How to Set Up Instagram Tracking for Your Brand’s Account

When it comes to promoting your business on Instagram, it’s natural to place a lot of your focus on finding new, innovative ways to spice up your posts and gain more favorites and comments.

But for a lot of Instagram marketers, those favorites and comments are subservient to more important marketing goals. After all, the reason you’re promoting your business on Instagram in the first place is because you hope that it will ultimately increase your number of leads and sales.

But how can you tell if your Instagram account is actually having this effect?

It doesn’t exclusively come from favoriting and commenting; rather, much of it depends on whether or not people click through to the one live link you’re allowed to have on your profile.

Tracking clickthrough rates and other engagement metrics is a must if you wish to understand how Instagram is affecting your web traffic and other important marketing areas. It’s also essential for improving your overall content strategy.

That said, without the right tools in place, this is impossible.

No worries, though—we’re here to help. Below, you’ll find a simple, four-step process for helping you set up Instagram tracking for your brand’s account:

* Step #1: Shorten Links for your business on Instagram

One of the simplest methods for tracking clicks to your website is to use a basic link-shortening service. Link-shortening services such as Bit.ly and Ow.ly allow users to create shortened versions of their links—even better, they’re usually free.

More importantly, however, these services allow you to track how well these links perform. Here’s a pro tip—by simply adding a “+” sign to the end of your Bit.ly link, you can get the most up-to-date stats on how that link is performing in a matter of seconds.

By measuring the number of clicks a particular link achieves, you gain a better understanding of which link-sharing strategies are driving prospects to your website, and which are ineffective.

 

* Step #2: Use Google’s UTM Parameters

Of course, we couldn’t talk about tracking your Instagram marketing efforts without mentioning the king of analytics—Google.

Google has a few key analytics offerings that can help you better track your Instagram promotion strategies—UTM parameters is one of the most important. Through its URL Builder tool, Google allows you to add tags to a URL, ensuring that tracking data is sent to Google Analytics when a link is clicked.

UTM parameters can be created specifically for traffic that comes via your Instagram account, giving you a better idea as to how much of your web traffic comes from this source.

Just don’t forget that you still need to shorten your link to use it on Instagram! After you’ve created your link with UTM parameters, run it through a link-shortening service so you can use it on your profile, as well.

UTM parameters is even more effective when combined with smart goal setting in Google Analytics. Google provides a wide range of templates to allow you to quickly and easily set campaign goals for your company.

By incorporating UTM parameters into these goals, you can track the contribution of Instagram and other platforms to specific campaign outcomes.

* Step #3: Create a Business Profile

Business profiles on Instagram are still relatively new, which means not every company has decided to adopt a business profile for their own marketing needs.

Unfortunately, those that stick with a standard Instagram profile are missing out on important analytics offered through a business profile’s insights feature.

Instagram’s business insights provides stats on key pieces of information, including the total impressions and reach of your posts, as well as the number of unique users who have clicked on your profile’s website link.

Perhaps even more useful are the insights that allow you to break down your Instagram followers by age, gender, location and even the times they are most commonly online—insights that help you improve your content and posting schedule for better Instagram engagement.

* Step #4: The Importance of Analytics Tools

While the above resources can be quite useful, analytics tools that specifically focus on Instagram provide you with even more data, allowing you to generate new, actionable insights to improve your team’s approach to Instagram marketing.

Because of this, we’re excited to launch our own analytics platform in 2017, allowing you to track the performance of both individual posts and your account as a whole.

For the time being, however, there are a few other tools that can help out.

For example, Iconosquare allows you to track gains and losses in your followers, even going as far as comparing the performance of your different posts and hashtags.

Another great option is Agorapulse. Agorapulse allows you to track daily levels of engagement. It also identifies which of your followers have engaged the most with your content.

By tracking these valuable statistics, you can fine-tune your content strategy to ensure even more leads and sales are generated by your Instagram marketing efforts.

Conclusion

With these tracking tools, and the launch of Kickstagram’s own analytics platform, you’ll be more equipped than ever to understand how promoting your business on Instagram is impacting your company’s bottom line.

Don’t sit idly by, wondering if your Instagram is actually having an effect on your business! Implement the above steps today to accurately quantify the money-making impact of your brand’s Instagram account!