Instagram's grown steadily since it became popular, now boasting over two billion monthly users — putting it as the third biggest social platform.

Success on Instagram, like any social media platform, is subject to frequent algorithm and platform updates. It's also a constant battle to remain relevant amid the sea of cool content. Yet, Instagram analytics tools can help to provide insight that can to unlock success for social media managers. 

From influencer marketing to video content, the tools listed in this guide can provide valuable insights you need to improve your Instagram presence. 

Let's find out more.

What is an Instagram analytics tool?

An Instagram analytics tool helps you track key performance indicators (KPIs) and metrics. Most of these tools "listen" to social media, to track data used in marketing reports, including: 

  • Impressions, views, and reach on each Instagram post
  • Engagement metrics like comments, reactions, shares, and clicks 
  • Conversions to sales pages 
  • Brand mentions 

Social media analytics tools help you understand the popularity and performance of Instagram accounts or content. You might use an analytics tool to measure your own content using the metrics above, or you might use it to help assess and analyze the performance of Instagram influencers you're hoping to partner with. Some brands use Instagram measuring tools to perform competitor analytics or to create customer personas for their target market. 

Why do you need Instagram analytics tools?

Without these tools, you won't be able to benchmark your content, so you won't know if a post is doing well, being heard, or getting traction with your target market. It will be harder to plan social media campaigns or influencer marketing programs because you won't have the data to guide your decisions. 

Using tools to analyze Instagram will help you make data-based decisions about your Instagram marketing strategy, and this will help you drive success. Here are some ways these tools are used.

Measure performance and engagement

The simplest and most universally valued social media metric is impressions — or how many people see your content. This is the whole reason we market on Instagram in the first place: to get our message out to as many people as possible. 

After that, we need to see engagement — how many of those viewers are moved to interact with the content. This helps you understand how well your message is resonating with your audience. 

Understand audience demographics

Social media tools let you assess audience demographics like age, geography, gender, and more. You can use tools to track your own audience demographics or to assess the demographics of an influencer you plan to collaborate with. 

You can also use reporting tools to check the demographics following a certain hashtag. 

Refine posting strategy and goals

These tools will help you understand which content is performing, and how. It can help you choose when to post, how often to post, and what type of Instagram post to make: post, story, reel, or collaboration. Reporting tools give actionable insights into what is and isn't working, and where to expand or slow down. 

Reporting tools show how Instagram audiences evolve over time. You can use Instagram analytics to discover when a hashtag is growing in popularity, when an account is on the rise, or where audiences spend their time.

Improve ad campaigns

Metrics help you identify the strengths and weaknesses of your campaigns. If your ad has high impressions but a poor engagement rate, it's a sign you might need to change the creative. Reporting tools give you the data to inform these choices. 

Track competitor performance

Instagram tools also let you listen in on how well your competitors are doing. Has another company in your industry recently gone viral? Instagram analytics tools can help you see that growth early and understand why they were successful. These insights can help you refine your own social media plans. 

Identify influencers and brand advocates

Knowing who to work with is one of the hardest parts of marketing on Instagram. With Instagram analytics tools to feed you data, you can select brand advocates and influencers more efficiently and be better assured of success. 

How do you choose the best Instagram analytics tool?

There are a number of factors that make a social media reporting tool for Instagram effective. They include: 

Ease of use

There's no point in using a program that is time-consuming and confusing to use. The best Instagram analytics tools allow you to quickly and easily glean a snapshot of the metric you want to see. One user-friendly dashboard is a key component of a quality tool. 

Real-time analytics

These days we're all looking for information at the speed of social. Real-time analytics allow you to respond rapidly to trends, and quickly correct campaigns that are underperforming. 

Historical data

They say we can't know where we are if we don't know where we've been. Having data that goes far back in time makes analysis more accurate, more reliable, and provides deeper insights. 

Competitor analysis

The best social media tools capture data from the entirety of Instagram, not just your own accounts. This competitive data allows you to track trends and performance across your whole industry, so you can benchmark your success – but also get a sense of how other players in your sector are doing. 

Hashtag tracking

This one seems obvious, but not all tools offer hashtag tracking. Hashtag tracking allows for suggested hashtags, helps you stay relevant, and helps you target your content to the right interest groups more efficiently.

Reporting capabilities

Reports should be flexible and versatile to meet your needs. This means not only capturing a lot of data, but letting you segment and display it in ways that help you assess and verify your Instagram strategy. 

Look for features like historic reporting and comparison tools. Reports should cover Instagram ads, organic Instagram posts, and insights into your Instagram audience like follower growth over time.

Integration with other platforms

We all work with a range of programs in our day-to-day. Social media analytics tools that integrate across platforms, and even with other reporting systems like Google Analytics or your sales software, make it easier to apply the analytics data you gather to real-world scenarios and solutions. 

Cost and budget

While the native Insights app offers a free Instagram analytics tool embedded within the platform, truly deep insights cost money. As a general rule, the more affordable Instagram analytics tools are less comprehensive than more expensive tools, the secret is in finding the best mix of cost and features for your needs. A platform with a straightforward and scalable pricing structure allows you to carefully manage your budget and get maximum bang for your buck. 

Customer support

Lastly, customer support becomes more important as Instagram analytics tools become more complicated and sophisticated. The best platforms offer reliable access to customer support by chat, email, phone, or all three.  

9 Instagram analytics tools to use in 2024

With those concepts in mind, here's a look at 9 social media marketing tools you can use to improve your Instagram performance: 

1. Brandwatch

The Brandwatch Instagram analytics tool boasts some of the most advanced analysis on the market, with robust data analysis and trend-tracking features that allow you to stay ahead of the curve. Brandwatch uses proprietary artificial intelligence (AI) software to track and even predict trends, keeping your social media strategy ahead of the competition. 

Brandwatch offers a full range of tools for content performance and channel growth with real-time and historic reporting on metrics like: 

  • Views 
  • Engagement 
  • Likes 
  • Audience demographics 
  • Sentiment 

Brandwatch also allows users to follow brand mentions and other trends across multiple platforms. The platform puts all this data at your fingertips with a range of customizable reports and easy-to-use dashboards that you can share with your team. 

Social media managers can use Brandwatch to schedule social media posts and manage organic and paid campaigns with a dashboard of social media management tools. 

The impressive number of reports – plus deep insights into posts, influencers, and coming trends – make Brandwatch a great option for your chosen Instagram analytics tool. 

2. Instagram Insights

Instagram's own native Insights tool is available if you have a business or creator account. It offers Instagram analytics data on your channel's growth and performance. This tool shines for real-time and short-term reporting on key Instagram metrics like impressions and engagement on individual posts and campaigns. 

However, the Insights tool doesn't offer a long period of historical data, and Meta tends to frequently changing up the tool which can make it difficult to keep accurate, comparative records. It's also limited in the scope of data available, with it mostly only capturing your own account performance. That said, it's a brilliant place to start.

3. Hootsuite

Hootsuite is a popular scheduling and Instagram management tool that also allows reporting on content performance. Plus, like Brandwatch, it offers social media listening to track trends and benchmark performance against competitors. 

It offers customizable reporting which you can share with your social media team. Hootsuite is a platform that allows users to schedule both paid and organic content. It pairs that content with detailed analytics reports for better insights into your performance. 

4. Sprout Social

Sprout offers reporting and dashboards that allow users to compare engagement and other KPIs across multiple accounts. Like other Instagram analytics tools, Sprout goes beyond basic analytics to deliver richer insights to social media marketer teams. 

This software includes tools for influencer analysis and revenue statistics to help demonstrate the return on investment (ROI) of your various campaigns. 

5. Iconosquare

Iconosquare is a social management tool that allows you to organize posts and engage with Instagram followers from your dashboard. You can customize the dashboard screen with automated reporting that also sends emails to your team based on the insights you assign. It's best used for clear, simple reports on your own content and account performance. 

6. Keyhole

This Instagram publishing platform ties the publishing and analytics reports into one seamless dashboard. It uses historical data from your account's own posts to offer up suggestions for optimizing your Instagram reels and stories, including the best length of each post. 

Once Keyhole has identified your top-performing posts you can drag it over to the publishing screen to repurpose and repost it, making it easy for a social media manager to action the analytics and apply them to posts right away. 

7. Zoho Social

Zoho Social offers a one-stop dashboard that offers easy-to-read and understand reports into your own social media audience on Instagram. The pre-set reports are easy to use and help bring native Instagram insights about your channel and its followers together. 

These insights allow you to explore your audience and create customer profiles you can use to inform the rest of your social media marketing strategy. 

8. Rival IQ

Rival IQ is built to help social media managers benchmark their performance against competitors. It's stand-out offering is a head-to-head report against your competitor's Instagram feed across a range of key Instagram metrics. 

The social listening tool and third-party analytic reports in Rival IQ make it a powerful tool for competitive analysis. 

9. Later

Later offers a platform for assessing native analytics from Instagram on post performance and engagement. While it looks at posts, reels, and stories, Later shines in assessing how video content performs. It will tell you the exit page from your stories and the completion rate of each view, giving you deeper insight into the success of specific content you post. 

How to track Instagram analytics with Brandwatch

It's easy to connect your Instagram account to Brandwatch and manage your posts and analytics from within the program suite. Here are five steps to track Instagram analytics using Brandwatch:

  1. Sign up for a Brandwatch account
  2. Connect your Instagram account to Brandwatch
  3. Setup your reports and data using the Brandwatch dashboard
  4. Configure and save reports to suit your needs
  5. Visit your dashboard to access your Instagram analytics reports

It's that easy to gather meaningful reports and insights into the performance of your Instagram posts. Book a meeting with the team today to find out how you can use our social media reports to grow your Instagram audience. 

FAQs

Does Instagram have an analytics tool?

Yes, Instagram offers a native Insights tool to help you assess your social media efforts. 

You'll need a business or creator account to use the tool. You can access the Insights analytics dashboard with these steps:

  1. Go to your profile in the Instagram app
  2. Tap the menu icon
  3. Tap "Insights" 

You can also access these free Instagram analytics through the Meta Business Suite dashboard on Facebook. 

How do you check someone's Instagram analytics?

Third-party Instagram analytics apps like Brandwatch allow you to explore the Instagram performance of social media posts on other users' profiles. These programs use Instagram data from other accounts to help you monitor key metrics from competitors and other accounts, such as likes and engagements.

Can Instagram analytics show who viewed your profile?

No, there is no Instagram analytics app or third-party programs that can show you when someone viewed your profile. The only way to get a sense of who's viewing your profile is by looking at who has viewed your stories. Some audience insights providers offer this data within their suite of Instagram reporting tools. 

Are there any free Instagram analytics tools?

Yes, the native Instagram Insights app offers data on audience demographics, content views and engagement plus a small amount of other data. However, it doesn't offer social listening, trends reports, or any of the other sophisticated Instagram reports you'll find in paid digital marketing tools.