F8 2017 Recap: 10 Major Announcements Every Marketer Should Know

We’re making the camera the first augmented reality platform.

— Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook F8 conference 2017

Facebook’s F8 conference was once again filled with incredibly exciting announcements.

Augmented reality (AR) could be seen as the main theme of this year’s conference. From augmented masks and special effects to 360 video camera to Facebook Spaces (an app where you can hang out with your family and friends virtually), Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook want to enable us to connect with one another on a deeper level through AR.

Besides AR, there were also announcements about Messenger, chatbots, Facebook Analytics, Facebook Live, and more!

We followed the conference for the past two days and would love to share the top 10 things we think social media marketers should take away from this F8 2017.

If you have been following the conference, too, we’d love to hear your thoughts and ideas about the amazing (and mind-blowing) announcements

10 Things marketers need to know from F8 2017

We’ll go through each of the 10 major announcements and what it means to marketers, below. If you prefer watching a video instead, here’s a quick recap of the top three announcements:

1. Augmented Reality

The biggest announcement from the conference is that Facebook will be moving towards using augmented reality to connect us with our family and friends (and maybe brands).

Instead of sci-fi-looking glasses, Facebook believes that the camera will be the first mainstream augmented reality platform (think Pokemon GO).

All the cool camera features that Facebook has been releasing over the past few weeks is just the first act of its plan to integrate augmented reality into social media. Facebook has been working on a few augmented reality technologies that will allow individuals and brands to do fun and valuable things with its camera. Some examples are adding 3D objects to your camera view, turning a 2D photo into 3D, and adding a virtual information card to objects in your camera view (such as the wine bottle in the screenshot below).

(If you are curious about these technologies, check out the demos, which start at 19:22 of the keynote.)

What it means for marketers:

When Facebook makes augmented reality mainstream (probably within the next two to three years), marketers will have an entirely new channel for reaching and connecting with their audience, just like when social media became mainstream many years back. The possibilities could be endless!

Personally, I like the example of tapping on an object in the camera view and having an information card pop up. According to Google, 82% of smartphone users research on their phones in stores before making their purchase. Augmented reality could change the way consumers research, shop, and interact with businesses.

At the moment, the best way to get started with augmented reality on Facebook might be to create (branded) masks and special effects for the Facebook camera. Let’s go through that next…

2. Camera Effects Platform

After Mark Zuckerberg shared his augmented reality vision, he launched the Facebook Camera Effects Platform — a platform that allows developers to create frames, masks, and special effects (or filters and lenses as we might be used to now) for the Facebook camera.

The two main products on this platform are Frame Studio and AR Studio.

• Frame Studio is an online creative editor that allows you to create frames for photos taken with the new Facebook camera or profile photos
• AR Studio is an application that lets you create animated masks and interactive effects for the new Facebook camera and Facebook Live

(From Facebook)

What it means for marketers:

Last year, The Information reported that people are sharing less on Facebook, with a decline of 21% in original personal content. With this new platform, Facebook might be looking to encourage users to share more by making sharing more fun.

If this trend were to pick up, it’d open up a great marketing opportunity for brands, just like Snapchat Geofilters did. Brands could create fun, relevant frames, masks, and special effects to reach their audience and then spread their reach when people share photos and videos with their creatives. The best part? It’s free to create these creatives on Facebook!

With the launch of Camera Effects Platform and Mark Zuckerberg’s special emphasis on camera as the first augmented reality platform, Facebook might push such content as much as it did with live videos over the past year.

3. Facebook Spaces

The next big announcement is the launch of Facebook Spaces — “a new VR app where you hang out with friends in a fun, interactive virtual environment as if you were in the same room”. It is now available in the Oculus Store.

With the acquisition of Oculus, Facebook wants to connect people beyond its mobile app but also in the virtual reality (VR). Facebook Spaces will allow us to hang out with our family and friends who are not physically nearby.

What it means for marketers:

It would probably be several years before social VR becomes mainstream (if it does) but it’d be great for marketers to start thinking about how marketing could be done in VR.

Looking at the video above, there could be several native and non-intrusive ways for brands to tap into the VR experience. Here’re some fun ideas I could think of:

• Travel agencies and tourism boards could let people explore certain places in VR before buying their tickets.
• Real estate companies could let potential buyers look at houses in VR before actually visiting the houses.
• Furniture companies could let customers “try out” furniture in their homes before purchasing.
• Clothes retailers could let customers “try out” clothes and chat with friends about them before buying, or even let them customize their avatars with their clothes.
• Education institutions and online learning platforms could let students attend classes together.
• And more!

Some of these might even be possible already with the new Facebook 360 camera.

4. Giphy + Facebook Live

In line with Facebook’s push for the camera to be the first augmented reality platform, Giphy launched three new products to make sharing GIFs even easier. The product that caught our attention the most was Giphy for Facebook Live.

With this new product, both you and your viewers can add GIFs to your live videos. This creates a fun, new way of engaging with your audience in real-time.

Here’s an example from a Giphy team member who went live from the F8 conference:

What it means for marketers:

Facebook has been ranking videos that are live higher on users’ news feed than when the videos are no longer live. This new feature could help increase engagement on your live videos and might help your videos rank (even) higher on your audience’s news feed.

Here’re the steps to activate this feature for your live video:

• Tap on the “Live” button in the Facebook app
• Tap on the magic wand in the upper-right corner
• Select “GIPHY LIVE”
• Tap “Go Live”
• Voilà!

When you are using the front camera (that’s facing you), there will be a ticker with hashtags that you can tap on to change the GIF. When you are using the back camera (that’s facing away from you), a microphone will appear as though you are interviewing someone.

5. Messenger Business Bots

There are now more than 100,000 chatbots on Messenger, up from 33,000 just last September. To help brands and consumers connect with each other better through such bots, Facebook released a series of updates during this year’s F8.

One of the updates is Chat Extensions, which allows multiple people to chat with the same business chatbot at the same time. For example, you could share songs from Spotify directly within your group conversation with the Spotify bot or make a holiday booking with your friends through the Kayak bot.

Another interesting update is that M, Messenger’s AI assistant, is now able to listen to your conversations and make relevant suggestions at the right time. For example, if you and your friends are talking about getting food, M would suggest playing an order through one of the food delivery bots.

(From Facebook News Room)

What it means for marketers:

This provides another great channel for marketers to reach and connect with their audience. How amazing! Instead of commenting on your Facebook post or messaging you via Messenger, your customers might choose to chat with your bot — which will be around 24/7.

If you already have a bot for your Facebook Page, you can now use call-to-actions like “Get Support” or “Shop Now” to bring people to your bot.

The bonus about bots is that they can help automate tasks, which is especially helpful for small businesses that have fewer resources. If you have not explored the idea of having a chatbot for your business, now might be a great time to start. Here’s a comprehensive article about chatbot marketing by Matthew Barby of HubSpot.

6. Messenger Discover Tab

With more and more bots being built on the Messenger Platform, Facebook wants to help users discover the right bots for the things they want to do. So during this F8, David Marcus, VP of Messenger, introduced the new Discover Tab.

It is a new section in the Messenger app where people can discover and find bots, nearby places, and businesses to message.

What it means for marketers:

With more than 1.2 billion people using Messenger every month, the Discover Tab might become a significant source of traffic for your business. While chatbots are relatively new at the moment, it might be timely to hop onto this rising trend before it gets too crowded.

Once more businesses and bots are listed in the Discover Tab, marketers might have to start thinking of ways to increase their visibility in the Discover Tab (similar to how apps try to be featured on the App Store or Google Play).

7. Parametric QR codes

Facebook is also trying to help people discover businesses in the physical world and enrich their experiences. By scanning the new parametric QR codes with the Messenger camera, people can find out more information about an event or business through a Messenger bot.

During the keynote, David Marcus showed how the Golden State Warriors are implementing several QR codes in their stadium that’d offer different experiences to their fans.

What it means for marketers:

This creates another touch point between your customers and your business, which is a great opportunity for you to provide extra value to them.

For example, if you are organizing a conference, you could create multiple QR codes for the conference. Your attendees would be able to scan your QR codes with their Messenger camera to receive a welcome message, find out the conference schedule, or see frequently asked questions about the conference.

If you are a physical retail store or a restaurant, you could create QR codes that would bring up your bots to assist your customers while they shop or dine.

8. Smart Replies for Pages

One of the challenges small businesses have is replying to all the messages they receive. With Smart Replies, Facebook wants to help small businesses automate some of the customer support processes.

Using AI, Smart Replies helps Page owners to respond to the most frequently asked questions that they receive, such as business hours, directions, and contact details. The AI would grab information from the Pages, detect the questions asked, and reply with the appropriate information.

(From Fast Company)

What it means for marketers:

Social media managers often have to juggle executing their social media strategy with answering customer support questions on social media. One great benefit of Smart Replies is that it can help free up some of your time for you to create high-quality content and engage with your audience on social media.

As the AI would grab information from your Page, it’ll be great to keep your Page information updated.

9. Facebook Analytics

Facebook Analytics, Facebook’s analytics platform previously only for apps, will now be providing analytics for Facebook Pages and offline conversions, too. This omnichannel analytics will allow businesses to measure and understand their customers’ full journey from interactions on their Facebook Pages to purchasing on their website.

This AI-powered analytics can automatically report trends and anomalies. Instead of spending a lot of time searching for the right data, Facebook Analytics will serve valuable insights directly to you.

(From Facebook Analytics blog)

What it means for marketers:

Facebook Analytics might become the new Google Analytics for social media marketers. While Google Analytics is great for web analytics, Facebook Analytics has an advantage of tying in data from Facebook. This will make it easier for marketers to prove the ROI of being on social media, particularly Facebook. For instance, you can evaluate if people who commented on an item in your Facebook post are more likely to visit your website to purchase the item.

You can now also create custom audiences based on people’s activities on your Facebook Page, app, website, or bot. This will allow you to reach more specific segments of your target audience through Facebook ads. For example, you could show your ads to people who have visited your website and interacted with your chatbot.

10. Global Connectivity

Facebook is moving from connecting family and friends to building communities. And building communities that work for everyone starts with building connectivity that works for everyone, according to Director of Connectivity Programs, Yael Maguire.

Teams at Facebook have been working on several projects such as the Aquila and Terragraph to provide fast and stable internet access to everyone everywhere.

What it means for marketers:

Facebook currently reaches about a third of the human population, and its goal is to connect the entire world — every single human being. Facebook still has a massive growth opportunity in terms of users and so it behooves marketers to continue to iterate on Facebook marketing tactics and focus on audience growth and engagement.

Over to You

From short-term projects (e.g. augmented reality) to medium-term developments (e.g. virtual reality) to long-term plans (e.g. global connectivity), Facebook seems to have all bases covered.

As one of the biggest tech companies around, Facebook has a huge impact on the way we live our lives and, consequently, the way we interact with our audience and market our products. It’s amazing how much work Facebook has done to make social media marketing more effective (and fun).

It’d be great to hear your thoughts on all these major announcements (and those that I have not covered such as brain technology).

• What are you most excited about?
• What do you think about these announcements?
• How do you think each of the developments will impact us marketers?

Thank you!

—

The featured image was taken from Facebook News Room.

source http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/bufferapp/~3/-yNHjLi86P0/facebook-f8-conference-2017-recap

The Ultimate Guide to Instagram Analytics: Metrics, Insights, Tools, and Tips

Instagram analytics are a key part of any Instagram marketing strategy.

Without analytics, your Instagram marketing efforts can be a little hit-and-miss.

How do you know if your Instagram marketing strategy is going well? How do you track your Instagram performance and improve your content?

Analytics are often essential for answering your questions.

With Instagram analytics, you can obtain a ton of valuable data and information to understand how your brand is performing on Instagram and how you can improve your results.

In this guide, we’ll go through everything about Instagram analytics — from what metrics and insights are available to how to get all them for free to what you can do with them to boost your Instagram marketing.

Chapters in This Guide

In this guide, we will be covering several topics under Instagram analytics. To make it more digestible, this guide is divided into four chapters. Feel free to skip to the chapter that interests you the most.

Chapter 1: 28 Instagram metrics and insights to measure and improve your performance

Chapter 2: Instagram insights and 10 other free Instagram analytics tools

Chapter 3: How we track our Instagram performance at Buffer

Chapter 4: How to act on your Instagram insights

Chapter 1:
28 Instagram metrics and insights to measure and improve your performance

Instagram provides a wide range of metrics and insights for you to measure your performance, understand your audience, and improve the results of your Instagram marketing.

These metrics and insights can be obtained from Instagram’s native analytics (i.e. Instagram Insights) or other Instagram analytics tools.

Most metrics available can be considered as level-one metrics — data in its most basic form (e.g. the number of followers and number of comments). We will go through level-two metrics — calculated metrics (e.g. followers growth and engagement rate) — further below.

Instagram overall – Profile analytics

Follower count: The number of people following your Instagram account.

Impressions: The total number of times all of your posts have been seen.

Reach: The number of unique accounts that saw any of your posts.

Profile views: The number of times your profile was viewed.

Website clicks: The number of taps on the website link in your profile bio.

Call clicks / Email clicks: The number of taps to call or email your business.

Posts: The number of Instagram posts you have published.

Mentions: The number of Instagram posts mentioning your Instagram handle.

Branded hashtags: The number of Instagram posts with your branded hashtags.

Instagram overall – Audience insights

Gender: The gender distribution of your followers (men or women).

Age: The age distribution of your followers (13-17, 18-24, 25-34- 35-44, 45-54, 55-64, 65+).

Top locations: The top five cities and countries where your followers are.

Followers – Hours: The average times (in hours) your followers are on Instagram on each day of the week.

Followers – Days: The days of the week when your followers are most active.

Instagram posts (Photos or videos)

Impressions: The total number of times a post has been seen.

Reach: The number of unique accounts that saw a post.

Likes: The number of unique accounts that liked a post.

Comments: The number of comments on a post.

Saved: The number of unique accounts that saved a post.

Engagement: The number of unique accounts that liked, saved, or commented on a post.

Views: The number of views of your video post.

Instagram Stories

Impressions: The number of times a particular photo or video has been seen in your story.

Reach: The number of unique accounts that saw a particular photo or video in your story.

Exits: The number of times someone exited your story.

Replies: The number of replies to a particular photo or video in your story.

People insights: The list of accounts that have seen a particular photo or video in your story. Tip: You can check out their accounts by simply clicking on their handle in the list.

Note: Instagram’s native analytics is the best tool for measuring your Instagram Stories performance at the moment as I believe analytics for Instagram Stories is currently not available outside of the Instagram app. (More about Instagram’s native analytics below.)

Instagram live videos

Live viewers at any given time: The number of accounts watching your live video and who they are.

Viewers: The number of accounts that saw any part of your Instagram live video.

Note: There is no analytics available for Instagram live videos at the moment. It’d be best to record down the numbers or take a screenshot right after your live stream.

Calculating level-two performance metrics

Beyond the above-mentioned metrics that you can obtain from Instagram analytics tools, you can go one level deeper by using some of those numbers to calculate more useful performance metrics.

Some of the Instagram analytics tools listed below can automatically calculate these metrics for you.

There are four general types of level-two performance metrics:

1. Growth

Growth metrics allow you to know the change (increase or decrease) of a metric. An example is follower growth — how your follower count is growing over time.

(Metric at time 1 – Metric at time 2)
————————————————-
Metric at time 1

Examples: Follower growth, impression growth, reach growth, engagement growth, clicks growth, and replies growth

2. Rate

Rate metrics give you a percentage figure to help you understand a particular metric relative to another metric. For example, engagement rate is the percentage of your followers that has engaged with your Instagram post.

Metric (e.g. number of engagement on a post)
—————————————————————
Follower count when the post was published

The common denominator used for this equation are follower count (i.e. per follower).

Examples: Impression rate, engagement rate, view rate, click rate, exit rate, and completion rate.

Tip: Completion rate is often used for calculating the percentage of people who viewed all the photos and videos in your Instagram Stories. It is determined by dividing the number of views for the last post in a story with the number of views of the first post in the story.

3. Average

Average metrics give you a benchmark for the general performance of your Instagram posts. For example, the metric, average likes per post, tells you generally the number of likes each of your posts received.

Sum of metric for a period (e.g. all the likes on the posts in January)
————————————————————————————————
Number of posts in that time period

The common denominator to use is the number of posts (i.e. per post). But you can also use time period (i.e. per day or per month). For instance, you could calculate the average number of viewers for your Instagram live videos on different days of the week to determine which day might be best to live stream on Instagram.

Examples: Average comment, average engagement, average reach for Instagram Stories, and average viewers for Instagram live videos.

4. Top

This category isn’t a form of metrics but still a valuable category of data to help you with your Instagram performance. By ranking your posts by the number of impressions, reach, engagement, or views they received, you can find out your top performing posts and attempt to repeat the success.

Examples: Top post, top video, top 10 posts in terms of comments, and top 10 posts in terms of engagement.

Chapter 2:
Instagram Insights and
10 Other Free Instagram Analytics Tools

Here’s an awesome piece of news. Instagram provides pretty much all of the metrics and insights listed above in Instagram Insights. All you need is an Instagram Business Profile.

Let’s walk through Instagram Insights before we explore other free Instagram analytics tools.

Instagram’s Native Analytics: Instagram Insights

To gain access to Instagram Insights for your Instagram account, you’ll have to convert your Instagram profile to a Business Profile. It’s super simple and requires only four steps.

Here are the steps, according to Facebook:

1. Go to your profile and tap on the gear icon ().
2. Tap Switch to Business Profile.
3. On the Connect Your Facebook Page screen, you’ll see all of the Facebook Pages you’re currently an admin on. Select the Page you’d like to associate with your Business Profile on Instagram.
4. On the Set Up Your Business Profile page, review your business’s contact information, make any changes, and tap Done.

Note: You won’t be able to view insights from before you converted your account.

Once you have converted to a Business Profile, you’ll see a graph icon () in the upper-right corner of your profile. That’s the button for Instagram Insights, similar to the analytics for your Facebook page.

Note: Instagram Insights is only available in the mobile app at the moment.

Overall

At the very top of your Instagram Insights, you’ll see the total impressions for your account and the change from the previous week. Here’re all the metrics you will see when you swipe the section left or right:

• Impressions for the account
• Reach for the account
• Profile views
• Website clicks
• Call clicks / Email clicks

Top Posts

Below that, you’ll see the “Top Posts” section. It shows you the top six posts in the past seven days sorted by impressions. Tap on “See More”, and you can explore your top posts further. Tap on the sentence “Showing All posted in the past 7 days sorted by Impressions” to adjust three stats filters:

• All, photos, or videos
• Impressions, Reach, Engagement, Likes, Comments, or Views (for videos only)
• 7 days, 30 days, 3 months, 6 months, 1 year, or 2 years

Tip: You can also see the stats of a post directly from any of your posts. Simply tap on “View Insights” on the post you are interested in to see its stats.

Stories

Next, you’ll see the “Stories” section where you can get the insights for your Instagram stories. If you have created a story in the past 24 hours, it will show up there. Otherwise, tap on “See More” to view the insights for your older stories. Tap on the sentence “Showing Impressions of stories posted in the past 7 days” to adjust two stats filters:

• Impressions, Reach, Exits, or Replies
• 24 hours, 7 days, or 14 days

Note: Insights from your stories will be available for only up to 14 days after they’re created.

Followers

Next, the “Followers” section shows the average times your followers are on Instagram on that day of the week (i.e. average times for Mondays if it’s Monday). When you tap “See More”, here’s the additional information available:

• Follower count (and number of new followers this week)
• Gender distribution
• Age range distribution (You can toggle between All, Men, and Women.)
• Top locations (You can toggle between Cities and Countries.)
• Followers activity (You can toggle between Hours and Days. For Hours, you can also switch between each day of the week.)

Tip: To see demographic metrics of your followers, your Business Profile must have 100 or more followers.

Promotions

The final section is “Promotions”. If you are running Instagram ads, you can see their performance here. As Instagram advertising uses Facebook’s advertising system, you can also view your Instagram ad performance in your Facebook Ads Manager.

Tip: If you are not sure what any of the metrics means, there’s a “What do these mean?” button at the bottom of almost every Instagram Insights page. Tap on it, and you’ll find the definition of the metrics found on that page.

10 Other free Instagram analytics tools

While Instagram Insights is great at providing level-one performance metrics and insights, there are several great, free Instagram analytics tools you can use to complement Instagram Insights.

Here’s a quick walkthrough of each of them:

1. Keyhole

Keyhole is a paid service but it offers a free preview of its service. You can use it to analyze your Instagram account or track a hashtag on Instagram. The preview will only show data for up to one year with a max of 99 posts, which is great for a free tool!

Key data available:

• Account tracking
  • Number of posts per week (shown as a graph)
  • Engagements per week (shown as a graph)
  • Top posts by engagements
  • Top hashtags by engagements
• Hashtag tracking
  • Number of posts with the hashtag
  • Number of accounts who used the hashtag
  • Top posts with the hashtag
  • Most influential accounts that used the hashtag and recent accounts that used the hashtag
  • Location
  • Share of posts
  • Sentiment
  • Gender distribution

2. Socialbakers

Socialbakers is a social media analytics tool, which provides a simple Instagram stats tracker. It provides the basic information you might be interested in, in a visually-appealing site.

Here’s a sample of our report.

Key data available:

• Top three most-liked posts
• Top three most-commented posts
• Most-liked users
• Top 10 hashtags used
• First post
• Distribution of post per month
• Top filters
• Most-tagged users

3. Squarelovin

Squarelovin is a user-generated content platform for Instagram, and it has a free Instagram analytics tool. You can connect more than one Instagram account to the tool and manage them using one dashboard.

Key data available:

• Overview (Followers growth, latest posts, etc.)
• Monthly analytics (Likes, comments, most-liked posts, and most-commented posts)
• Engagement (Likes and comments received shown in graphs, most-liked media, and most-commented media)
• Optimization (Best time to post and user interactions shown in graphs)

4. Simply Measured

Simply Measured provides a free Instagram user report for accounts with up to 25,000 followers. All you have to do is to fill up a form with your particulars, and Simply Measured will give you a report on your Instagram account for the previous two weeks.

Here’s a sample report of @buffer.

Key data available:

• Account information (Number of posts, total engagements, engagements per post)
• Engagements per week (shown as a graph)
• Likes per post and comments per post
• Top posts by engagements
• Top keyword mentions in comments
• Most active commenters
• Comments and posts by day and time (shown as a graph)
• Top photo filters, video filters, and cities

5. Union Metrics

Union Metrics is a multi-channel social analytics platform. It offers a free Instagram account checkup, which uses some of the paid tool’s algorithms. The checkup looks at your account for the past month, and you can refresh the report every day.

Here’s our Instagram account’s health report!

Key data available:

• Account information (Total posts, followers, following, etc.)
• Best time to post based on engagement
• Top fans
• Top hashtags
• Top posts

6. Websta

Websta is powerful, free Instagram analytics tool. It is similar to Squarelovin’s Instagram analytics tool but with more features. For example, you can create up to three custom feeds, reply to comments on your posts, and explore featured users and top hashtags.

Key data available:

• Overview (Total posts, likes count, comments count, etc.)
• Content (Post history, hashtag usage, etc.)
• Engagement (Followers, likes, and comments growth shown as graphs, most-liked posts, and most-commented posts)
• Optimization (Best time to post and popular hashtags)

7. INK361

INK361 is an Instagram management tool. On its free plan, you’ll get basic audience insights and data about your account, reply to comments, and create up to three custom circles. Custom circles allow you to monitor content from specific accounts.

Key data available:

• Account overview
• Love rate (a user engagement metric based on how much your followers like your posts)
• Talk rate (a user engagement metric based on how much your followers talk about your posts)
• Post history (Year, month, day, and time distribution shown as graphs)
• Likes and comments received shown as graphs, most-liked posts, and most-commented posts
• Hashtags used

8. SocialRank

SocialRank is an Instagram and Twitter followers management tool. It allows you to segment, identify, and understand your followers so that you can better engage them. It is more of an audience insights tool than a data analytics tool.

Key data available:

• Follower activity, distribution, and top locations
• Popular words in your followers’ bio
• Popular words in your followers’ posts
• Popular hashtags in your followers’ posts
• Popular emojis in your followers’ posts
• Data about individual followers (Average comments and likes per post, top performing posts, most-used words, hashtags, and emojis, and recent photos of yours that they have engaged with)

9. Pixlee

Pixlee is a visual marketing platform that uses user-generated content from Instagram, Facebook, and more. It offers a free Instagram analytics app, which would send you a weekly report. Note: Your first report will be ready after the app has collected one week’s worth of data.

Key data available:

• Fans on Instagram (Posts about your brand, Top fan posts, Top brand and emerging influencers)
• Brand performance (Followers, Growth, Top brand posts, Engagement per post, and Posts)

10. Picture.io

Picture.io is a free Instagram analytics app created by Chute, a user-generated content marketing platform. While it does not provide as much data as other free Instagram analytics tools, it calculates your Instagram influence score, which few tools offer. Your score is calculated by an algorithm which takes into account metrics such as your network size, engagement, and community trends.

You can check out our Picture.io report here.

Key data available:

• Influence score
• Most popular photos (The popularity factor is determined by its algorithm, too.)

Paid Instagram analytics tools

If you have the budget to spend a bit on an Instagram analytics tool, here’s a list of the paid, specialized Instagram analytics tools, which have several more powerful features.

1. Iconosquare — price starting from $9 per month or $54 per year with a 14-day free trial
2. Minter.io — price starting from $20 per month with a 14-day free trial
3. InfluencerDB — price starting 99€ (about $100) per month with a free plan
4. Dash Hudson Instagram Insights — custom pricing packages

Tip: If you are using Buffer for Business, you already have access to some basic Instagram analytics such as top posts and metrics graphs. Here are some ways to use Buffer’s Instagram analytics to the fullest.

Chapter 3:
How we track our Instagram performance at Buffer

I thought it might be helpful to share a little about how we use Instagram as a marketing tool and how we track our Instagram performance at Buffer.

Brian Peters, our digital marketing strategist, uses the various content formats for different marketing purposes. Our Instagram posts are for driving brand awareness and engagement while our Instagram Stories and live videos are for sharing educational content.

Brian uses a mix of Buffer, Iconosquare, and Instagram Insights (Instagram’s in-app analytics) to track our Instagram performance on a weekly basis. Here’re the main metrics he tracks — and where to find each of them:

• Average likes per post — from Iconosquare > Analytics > Engagement
• Average reach per post — from Instagram Insights > Top posts > Sort by Reach
• Audience size growth (or decline) week over week — from Iconosquare > Analytics > Overview or Buffer > Analytics > Analysis > Followers and New Followers
• Average engagement rate compared to previous weeks — from Iconosquare > Analytics > Overview
• Number of posts for the week (for tracking consistency) – from Buffer > Analytics > Analysis > Posts Per Day

Chapter 4:
How to Act on Your Instagram Insights

Once you gather all your metrics and find out audience insights, you are all ready to improve your Instagram marketing. Here are several ideas on how to use your Instagram insights to achieve better results:

Change your posting day and/or time

Just like Facebook, since the introduction of the algorithmic feed, there probably isn’t a single best time to post on Instagram. Instead, each brand has their own perfect time to post. With Instagram analytics, you can find your perfect posting times.

With Instagram Insights from the Instagram app, you can tell the days when your followers are most active and the average times they are on Instagram on a typical day. For instance, our followers seem to be most active on Sunday and from about 9 pm to 6 am SGT (or 8 am ET to 5 pm ET, working hours in the East Coast) for most days of the week.

You could either post during those peak hours to reach your audience when they are most active or post during off-peak hours when there might be less competition on your followers’ feed. I’d recommend experimenting with both to determine your perfect posting times.

Improve your content based on performance or followers demographics

Using the Instagram Insights, you can easily tell which are your top posts and stories based on impressions, reach, and engagement. Once you have sorted your top posts, do you notice any trends?

For instance, our giveaway posts tend to generate the most comments while user-generated landscape photos usually receive the most engagement. To drive more engagement, we can continue to post landscape photos from our community.

You can also use the followers’ demographics and your understanding of your target audience to improve your content and appeal to them. For example, if most of your followers are females aged 35-44 who like to design, can you create content that resonates with them more than the rest of your followers?

Tell better Instagram Stories

You can also use your Instagram Stories data to improve your stories. Instagram Insights from the Instagram app provides data such as impressions, exits, and replies, which you can use to tell better stories.

For example, our story on creating a custom graphic within Canva received more impressions than other recent stories, and our Instagram Stories takeover by HubSpot on productivity tips received more replies than other recent stories.

We can also dive into a particular story: Most people exited our video marketing stats story at the first photo so perhaps we could work on the headline for the next story.

What does your Instagram Stories data tell you? Is there a type of stories that tends to do better than the rest? Is there a common point when most of your followers exit your stories?

Experiment with different call-to-actions

Since Instagram allows only one link (in the bio), marketers would usually have a call-to-action (CTA) in their Instagram posts to direct followers to the link in their bio.

With Instagram Insights’ website clicks metric, you can now know how effective your CTAs are. You could change your CTA on a weekly basis and see if the number of website clicks increases. As a refresher, website clicks are the number of taps on the link in your bio.

Alternatively, you could use Bitly or similar link shorteners with tracking capabilities for the link in your bio to track the number of clicks.

How have you been measuring and acting on your Instagram insights?

With the wealth of data available to us marketers through the numerous Instagram analytics tools, we can be more data-driven with our Instagram marketing than ever before.

Combined with our understanding of our followers, these Instagram insights can enable us to create more valuable and engaging content for our audience.

I’d love to learn from you all, too! How have you been measuring your Instagram metrics? How have you been using your Instagram insights to improve your Instagram marketing?

source http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/bufferapp/~3/Amqp7NF_-uQ/instagram-analytics

Using Social Media for Good: Meet the Entreprenuer Changing the World One Story at a Time – Branden Harvey [SSM040]

Negativity. It’s human nature. At least that’s what research shows!

Researchers have demonstrated repeatedly that negative information has a greater impact on the brain than positive information. So much so that we now call this common occurrence “negativity bias”. That negativity bias is a result of the of the fight-or-flight response that is activated only during negative experiences.

But we wanted to know: Is it possible to rewire your brain for positivity and happiness?

Storyteller and social entreprenuer Braden Harvey thinks knows so. He’s seen the powerful effect of positivity countless amounts of times in the countries and people that he has worked with over the years. That’s why he’s on a mission to tell stories of good on social media for some of the world’s most impactful companies and brands.

In episode #40 of The Science of Social Media, Branden shares his incredible journey from photographer to storyteller and the importance of chasing your passions. He also shares some incredible storytelling secrets and how marketers and brands can utilize the power of good on social media.

A huge thank you to Branden for packing this episode full of inspiration and actionable takeaways for marketers looking to use social media to make a lasting impact and change on the world – for good.

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.” -Margaret Mead

How to listen: iTunes | Google Play | SoundCloud | Stitcher | RSS

This episode is available on:

• iTunes
• Google Play
• Stitcher
• Sound Cloud

In this episode, here’s what you’ll learn:

Branden Harvey gives us an inside look into his journey to make the world a better place by telling stories of good. Along the way, he provides incredible insights into what makes a compelling story and how we might all be able to tap into some of that magic. You’ll also learn other things like:

• The current narrative of social media and why it’s so “easy”
• How Branden has built a business around storytelling
• Why chasing a profession is different than chasing your passion
• How Branden was able to tell the story of Pope Francis, SouthWest Airlines, and others
• Ways that brands and marketers can use social media for good

Actionable Advice for Brands and Marketers Looking to Use Social Media for Good

In Branden’s words…

“One of my favorite things is seeing the ways that people can have an impact in a way that is unique to them. I think that is especially true on social media. What are your strengths? What are the things that you do really well? What does your unique platform give you the ability to do? Lean into that in a way that only you can. Don’t be afraid to diverge from other people’s footsteps and take your own path once you’ve learned a little bit. Do something that only you can do because that’s how the world is going to change.”

A Great Moment

“My core choice every single time I tell a story is to zoom in instead of zoom out.”

– Branden Harvey

Awesome People and Stuff Mentioned in the Show

• Branden Harvey Home
• Branden Harvey on Instagram
• Branden Harvey Podcast (Sounds Good with Branden Harvey)
• Branden Harvey GoodNewsletter
• Meet the Instagrammer Who’s On a Mission to Change the World – Mashable

Favorite Quotes

• I started, almost serendipitously, building a really fun community of my own. People who are connecting with my stories on a deeper level because they share this value of focusing on the good in the world.
• I think that social media inherently leans towards cynicism. And it’s not anyone’s fault and I don’t think it’s necessarily wrong – but cynicism is easy… The truth is, if you spend a little more time, if you dive into a little more nuance, you’ll see that there’s actually a lot of good being done under the surface.
• Photography is a tool. It’s a fantastic tool and it’s what I use to tell so many of my stories today. But it’s just one piece of the puzzle of helping to tell stories that matter.
• I asked myself: What if I could get really into telling stories of real people doing real things in challenging situations. What if I could celebrate that? Maybe that will open up the doors and allow people to join in to help support that.
• With the PetSmart project it was way more than just photographing puppies and kittens – I loved having those conversations with the children and communicating what a beautiful experience it was to be there.
• I want to do this to help world-changers get the word out and help them communicate how other people can join in and help them in changing the world.

How to Say Hello to Branden (and us)

Branden Harvey is super fun to follow along with on social media and he would love to say hello to you! You can find Branden on Twitter here, LinkedIn here, or Instagram here. And if you’re interested in checking out more of Branden’s incredible work or podcast, head on over to brandenharvey.com

Thanks for listening! We’d love to connect with you at @buffer on Twitter or with the hashtag #bufferpodcast.

Enjoy the show? It’d mean the world to us if you’d be up for giving us a rating and review on iTunes!

—

About the Show

The Science of Social Media is a podcast for marketers and social media managers looking for inspiration, ideas, and results for their social media strategies. Each week, we interview one of the very best in social media marketing from brands in every industry. You will learn the latest tactics on social media, the best tools to use, the smartest workflows, and the best goal-setting advice. It is our hope that each episode you’ll find one or two gems to use with your social media marketing!

The Science of Social Media is proudly made by the Buffer team. Feel free to get in touch with us for any thoughts, ideas, or feedback.

source http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/bufferapp/~3/-VfEMWOF6fY/branden-harvey-show-notes