Instagram is one of the most popular social media platforms today. It is an excellent place for influencers and small businesses to advertise and document their brand, allowing them to build a following that helps cement their popularity.
If you are trying to boost your reach and engagement on Instagram but you’re having trouble with it, that’s probably because you don’t know a great deal about impressions and how to work them to your advantage.
There is a whole backend to Instagram and how to use it and if you have a business account, you can access these features and understand how your audience works.
What’s So Special About An Instagram Business Account?
Let’s talk about the Instagram Business Account. They are a bit different from the standard Instagram account in a few ways. The Business account gives you access to many features you usually wouldn’t be able to access on the standard account.
One of the biggest features it offers you is the ability to be able to track Insights. You can track your traffic, sales, engagement rates, and much more. Being able to see these analytics can help you with future posts and impressions.
These features can only be accessed when you have a Business Account, so if you don’t, you won’t be able to use them. Switching to a Business Account is a really straightforward process and can be done from your Instagram settings.
So, What Are Instagram Impressions?
Once you have a Business Account on Instagram, you’ll have access to Impressions. Basically, the Impressions track the number of times your stories and posts are shown to other users.
Even if someone sees your post or story and just carries on scrolling, this is also an impression.
Impressions don’t track the individual user, so if one person views your post three times then it’ll be counted as three impressions, but the Reach will only count as one. We’ll get into Reach in a bit more detail later.
Impressions help with familiarity. If you are getting lots of impressions, then other users are becoming more familiar with your brand and content. In theory, this will mean they are more likely to trust you and buy your products or services in the future.
Reach And Engagement
As well as Impressions, you also have Reach and Engagement. Each of these features goes hand in hand with Impressions and will help you when it comes to knowing what to post and what habits your unique audience has.
Let’s have a little look at each of these features:
Reach is like Impressions, but a bit more unique. It refers to and tracks the number of individual users who have seen your content.
Engagement refers to any time any user interacts with your content. This includes your own interaction as well. There are a few different types of actions that get counted towards Engagement and they include liking, following, commenting, sharing or saving, mentioning your account via tagging, using branded hashtags, direct messages to your account, and clicking through a story or link.
Your Impressions will add up alongside your Reach and Engagement and each is just as important as the other when it comes to managing and catering your account to your audience.
How Do You Track Reach, Impressions & Engagement?
Tracking your Reach, Impressions & Engagement is really easy to do. All you need to do is go to the Insights section of your profile and you’ll be able to view all of your profile analytics.
All of the information you’ll see here will help you with future posts and stories and you’ll be able to work on a strategy based on the information you see to get optimal Engagement.
Remember though that you need to have a business account in order to see your Insights. If you only have a regular account, the Insight option won’t be available to you.
Check On Your Insights Regularly
It is important that you check on your Insights regularly to really get good use out of the tool. If you check them once a month, this will be of no use to you because your Reach, Impressions & Engagements can change dramatically in 30-day intervals.
Consistently checking your Insights will help you learn what your followers like and what keeps them engaged the most. You want to check your Impressions, Reach & Engagements at least once a day to get good use out of the feature.
Checking your Insights once a day will show you what areas you need to work on on your profile and what sort of content engages and disengages users.
Stay Active With Content
Another important thing you need to do if you want your audience to stay engaged is to stay active with your content.
Post regularly. Post actual posts at least once a day or once every two days and you should upload to your stories every day too. Regular posting is the best way for you to improve your Impressions, Reach, and Engagement.
When it comes to creating posts and stories, you’ll want to make sure that they are fully optimized for Instagram. Content that is sharable is one of the best ways to improve your Impressions and Reach.
When people share and repost your posts and stories, your Reach will naturally increase and this should help with your overall Impressions and Engagement.
Conclusion
So as you can see, Impressions are a really important part of your Insights for Instagram. Though they are similar to your Reach, they are still slightly different.
But your Impressions go hand in hand with your Reach and Engagement and you need all three to be in a good place on your account.
Consistently and regularly posting will naturally increase your Impressions, Reach, and Engagement. Keep your content on brand, interesting, and above all, sharable! For better Insights, good quality, sharable content is the right way to go about it.
As your audience grows and develops, you’ll start to see patterns forming on your Insights, so keep checking them regularly!
Hi, my name is Justin Shaw, I started my career with a Masters in Computer Science but found writing to be my forte'.
I'm now the Principal Tech writer for GshiftLabs.com as well as a few other well known publications. I help make the complex world of Tech-Jargon easy to understand.
