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Sure, B2C businesses might get better engagement on Instagram, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t rely on it for your B2B needs.
In fact, 49% of B2B marketing teams say that Instagram is one of their most trusted social media platforms.
But to properly grow your presence on the platform and see results, you need to keep a close eye on your data and use it to refine your strategies.
You might already be tracking metrics like impressions, likes, and shares… but what else should you keep an eye on?
That’s exactly what we’ll cover in this article.
What’s more, we asked 30 B2B experts to help us out and share their best insights on what you should track and why. Most of our respondents are small businesses with up to 50 employees.
All of our respondents have Instagram accounts and the vast majority of them actively use it. Only two respondents stated that they don’t use their Instagram accounts actively.
Let’s check out what they had to say.
Instagram business metrics are data insights that show you how your Instagram content and account are performing.
To understand what your audience prefers and reacts to, and improve your Instagram content strategy, you need to pay close attention to these metrics.
For example, you can analyze metrics such as engagement rate, likes, comments, and shares to determine which types of posts resonate most with your audience.
You can also track how efficient your Instagram account is in generating new leads by checking out which content drives traffic to the website, which posts lead to conversions, and how leads interact with your content.
And aside from basic engagement metrics, B2B companies can also analyze the sentiment and qualitative feedback in comments to refine their messaging.
Audiences usually have nuanced reactions to different content types (educational vs. behind-the-scenes, for example) and you can use that data to position your company as a thought leader, and not just another business on Instagram.
OK – so before we show you how to track your business metrics, we want to recommend a few things that will make your tracking process more efficient and get you better insights:
We also asked our B2B respondents about what they’re primarily trying to achieve on Instagram.
More than half of respondents stated that the primary goal of their B2B Instagram Business Account is to build a brand – let more people know they exist, and what they do.
But what does “regularly” mean specifically?
We asked our respondents about their tracking cadence and a bit over 40% of them stated that they check their B2B Instagram Business Account Performance once a month.
Now that we’ve covered the pre-tracking process, let’s check out how you can actually track your Instagram metrics:
The technical part of tracking Instagram business metrics is straightforward.
All you need to do is open your profile and click on the “Insights” button. Or, go to the three-dash button in the upper right corner and click on “Get Insights”.
Here, you’ll be able to check out:
For Mitch Kenney of Sveagle Plumbing, Instagram Analytics is “the best way to monitor your B2B Instagram business account performance.”
“With the help of this, you can get to know how your content or post actually works on the platform and which post is most popular among your audience. If the post receives more impressions and reach then it is best for your business and you can use it more to get more engagement.”
However, Meta’s native analytics tool isn’t the ideal solution for all of our respondents.
For example, Adam Connell of Blogging Wizard says that “while account performance can be monitored via Meta’s native tools, I find them seriously lacking and glitchy.”
Instead, he uses a “number of third-party tools like Iconosquare because I can create custom dashboards with all of the metrics that matter to my business. It gives me a quick glance at how we’re doing without any of the distracting metrics that don’t serve our needs.”
You can also use Google Analytics in combination with UTM parameters to track Instagram business metrics, especially if you want to better understand how traffic from your Instagram account interacts with your website.
Simply put, UTM parameters are tags that you add to a URL. When someone clicks the URL, the tags are sent back to Google Analytics, allowing you to track your campaigns and understand visitor behavior.
Brad Russell of Digital Hitmen says that “using Google Analytics with UTM parameters has worked incredibly well for tracking my company’s Instagram account”.
“I obtain detailed insights into user behavior outside of Instagram’s built-in statistics by inserting distinct UTM codes into post links. This approach reveals the precise posts and campaigns that are generating website visits and conversions in addition to the sources of traffic.
A thorough understanding of the customer journey from Instagram to conversion is made possible by Google Analytics’ strong attribution modeling. With the use of this complex data, I can identify high-converting campaigns, improve content tactics, and strategically allocate resources to get the most return on investment possible in the ever-changing world of B2B Instagram marketing.”
To measure the performance of your Instagram marketing strategy, you may rely on Instagram Analytics to learn which posts receive the most impressions and reach, and overall, which posts are the most popular with your followers. Now you can quickly assess the performance of your Instagram content in a single dashboard that monitors fundamental metrics, including:
Now you can benefit from the experience of our Instagram experts, who have put together a plug-and-play Databox template showing the most important metrics for monitoring and growing your Instagram Business account. It’s simple to implement and start using as a standalone dashboard or in social media reports, and best of all, it’s free!
You can easily set it up in just a few clicks – no coding required.
To set up the dashboard, follow these 3 simple steps:
Step 1: Get the template
Step 2: Connect your Instagram account with Databox.
Step 3: Watch your dashboard populate in seconds.
Now that we’ve covered why Instagram business metrics are important and how you should track them… let’s get into the trenches and see which specific metrics you should track.
We asked our respondents to select 3 Instagram business metrics they consider to be the most important for their B2B businesses: reach, engagement-related metrics and total followers got the most votes.
But the metric that stands out as the most crucial one for B2B businesses is top-performing content.
What about vanity metrics? Is there anything you should avoid tracking?
For this survey, most of our respondents selected follower count and likes as vanity metrics. This is interesting considering that a lot of companies think these metrics are indicators of a successful Instagram business account, as seen earlier.
Now, we didn’t only get votes from our respondents – we also got a lot of actionable insights regarding these Instagram metrics.
So, let’s dive in and see what they have to say about these metrics:
Top-performing content refers to the posts, reels, or stories that receive the highest level of engagement on your account.
With this metrics, you can easily pinpoint what type of content resonates best with your audience and adjust your strategy based on those insights.
Solomon Thimothy of ClickX says that “top-performing content is extremely important for us since that metrics provides better insights into our ICP and tell us more about the challenges and pains of our audience.”
PRO TIP: Want an easier way to stay on top your posts’ performances? You can download our free Instagram Business Post Performance and have your first dashboard ready in minutes. This way, you can have all of your most important content metrics in one place, instead of scrambling through different reports inside Meta’s native reporting tool.
Accounts engaged refers to the unique Instagram accounts that have interacted with your content during a specific time period.
This interaction can include a range of actions, such as likes, comments, shares, saves, replies to stories, mentions, or direct messages in response to your content.
Unlike broader metrics (such as impressions or reach), which show you how many people saw your content, accounts engaged tells you how many took some action based on your content.
It’s a measure of active interaction rather than passive viewing.
And as Lisa Sicard of Inspire to Thrive puts it, you should keep a close eye on this metric because “Instagram is all about engagement today. You want to see people engaged with your content on this platform.”
The social share of voice (SSoV) metric helps you better understand your brand’s visibility and how you compare to niche competitors.
On Instagram, it specifically refers to how much your brand is mentioned or engaged with in posts, stories, comments, or hashtags.
Tracking SSoV over time can give you insights into whether your brand’s market position is improving, declining, or stable.
Hardy Desai of Supple Digital says that the social share of voice is their top metrics “because we want to see how much users are talking about and mentioning our brand compared to our competitors.”
“If we don’t have a strong share of voice, we know we’re not doing enough to create a unique brand experience and showcase our USP. Conversion rate matters because without a strong ROI, social efforts should be dialed back.
But that means understanding how your social presence, directly and indirectly, affects revenue, so it gets a little complex. Response time matters because users expect quick responses, so being timely shows our audience how much we respect and value their presence.”
PRO TIP: If you want to get a birds-eye overview of your most relevant Instagram metrics, you can download our free Instagram Business Account Overview dashboard. Once you customize this dashboard, you can get real-time insights into the overall health of your Instagram Business account and track everything from engagement metrics to audience and content metrics.
Accounts reached represents the total number of unique Instagram accounts that have seen any of your posts or stories over a specific period.
You should track this metric to get a sense of the scale of your audience.
It’s not just about how many times your content is seen (impressions), but how many individual accounts have encountered your content.
Plus, by analyzing which types of content reach more accounts, you can tailor your content strategy more effectively.
For Will Hatton of The Broke Backpacker, reach is arguably the most important metric “because it shows us overall how well our account is doing in the Instagram sphere.”
“Many other metrics fall under the umbrella of reach including followers, likes, and hashtag performance. I don’t believe that any of the metrics are used for vanity, as they all have their place in measuring the success of an account.
If we didn’t know what our reach was, we wouldn’t be able to know where to go with our content. Depending on how long your reach is, you have to ask yourself, ‘do we make content that works for the masses? Or do we make content that is more niche?’ It’s a main driver beyond what our next plans are.”
Post interactions on Instagram refer to the total number of actions that users take in relation to your content. These actions can include likes, comments, shares (reposts), and saves.
Since Instagram’s algorithm favors content with higher engagement, it’s a good idea to keep an eye on which type of posts get the most interactions from your audience.
Andre Oentoro of BreadNBeyond says that post interaction metrics like likes, comments, and shares are “the most important Instagram Business metrics.”
“These indicators directly reflect audience interaction and interest in our content, helping us gauge the effectiveness of our explainer videos. These metrics not only inform content optimization but also ensure our Instagram presence is both engaging and results-driven.”
The follower demographics on Instagram provides detailed information about the characteristics of your followers.
It typically includes data on age ranges, gender distribution, top locations (countries or cities), and the times when followers are most active on the platform.
You can use this information in a variety of ways.
For example, knowing the top locations of your followers can help you create geographically tailored content, potentially involving local languages, cultural references, or region-specific products.
Another useful insight is your audience’s most active hours since this allows you to schedule posts, stories, and ads to make sure you squeeze the most visibility for your content.
PRO TIP: Follower demographics is important, but it’s only one piece of the puzzle when it comes to understanding your audience. If you want to a comprehensive overview of all of your key audience metrics, you can download our Instagram Business Audience Overview dashboard. You can track metrics like followers by location, followers by age group, follower gender, and much more.
The follower growth metric refers to the rate at which your brand’s number of followers increases over a specific period. This metric is typically analyzed in terms of growth rate, meaning the percentage change in followers over time (daily, weekly, monthly, etc.).
Businesses can use this metric to track the correlation between specific content strategies and spikes in follower growth to get a more granular understanding of what’s working.
Just remember to also analyze the quality of your subscribers alongside the quantity, as Dmitrii Kustov of RegexSEO points out:
“Monitoring follower growth is important, but for B2B businesses, it’s also useful to focus on the quality of subscribers rather than the quantity. Engaging with relevant industry experts, businesses, influencers, and potential employees from our field is more valuable than just having a high number of subscribers.”
Profile activity insights show you a variety of interactions that users have with your Instagram profile.
It covers a range of actions that users can take, including profile visits, website clicks (if you have a link in your profile bio), direction clicks, call clicks, and more.
Many businesses track profile activity alongside other engagement-related metrics to get a better sense of how interested their audience is in the product or service they’re offering.
As Alex Cascio of Vibrant Media Productions puts it, “achieving good engagement on Instagram is immensely beneficial for our business.”
“The heightened engagement not only amplifies the visibility and awareness of our brand but also fosters a broader and more active community of followers, establishing a stronger connection and loyalty. Moreover, our robust Instagram engagement strategy can drive traffic to our business website, open doors for collaborations with other businesses or influencers, and contribute significantly to the overall growth and success of our brand.”
PRO TIP: To track your profile activity metrics in one place, without having to juggle through multiple reports, you can use our free Instagram Business Profile Overview dashboard. Simply connect your Instagram account, choose which metrics you want to track, and then turn the data into professional visuals with just a few clicks of a button.
The impressions metric shows the total number of times users view your content.
But keep in mind that it doesn’t account for unique views, which means that if the same user views a post five times, it would count as five impressions.
It’s usually a good idea to track it alongside reach. Reach measures how many unique users see the content, while impressions measure how often the content is displayed.
So, a high number of impressions compared to reach means that users are viewing the content multiple times, which could be a sign of strong interest.
Tarlia Smedley of Pulse Recruitment says that impressions are “one of the most important Instagram Business metrics for our B2B business.”
“Impressions count the total number of times our content is displayed. This metric provides insight into the overall exposure and frequency of interaction with our content. In the B2B context, where nurturing long-term relationships is often more important than immediate conversions, high impressions are indicative of strong content visibility and consistent engagement with our target audience. It helps us to understand if we are maintaining a sufficient presence on our audience’s feed, which is crucial for long-term brand recall and recognition.”
Story interactions metric shows you the total number of actions that users take when they engage with a story posted on your Instagram account. These actions include replies, shares, or sticker interactions.
And while story Interactions is a quantitative metric, the qualitative insights it offers can be invaluable for optimizing your content strategy and understanding your audience better.
Not only will you have a direct insight into which types of stories get the most reactions, but you can also analyze the reactions you’re getting (e.g. a follower sharing one of their pain points by replying) to better understand your audience’s needs.
Follower active times shows the specific days and hours when your Instagram followers are most active on the platform.
Once you know when your audience is most active, you can use that data to schedule posts at that time to make sure you squeeze the most engagement.
The metric is especially valuable for businesses with a global audience and need to plan content based on time zone differences.
PRO TIP: Are you using other social media platforms for your B2B business aside from just Instagram? If so, you’re probably spending hours each week getting the data together from each individual tool and comparing performances. But there’s an easier way to do it, if you download the free Social Networks Overview Dashboard template. With this dashboard, you can combine your most relevant metrics from all your key social platforms, including Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and more.
Reels interactions metric on Instagram refers to the total number of user engagements with your brand’s Reels content. It encompasses various forms of user engagement, including likes, comments, saves, and shares.
Apart from general engagement, analyzing Reels interactions can also help you reveal subtle preferences in your audience’s behavior.
For instance, you might find that educational content generates more saves and shares, which shows a desire for value-driven content. Or, behind-the-scenes Reels might get more comments, which suggests a preference for personal content.
Live interactions refers to the number of user engagements that occur during a live video broadcast on the platform. This includes a range of interactive actions such as likes, comments, shares, and live viewership numbers.
Essentially, it’s a good way to analyze your audience’s level of engagement with the content in real-time.
This real-time feedback is great for staying on top of audience sentiment, and it allows you to address current concerns, clarify features, or even note suggestions for future improvements.
Instagram can be a powerful social platform for B2B companies looking to connect with their audiences and drive more awareness to the brand.
But to make it work, you’ll need to spend a lot of time in your analytics reports to figure out the top-performing strategies, understand your audience’s preferences better, and stay on top of the latest trends and strategies.
There’s just one issue – Meta’s native Instagram analytics tools isn’t exactly the simplest and most intuitive solution.
Depending on what type of data and metrics you want to track, scrambling the different reports and compiling the data manually can quickly become a headache.
Luckily, you can simplify this process with Databox Dashboards.
With our tool, you can easily build your own Instagram dashboards in a matter of minutes and collect all of your most important metrics in one place. This way, you can track your performance in real-time and get a proper birds-eye overview of what’s going on.
Later on, you can communicate your findings to C-level executives and shareholders through Databox Reports. You don’t have to prep for the meeting weeks ahead anymore – now, you can build professional reports in no time.
Oh, and did we mention that you also get access to Benchmark Groups?
With Benchmark Groups, you can compare your data to the numbers similar-sized competitors in your industry are seeing and instantly see whether you have any bottlenecks.
So, if you’re ready to streamline your Instagram analytics and reporting process, sign up for a free trial with Databox and check out just how easier it can get.
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Filip Stojanovic is a content writer who studies Business and Political Sciences. Also, I am a huge tennis enthusiast. Although my dream is to win a Grand Slam, working as a content writer is also interesting.
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