Now that you know what to track and how I suggest checking out our post, How to Build a Social Media Marketing Strategy, next! 

The world is your oyster, friends.

Ciao! 

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Measuring your efforts is the surest way to analyze your social media performance! Come learn what to track and the easiest ways to do so.

How to Calculate and Maximize Social Media ROI

Kristie Hill on April 26, 2022

What is Social Media ROI?

Social media ROI is simply the return on investment (ROI) from one’s social media marketing expenses and activities. Such expenses and activities might include ads, strategic campaigns, a redesign of the website, updated social media bios, etc.

The return can be in the form of revenue, brand awareness, improved customer service, customer loyalty, and much more. At an ideological level, this type of ROI is how much value you receive from the investments you make into social media marketing.

While this may seem like a simple enough concept, obtaining and demonstrating a strong social media ROI is not overly straightforward.

In fact, as of September 1, 2021, a mere 15% of social media marketers were measuring social ROI, according to a Sprout Social Index. However, anyone who incorporates these practices is likely to be several steps ahead of the competition.

How to Calculate and Measure Social Media ROI: 5-Step Plan

1. Define your goals

To begin, it is essential to define your goals and your brand’s social media purpose. The purpose of social media is different for each company. It might even be different for each product or campaign. Some examples of a purpose are as follows: 

  • To make more money
  • Raise brand awareness
  • Community building
  • Better address customer comments
  • Enhance customer experience and loyalty

For goals, make sure they are actionable, measurable, and realistic. Such goals should also be specific to each campaign and in coordination with establishing goals for social media ROI in general.

Do not forget that goals should also be in line with overall business goals and overall marketing goals. By defining your goals in a specific manner, it will be easier when it comes time to calculate your ROI. 

To define your goals, be sure to decide what you want to get out of your campaign. Keep in mind that setting goals is not a one-size-fits-all approach. What is right for your brand may not be realistic for another. The same is true for each campaign. The following are some goals to consider: 

  • Raise brand awareness
  • Gain followers
  • Audience engagement
  • Signups for newsletter
  • Time spent on a page
  • Leads generated
  • Clicks on a link
  • Purchases
  • Downloads

In the end, goals should be based on measurable actions that can be monitored. This will help to demonstrate and present the value of your efforts to decision-makers. 

2. Measure your progress

Establish metrics to be able to calculate social media ROI. Marketing metrics are a way to track the performance and outcome of a campaign to determine its effectiveness. Before you begin tracking metrics, do not forget to benchmark your ROI for paid social media initiatives. This can be done by measuring the ROI of existing social media marketing efforts prior to launching new campaigns or tactics.

And create a specific period of time to measure, such as the first two weeks or specific dates. LinkedIn research revealed that 77% of marketing individuals measured results during the first month of any campaign despite sales cycles being longer in many instances. The way many organizations and individuals measure progress with metrics is by tracking websites and social media.

On a website, you can use Google analytics to determine social media traffic and which platforms bring in such traffic. For social media, each platform, such as Twitter and Instagram, offers an analytics tool to track interactions and engagements with your audience.

You can keep track of new followers over a specific period of time, how many people save a post, etc. Each metric gathered can help improve the effectiveness of a campaign as well as the overall marketing strategy. 

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3. Assign a monetary value to your results

To be able to prove that social media investments are worth the time and money, it will be critical to assign a monetary value to your results. One option is to calculate the lifetime value, or the amount you earn from a customer on average. A formula is often applied to determine the potential value of each visit from a customer.

This formula is the lifetime value x the conversion rate. For example, you might take the lifetime value and multiply that by the average number of email subscribers who become customers to find the real potential value of a customer visit. 

Another monetary value can be assigned as the average sale. If the goal of your campaign is to try to get sales, then you’ll want to calculate your average sale amount and set that as the value.

In this case, your destination page would have to be the page that shows up after a customer completes a purchase. When returns are achieved organically, see how much it would have cost to generate those same returns with ads. The monetary value will be the amount you save.

4. Track your investment

Another component to determine the ROI of social media is to track your investments. The type of investments will vary by campaign. This might include: 

  • Advertising costs
  • Cost of each employee’s hours spent working on the campaign
  • Expense of hiring someone to write content or social media posts
  • Fees for social media tools, like social media management software 

It is important that these expenses are weighted. This means that if you use social media tools all year, only include the charges from the weeks or months of the campaign’s duration. And be sure to separate paid and organic social media tracking. 

5. Calculate your social media ROI

Now that you have all the information and tools to figure out your social media ROI, it is time to calculate. You will need to have profit and investment per campaign at the ready. Profit is the money you earned from, the value of, etc., various social media marketing efforts.

Whereas, investment is the total cost of social media marketing efforts. The following is the social media ROI formula: 

The actual calculation → (Profit-investment/investment) x100 = ROI %

And, in the end, you must be able to showcase ROI in an easily digestible report for decision-makers and team members who may not fully grasp social media ROI. You want these reports to follow a basic template.

They should use plain language void of jargon and acronyms. Include results that relate to relevant business objectives. Use KPIs to track progress in the short term. And clearly express any limitations and aspects that you can and can’t measure.

4 Tips for Maximizing Social Media ROI

These tips can help maximize social media ROI!

  • If you are unsure whether a campaign is right, consider a test campaign. Experiment with different platforms, ad formats, and target audiences. Once you determine which aspects work best, you can launch a full-scale campaign with greater results. 
  • For any campaign, always keep goals in mind during the development and execution stages. It is critical to consider all goals, including the business goals, marketing goals, and campaign goals. You may have to reevaluate mid-campaign to remain aligned with ROI goals.   
  •   Look at the data with great frequency. Take advantage of the tools you have to track and monitor data. Evaluate data from a micro and macro perspective, or rather in great detail and from a broader viewpoint.

And, do not forget to use the many helpful social media marketing tools that exist. Tailwind has scheduling tools, analytics, and even Tailwind Create to help you make sure your campaign is a success! Check out Tailwind’s free trial to start getting the most value possible from your social media investment!

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Social media ROI can be a confusing topic, but it is vital for successful marketing. Here’s the ultimate guide to understanding and measuring social media ROI.

10 Social Media Optimization Strategies

Kristie Hill on March 16, 2022

Social media marketing can often seem like the wild west. Anything goes, and marketers have to try everything to see what sticks.

However, this isn’t the most efficient way of going about social media marketing. There are ways to make your campaigns more efficient while focusing your energy into what works instead of what doesn’t.

Let’s talk about the key elements of social media optimization and how you can optimize your social media campaigns.

What is Social Media Optimization (SMO)?

Simply put, social media optimization is all about finding what works best for your brand and focusing in on that success. There’s no point in spending time and money on social media campaigns that don’t benefit your business.

However, it can be challenging to figure out what will work and what won’t. Building a popular brand on social media networks is extremely important, so it’s critical that businesses focus on the most efficient path to success.

Some common social media optimization strategies are:


  • Efficient post scheduling – when should you post content so that it reaches its maximum potential audience and achieves the highest level of engagement?

  • Intelligent hashtag usage – which hashtags should you use in your posts that will garner you the best results?

  • Intelligent profile creation – figuring out the best way to present your brand’s social media profile descriptions and links to users is important for any brand’s success.

  • Focus on community – How can you engage with your brand’s audience over time and make them feel part of the action?

How is Social Media Optimization Related to Search Engine Optimization?

If social media optimization (SMO) seems similar to search engine optimization (SEO) to you, then you’re not wrong!

They are related in some ways, but they have distinct characteristics. One important aspect of SMO is that it can improve SEO performance when done correctly.

They both have similar goals as well, as both aim to raise content awareness with a company’s audience and drive more traffic to websites and services that businesses operate.

As social media becomes more important in people’s everyday lives, so too does social media optimization for brands.

SMO For Every Platform

SMO can be applied to any platform, including Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and more.

Each platform has its own nuance to it, so marketing on these sites will never be exactly the same.

Designing social media content for any platform should take all aspects into account.

The Main Idea of SMO

The most important element of SMO that will be a theme throughout the rest of this guide is that properly executing SMO involves formulating a strategy, putting that strategy into action, and then monitoring its progress.

This makes it similar to SEO marketing, but with a deeper focus on the nuance of the particular social media platforms you’re working with.

Why is Social Media Optimization Important?

Social media optimization can help your business be discovered more easily. Since social media is extremely pervasive in our society, more and more businesses are using it to promote their brand.

Leveraging the power of social media is critical for remaining competitive in the modern market. This is important even for local businesses.

Successfully implementing SMO can lead to better audience engagement and increased brand awareness. It can also help your brand reach a wider audience through different social media platforms.

SMO can also help marketers assess their ROI and other KPIs more concretely. These strategies can also help your business perform better on search engines, as social pages will rank for certain keywords.

Being connected with your audience on social media also helps marketers measure the response and thoughts of their audience.

With that in mind, let’s talk about specific ways that we can utilize social media optimization to benefit our brands and businesses.

#1 | Identify Your Social Media Goals

One of the most important aspects of social media optimization is to simply take a second to understand what you’re trying to achieve. 

Focusing on what you want to accomplish will help narrow your strategy down and help you find purpose in your campaigns. Different campaigns will emerge from different goals. A strategy related to boosting sales will differ from a strategy that focuses on boosting a company’s followers on Instagram. 

The length of these goals is also important to consider. It can be helpful to break down your goals into pieces and ask questions that can help you zero in on those goals. 

Who is your target audience? What benefits do you offer through your social media presence? What are your competitors doing and who is following them? What kinds of quality content can you provide that differentiate you from that competition? 

These are questions that can help you narrow down your goals and help you make better decisions when optimizing your social media campaigns.

#2 | Take Advantage of Your Profile

Consider that your profile is something nearly everyone in your audience may see. If they are curious enough to click on your profile after seeing a post they find interesting, what they see next is critical to retaining their viewership. 

It’s important to fill out your profile as much as possible. Pay close attention to your profile picture, bio, links, location, and store hours. These will depend on the platform you’re using. 

Your profile is a golden opportunity to communicate with your audience about what your business does and what matters to you. Be sure to include important keywords as these can help improve your search ranking not just on social platforms but also on search engines. 

Be sure to make your company’s profiles across all social networks as consistent as possible. This will help with brand recognition. Profiles on social media are essential for social media optimization.

#3 | Do Your Research

Social media optimization strategies require research to be successful, just like SEO.

Taking a deeper look into competitor strategies and analyzing keywords can help you make your campaigns more successful.

Finding what keywords you’d like to implement into your campaigns can help formulate more effective hashtags and captions.

#4 | Use Hashtags

Knowing how to use hashtags is incredibly important for the optimization of any social media campaign. After you’ve done keyword research, top keywords can transform into hashtags that can help you accomplish your campaign’s goals. 

Each social media platform is different in terms of how its hashtags function. For example, using single hashtags can be more effective than multiple ones. 

Instagram is the opposite, performing well with as many as 30 hashtags per post! However, we recommend sticking to approximately 11 hashtags per post if possible. 

Remember the purpose of hashtags: helping people find your content. For your business, this means that you can extend your reach to a wider audience. 

Be sure that the hashtags you use are relevant to your brand. The more users that you reach, the more engagement that you will receive. 

On Instagram, engagement has been declining in recent years, making it more important than ever to adopt effective outreach and engagement strategies for your brand.

#5 | Optimize Your Content

It’s critical to ensure that the content you’re creating is relevant for consumers. You should avoid redundant, pushy, or other language that comes off as trying to sell something too overtly. 

Some different types of engaging content include infographics, news, and giveaways. Images are also a great way to increase engagement. Just like with other social media optimization strategies, take a step back every once in a while and consider if your content is closely aligned with your goals. 

Each platform also has specific ins and outs that are very important for social media marketers to take into account.

For example, verifying your website on Pinterest is very important for helping you rank in Pinterest search results. 

Paying attention to the way that your URL slug will appear on a post is important as well, as this can affect your post’s SEO performance. 

Creating high-quality social media posts can be very effective for building your brand and building more brand awareness. The more that you build out your brand on social media, the more recognizable your business will be across platforms. 

It will also become more difficult to replicate your marketing which differentiates your content from the competition.

#6 | Craft Effective and Attention-Grabbing Captions & Headlines

Your overall goal must be to capture the attention of your audience and maintain it. A common misconception is that captions and headlines should always be positive. 

It’s easy to imagine that a negative headline might drive away a user. However, negatively framed headlines can actually be extremely effective in hooking a reader into your content. 

For example, a headline titled “3 Things You Should Never Do…” can hook your audience quickly and consistently and is an effective way to optimize your social media content.

Positive Headline Negative Headline
3 Things You Should Do 3 Things You Should Never Do
How X Can Help You Get Work Done Don’t Buy X Until You Read This
This New Video Broke the Internet 10 Foods You Should Think Twice About Eating

Be sure to include keywords in your captions. Make sure that they reflect your brand and your goals. 

Numbers can also be effective for drawing in engagement with your content. Captions should also feature some kind of call to action. 

Integrating emotion into your captions can also be effective at converting and enticing users. Emojis can also be helpful, having the potential to boost engagement dramatically.

#7 | Create a Posting Schedule

Consistency and activity on social media is critical for a brand’s success with any audience. You should take some time to find the right schedule for posting in order to maximize brand engagement. 

Do research to find when your audience is online most often. This will vary based on the time of year, who you’re trying to reach, as well as your audience’s demographic. 

Different platforms are effective for different levels of frequency as well and mastering these can be helpful for optimizing your social media strategy.

Platform Frequency
Facebook 3-10 posts per week
Twitter 5+ posts per day
LinkedIn 2-5 posts per week
Pinterest 5-10 posts per day

It’s also important to think about when the best time to post is during the course of the day. 

This will vary based on what platform you’re using, but keeping in mind when your audience is most active during the day will help you better optimize your social media campaigns and achieve the most engagement.

#8 | Engage with Your Followers

Being active and responding to your audience is extremely important for social media optimization. 

Be sure to respond quickly and kindly to your followers. Remember that every follower is a potential customer that can add more value to your company.

#9 | Keep Track of the Results, and Change What Isn’t Working

Monitoring your progress is one of the most critical components of social media optimization. 

If you don’t know how you’re doing, it’s impossible to improve and narrow down how to achieve your goals over time. 

Every social media marketer should track results and metrics depending on the platform they’re using. Some metrics to watch are:


  • Likes

  • Shares

  • Follows

  • Retweets

  • Post views

  • Link clicks

Be sure to pay close attention to what’s working well and what isn’t.

Optimizing your social media campaigns is all about adjustment. Achieve your goals by keeping what works and tossing out what doesn’t.

#10 | Using the Best Tools for Social Media Optimization

Using professional tools to optimize your social media campaigns can greatly increase your results and help you accomplish your goals faster with higher ROI. Tailwind is an effective solution that provides features such as SmartSchedule, Hashtag Finder, Smart.bio, and more for Instagram marketers. 

Pinterest marketers can take advantage of scheduling, creativity tools, and community features as well with Tailwind. 

One of the best parts about Tailwind’s social media optimization suite is that the creation tools don’t require any design skills, making them very easy to use for marketers of all skill levels.

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Social Media Optimization Strengthens Brands

In a very competitive digital landscape, social media optimization is incredibly important for strengthening brands online. Utilizing effective tools, doing the right research, and planning out your content can make or break your business’s success on social media platforms. 

Industry experts like Tailwind provide effective tools that can elevate your brand and help you achieve your goals more efficiently. 

When you’re ready to optimize your company’s social media presence, try out Tailwind’s social media tools today for free to see how professional content can help you achieve the results you need!

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Check Out the New Instagram Professional Dashboard!

Paul Dughi on February 17, 2021

Instagram Professional Dashboard

If you’re an Instagram for Business account user, you’re likely familiar with many of the changes the platform has rolled out over the past year. In 2020 alone, Instagram introduced Badges, Instagram Shop, Checkout, and Branded Content tools, to name a few!

Now Instagram is changing things up slightly to help business owners and content creators grow their business on the platform- the Professional Dashboard!

Instagram Offers a New View for Tools and Insights

The new Professional Dashboard will serve as a central hub on the Instagram app for business owners and creators to access all the tools and resources they need!

This dashboard will allow you to track your performance metrics, use professional tools, and learn social media stats and strategies cultivated by Instagram.

The dashboard will have three sections: 

  1. Track Your Performance 
  2. Grow Your Business 
  3. Stay Informed

Track Your Performance

This section will show you insights and trends based on your account’s performance. 

Some of these insights include: 

Accounts Reached 

This section details the reach and impressions of your content.

Here you can sort your top posts, Stories, and IGTV videos by reach. You can also see data on your profile visits, such as the number of taps received on your Instagram profile action buttons – like ‘Call’, ‘Text’, or ‘Directions’!

Content Interaction 

This is where you will find all the engagement metrics, such as likes, comments, shares, and more, for your Posts, Stories, and IGTV videos.

You can also see your top Posts, Stories, and IGTV videos by interactions to get clues about what content is performing best!

Instagram Professional Dashboard

Your Audience 

This section will show you data and demographics on the users seeing and interacting with your content. You’ll find out information like, age, gender, location and most active times for your audience!

Content You Shared 

This section will showcase all the content you’ve shared or promoted for the last 7 or 30 days.

You can view and filter all your content (Posts, Stories, IGTV) by media type, reach, interactions, and time frame. This is another valuable way to see what content is resonating your followers most, and what content seems to be falling flat.

Grow Your Business

This section contains the professional tools you can use to help improve your business’s presence on Instagram.  

Some of these tools include: 

Branded Content Tools 

Branded content tools allow creators and businesses to easily post and clearly disclose branded content, no matter what Instagram format they choose to use. Here’s where you can manage the Branded Content tag as a Creator. Businesses will also see Branded Content Approvals in this section, where they can manage tag requests, approvals, business partners, and Ad Creation!

Branded Content Activity 

This section gives key metrics and indicates how your branded content is performing. 

Instagram Shopping 

Instagram Shopping allows businesses to post products and users to buy directly from the app. Use this section of the dashboard to monitor the ‘Shop’ side of your account.

Saved Replies 

This section allows you to craft, save, and view replies to commonly asked questions about your business. Write it once, save it here, and use a shortcut to insert it into Direct Message conversations later, rather than having to type it out every time. 

Stay Informed

This part of the dashboard is where you can find all of the tips, tricks, best practices, and guidance Instagram has specifically curated to help business owners and creators like you make the most of the platform. 

You can also find Instagram Guides created by Instagram’s Creator account saved here for easy reference! 

Conclusion: Instagram’s Professional Dashboard is a One-Stop Shop

Although the new Professional Dashboard might seem to really ~shake up~ your Instagram experience, nothing about the analytics or tools Instagram offers has changed with the update. 

The new dashboard simply allows you to see all your insights and tools together in one place, rather than having to click into multiple parts of the platform (And who doesn’t love things that make your life easier?!).

What do you think about the new update? Let us know in the comments below

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The Instagram Professional Dashboard organizes all your analytics, tools and resources in one place. Take a walkthrough with us!

The Instagram Story Insights That Matter

Lacey Mark on October 31, 2019

how to use Instagram Story insights to boost your engagement and followers

There one minute, gone the next! ⏳

You might be wondering why you should even spend time getting familiar with your Instagram Story insights if Stories just vanish after 24 hours?

Well, there’s a great reason! If you struggle to hang onto engagement, Instagram stories could become your best friend. That’s because by nature, Stories create urgency. When people know your Story will disappear after 24 hours, FOMO kicks in. Plus, Stories propel your content to the top of the feed so you don’t have to worry about the algorithm.

To make Stories effective for driving engagement and connecting with your followers though, we suggest keeping an eye on the analytics so you can understand how people engage with your stories – and provide more of the content they like!

Why Instagram Story Analytics Are Key for Growth

Did you know that 500 million people interact with Instagram stories every day?

We think that’s a lot of potential for starting conversations and increasing your followers!

Plus, 96% of marketers surveyed in the US said they plan to not only start but keep using Instagram Story ads over the next six months. And hey, let’s be real: brands wouldn’t spend money on advertising methods if they weren’t delivering a return.

You can make Stories work for you too – whether your goals are boosting leads and conversions or just sharing your brand story and connecting with your followers!

Here are just some of the ways you can create a Stories strategy that works for your brand:

  • Create permanent content by saving your top Stories to Highlights
  • Propel yourself to the top of the feed and gain a ton of visibility with your followers
  • Promote websites, products and landing pages
  • Increase overall brand awareness and educate your followers
  • Collect valuable information about your followers and their interests
  • Test out fresh Instagram Story features and cool secret tricks for engagement

Instagram Stories are filled with potential for engagement and boosting your audience and understanding your Instagram Story analytics can help you make the most of them!

How to Find Your Instagram Story Insights

First things first: you need a professional account, also called a Business account. Don’t worry, you don’t need to have a registered brand or physical storefront. The Professional option is simply one of three account types you can use on Instagram. Another is the Creator account!

To change your Instagram account settings, go to your profile page and click the three bars located in the top right corner to open your menu. Then select the Settings gear at the bottom. You can find a complete walkthrough for setting up a business account here!

To find your Insights:

1. Tap the second option in your Instagram menu (the bar chart icon).

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2. Click on Insights and then click on the Content tab. Scroll down to the Stories section and you’ll see a preview that contains any of your active stories. For any past stories that are over 24 hours old, just click the See All button and choose the story you want to analyze.

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3. Open your active story and swipe up to quickly access your current Instagram story analytics

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How to Track Your Instagram Story Analytics to Level-Up Your Instagram

This is where the exciting details are! Let’s dive into Instagram Story insights, and what each tells you about your audience.

Interactions

Interactions include any actions people took through your Story.

  • Replies: How many people replied to you in a message through the Story
  • Profile Visits: How many people visited your profile
  • Sticker Taps: How many times someone clicked on one of your location tags, polls, mentions, or hashtags stickers (and which ones they clicked)

HOW TO APPLY THIS INFORMATION:

Interactions are great Instagram story analytics to watch for tracking your engagement. Here are some insights you can pull:

  • If you included a sticker as a CTA, did people click it?
  • If you included a poll, did people respond?
  • If you asked a question, did people reply?

Grab these metrics and throw them into a spreadsheet. Check them out next to your general post analytics and track them over time to find areas for improvement, including topics you’ll want to pinpoint what people are responding to positively, so you can create more content like it!

Those most-viewed Stories can be saved in another spot, too! You can save these into categories in your Story Highlights!? The ones people can’t get enough of? THOSE are the ones you need to turn into categories for story highlights!

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Discovery

If you’re wondering what Discovery means, it’s a fancy way of saying reach, in this case. In other words, how many accounts were reached with your Story. There are two important metrics here:

  • Impressions: How times someone viewed your story, even replays.
  • Reach: How many individual accounts viewed your story at least once.
  • Follows: New followers you gained

HOW TO USE THEM: Instagram is providing valuable information by including new follower counts with Impressions as a broader Discovery category. With these numbers, it’s easy to track reach and new exposure in one place. You can use this to your advantage!

If your number of impressions is higher than your number of accounts reached, congratulations! That means people are replaying your story because they found it interesting.

One thing Instagram doesn’t tell us how many of our story views came from non-followers yet. You can, however, measure your current follower count against your story Impressions.

If your story impressions nearly reach or surpass your follower count, you can bet non-followers viewed your story. From there, ask yourself how many new followers you gained through the story.

If non-followers seem to be viewing your story but aren’t clicking follow, that means you’re either not reaching the right people or (sigh) your story wasn’t interesting enough.

You could also cross-reference new followers with your profile view stat from the Impressions section. Are non-followers viewing your profile but not clicking follow? Maybe there’s a mismatch between the audience and content.

The Tailwinds Hashtag Finder can help you find the most engaging hashtags to help promote your stories.

Navigation

The Navigation set of Instagram Story insights are interesting because they report the behavior of your audience, and how they physically navigated your Stories!

  • Back: How many people clicked back to view the previous story again
  • Forward: How many people tapped to see the next story before your story finished playing
  • Next Story: The number of times someone swiped out of your story to see the next account’s Story
  • Exited: How many times someone exited your Story and went back to the main feed, or left the Instagram app completely during your story

HOW TO USE THEM:  Instagram Story Navigation insights inform you how engaging and interesting your Stories are, or if there’s something you could be doing even better with your content!

  • Is everything cropped and positioned properly? Using the right size and dimensions will give your Story a professional look and ensure that viewers understand your message.
  • Did you include a CTA or sticker to engage your follower even more?
  • Does your story content match your typical content and voice? You want to give your followers and non-followers a consistent idea of who you are through Stories.

Although not ideal, don’t let exits and swipes get to you too much. They are a great learning opportunity to help you fine-tune your Stories content!

In Conclusion

With so many awesome features and tricks, Instagram stories are almost a separate platform on their own.

Tailwind can help you post your best Stories at the perfect time with scheduling – and more! Upload photos and schedule them from your browser or mobile device so you can spend more time focusing on your Story strategy.

When you create an account with Tailwind, we’ll meticulously scan your followers and let you know when they’re most active on Instagram each day. So you’ll always know the perfect time for each post.Using the Hashtag Finder, you can grab the best hashtags for your posts and stories for a chance at higher engagement and reaching the right audience! Plus, you can track your analytics in one place.

See how scheduling your Stories and tracking Instagram Story analytics can take your engagement into a new world! Take Tailwind for a spin now for free no strings attached or credit card required.

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The 21 Instagram Statistics Marketers Really Need in 2019

Greg Starling on January 30, 2019

Ever wondered who is really using Instagram and if your customers are there? How old they are, what’s the gender split? How about how Instagrammers spend their time on the platform and how do businesses actually turn likes, hashtags, and comments into income?

Well, you’ve found it here. We’ve gathered 21 Instagram statistics that reveal all of that and more. Beyond that, we’ll share why those demographics and other numbers matter and what to do with this information to make the most of your Instagram marketing.

After all, this is about more than numbers. It’s about real people and real business – YOUR business! And it’s about how you’ll turn followers, views, and Instagram engagement into real business growth.  That’s right. We’re about to make these 21 Instagram statistics work for you.

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Instagram User Statistics – Who is Using Instagram?

This summer, Instagram hit one BILLION monthly active Instagram users .

That’s nearly one in seven humans on the planet and double the number just two years ago! While the U.S. claims the largest number of users, India isn’t far behind, and in fact, around 80 percent of users are outside the US.

Instagram user growth chart. 90 M in 2014 to 1B in June 2018

Of the 121 million users located in the U.S., 32.6 percent are between 25-34 years old, with 18-24 year olds making up a further 23.7 percent share.  Of all US users, just over half (55 percent) are female.

Don’t discount the more mature among us, though! Fully 40 percent of those aged 30-49 in the U.S. use the app. With 21 percent of those 50-64 and 10 percent of the 65+ crowd also utilizing Instagram.

Many Instagram users have money to spend. In fact, of U.S. earners of over 75K per year, a full 42% are on Instagram.

Why it Matters: The broad adoption (one BILLION users!)  of Instagram across a large geographic and demographic range means that your customers likely ARE engaging on the network. And with a good number of high earners there, making effective use of Instagram can have an outsized impact on your bottom line.

What to Do Next: Find out if YOUR customers are on Instagram (chances are pretty good). An easy place to start is to see if your competition is on Instagram. If they are, it’s possible they’ve determined it’s a good investment for them and you can get ideas from their successful strategies. If they’re not yet on Instagram, could you be the first?

Depending on your business, you may not need to invest in highly-produced flat lays, lifestyle images, or gorgeous scenery to create a connection with your customers on Instagram. Instead, think about what they might like to see. For example:

Instagram User Behavior Statistics – What Are People DOING on Instagram?

They’re sharing photos and videos (of course!). In 2016 (when there were half the number of users), Instagrammers shared more than 95 million photos and videos every day!

Instagram users really LIKE the platform. IN fact, a couple years back,  there were 4.2 billion likes every single day! Now, that’s engagement!

Being truly social really works! On average, posts that include another user handle in the caption net 56% more engagement.

They’re also following business accounts. Eighty percent of Instagram users follow at least one business account.

Instagrammers are watching and sharing Stories! Every day 400 million Instagrammers use Stories.  Perhaps surprisingly, one third of the most-viewed Instagram Stories were created by businesses.

They’re looking for you locally! Posts tagged with a location receive 79% higher engagement.

They’re discovering new things because of hashtags. Posts with at least one hashtag average 12.6% more engagement.

Why it Matters: Instagrammers are receptive to brand messages on the platform. They want to engage with you. The increase of engagement on tagged photos suggests that your fans are anxious to bridge the digital divide and move the connection to real life. If you have a physical storefront, make them feel like they’re there with you – even if it’s through photo and video. It’s likely to lead to some IRL business!

What to Do Next: Commit to consistency on Instagram. Our study showed that posting daily works best. Learn to use Instagram Stories and influencer marketing successfully to reach people where they’re spending their time.

Effective use of hashtags can help new people discover your brand and products. Our study suggests using nine or more hashtags is best for optimum discovery. Of course, you want to use the right hashtags, especially as people can now follow hashtags are really want the content in those results to be relevant.

Tool Tip: Did you know you can save hashtag lists with Tailwind for Instagram? You can even save caption formatting if you (like me) prefer to have your captions look tidy and send your hashtags down a few rows. Here’s how. Oh, and you can also tag users and locations in your posts!

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Instagram Sales Statistics – How Businesses and Brands Make Money on Instagram

Sixty percent of people say Instagram helps them find new products.  ‍♀️

Seventy-two percent of Instagram users say they have purchased a product they saw on the app. ‍♀️ ‍♀️

Instagram users respond to influencer marketing. Thirty-six percent of Instagrammers say they have discovered new brands because of influencer marketing – and likely many more don’t recognize it! Men using Instagram are more likely to report that influencers affect their purchasing decisions than are women (41 percent compared to 30 percent).

Ninety million Instagram users click on Instagram product posts each and every month.

In one test, adding customer photos to an Instagram feed increased orders by over 23 percent.

Two hundred million Instagram users visit at least one business profile each day.

Percentage of Instagram users who say IG influences their purchases by helping them discover new products (60%), purchase (72%), respond to influencers (36%), and visit business profiles (20%)

Why it Matters: Instagrammers are clearly in the mood to shop and are strongly influenced by what they see in their feeds.

What to Do Next: Get your Instagram business profile set up to impress potential customers, making sure to set up your one link in your bio. You’ll also want an Instagram business profile so you can take advantage of more insights and to advertising, which can help get your posts in front of millions more people who are primed to buy.

Feature your products in your feed from time to time, and if you can include user-generated content in the mix, so much the better (23% better, in fact!).

Working with influencers isn’t just for the big players. Micro influencers can be affordable to work with and extremely influential in their circles. You can start by reaching out to people who have already started talking about you on Instagram (search for your branded hashtags to find them). They may be happy to share a post or two in exchange for free products or a modest payment. Just make sure everything is on the level with FTC requirements (or the governing body of your country).

In Conclusion: The 21 Instagram Statistics Marketers Really Need in 2019

Instagrammers: there are a lot of them. They are engaging with brands, and they are buying. Knowing who they are, what they’re doing on the app, and what influences their purchases can be the difference between Instagram becoming a time-consuming marketing “thing you have to do”, and a real revenue-generator. How will you use these stats for your brand?

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