How to View Instagram Metrics

Figuring out what actually works on Instagram can feel like guesswork until you start looking at the data. Your metrics are a direct line to your audience, telling you exactly what they love, what they scroll past, and when they’re most likely to be paying attention. This guide will show you precisely where to find your Instagram analytics, what they truly mean, and how to use them to create more content that genuinely connects and helps you grow.

Why Bother with Instagram Metrics Anyway?

Dumping countless hours into creating content without looking at the numbers is like driving with your eyes closed. You might be moving, but you have no idea if you’re heading in the right direction. Tracking metrics helps you shift from hoping your content works to knowing it does. It stops the guesswork and replaces it with strategy.

By understanding your analytics, you can:

• Create more of what your audience loves: Identify common themes in your top-performing posts so you can double down on the content that gets the most saves, shares, and comments.
• Understand who your audience is: Learn where your followers live, their age range, and when they’re most active on the app.
• Post at the perfect time: Schedule your content to go live when the majority of your followers are online, giving it the best possible chance for initial engagement.
• Prove your value: Whether you’re a freelance marketer showing results to a client or demonstrating your department's ROI to your boss, concrete numbers are your best friend.

First Things First: You Need a Professional Account

Before you can see any detailed analytics, your Instagram account needs to be set up as a Professional Account. If you’re still using a Personal Account, you’re missing out on a mountain of valuable data. The good news is, it’s a free and easy switch.

Here’s how to do it:

1. Go to your Instagram profile and tap the three-line menu (hamburger icon) in the top-right corner.
2. Tap Settings and privacy.
3. Scroll down to the "For professionals" section and tap Account type and tools.
4. Tap Switch to professional account.
5. Follow the on-screen prompts. You’ll be asked to choose a category that best describes what you do (e.g., Creator, Blogger, Local Business, etc.).
6. Next, you’ll choose between a Creator account or a Business account.

Creator vs. Business Account: What's the Difference?

The choice is mostly about how you plan to use Instagram, and both give you access to analytics.

• Creator Accounts are best for public figures, influencers, and artists. They offer more flexible profile options and slightly more detailed follower growth-and-loss metrics.
• Business Accounts are ideal for brands, retailers, and service providers. They allow you to add more business-specific information like your address and phone number, and they provide access to features like Shops.

For most people just looking to access their analytics, either option works perfectly fine. Once you’ve made the switch, you’ll see a brand new button on your profile: the Professional Dashboard.

Your Instagram Command Center: The Professional Dashboard

The Professional Dashboard is your AI-powered Mission Control for everything related to your account’s performance. Tapping on this from your profile will take you to a screen with various tools, but for analytics, you'll want to tap on Account Insights.

Inside, your insights are generally broken down into three core areas: Accounts Reached, Accounts Engaged, and Total Followers. Let’s break down what you’ll find in each.

Accounts Reached

This tab tells you how many unique people have seen your content. It’s the best measure of your overall brand awareness on the platform.

• Reach: The number of unique accounts that have seen any of your content (posts, Reels, Stories, etc.) at least once. If one person sees your Reel five times, that’s still a reach of one.
• Impressions: The total number of times your content was displayed on screen. Using the same example, if one person sees your Reel five times, that’s five impressions. Impressions will always be higher than reach.
• Top Content: This section quickly shows you which posts, Stories, and Reels have reached the most people in a given timeframe. This is your first clue to understanding what types of content are expanding your audience.
• Profile Activity: Includes how many people have visited your profile, tapped your website link, or tapped your email/call buttons. This is great for measuring how effectively your profile drives action.

Accounts Engaged

Reach is great, but engagement is what builds a community. This tab shows you how people are interacting with your content on a deeper level.

• Content Interactions: This is a summary of all the likes, comments, shares, and saves your content has received. It's a high-level look at how your community is responding.
• Likes: The simplest form of engagement - a quick thumbs-up.
• Comments: A much stronger engagement signal. Comments show that your content was compelling enough to spark a conversation.
• Saves: A powerful indicator of value. When someone saves your post, they’re marking it as something useful they want to come back to. The Instagram algorithm values this highly.
• Shares: Another huge signal. Sharing is word-of-mouth marketing, extending your reach to new audiences who trust the person sharing it.

Total Followers

This tab is all about the people who have chosen to follow your account. It's less about individual post performance and more about your audience composition.

• Follower Growth: A chart that shows your follows and unfollows over a specific period. Don't panic over daily unfollows - they are normal for every account. Focus on the overall trend line. Is it going up over time?
• Top Locations: See which cities and countries your followers are from. This can be super useful for targeting ads or creating location-specific content.
• Age Range & Gender: Understand the demographics of your audience. Are you reaching the people you thought you were?
• Most Active Times: This is one of the most actionable pieces of data in your entire dashboard. It shows you the days and hours your followers are most active on Instagram. Use this to schedule your posts for maximum visibility.

Breaking Down Individual Content Performance

Getting the big picture is important, but the real insights come from analyzing individual posts. How do you know if that carousel you made was a hit? What about that Reel you spent hours editing? Here's how to check.

To view analytics for a specific piece of content, just navigate to it on your profile and tap the View Insights button below the post.

Analyzing Feed Posts (Photos & Carousels)

For your standard grid posts, the metrics focus heavily on direct engagement. You'll see the usual suspects:
Likes, Comments, Shares, and Saves. Pay close attention to Saves and Shares. A "Like" is a passive acknowledgment, but a "Save" or a "Share" means your content was so valuable or relatable that someone took an extra step. These are huge indicators of content that resonates deeply.

You'll also see:

• Reach: How many unique accounts saw your post.
• Profile Visits from this post: How many people were inspired to check out your profile after seeing it.
• Follows from this post: The holy grail - the number of people who liked this piece of content so much they decided to follow you right then and there.

Decoding Reel Performance

Reels have their own set of slightly different metrics tailored to video performance.

• Plays (or Views): The total number of times your Reel has started to play.
• Reach: Same as above - how many individual accounts saw it. If your Plays are significantly higher than your Reach, it means people are watching your Reel multiple times, which is a great sign!
• Likes, Comments, Shares, Saves: Same as with feed posts. Again, focus on Shares and Saves as key indicators of success.
• Watch Time & Average Watch Time: These two metrics (sometimes less prominently displayed) are perhaps the most important for Reels. They tell you not just if people watched, but for how long. High average watch time signals to the algorithm that your content is holding people's attention, which can lead to it being shown to a much wider audience.

If a Reel has low watch time, analyze where people might be dropping off. Is the intro too slow? Is the hook not strong enough?

Making Sense of Story Insights

Analytics for Stories are designed around their interactive and temporary nature. Tapping "View Insights" on an active Story (or in your Story archive) will show you:

• Reach & Impressions: How many saw your Story.
• Content Interactions: This includes Replies or reactions to your Story.
• Profile Activity: This shows actions people took from your Story, like Profile Visits or Website Taps (if you used a link sticker).
• Navigation: This is Story-specific gold. It tells you exactly how people moved through your frames.
  • Taps Forward: The number of taps to see the next Story. Perfectly normal.
  • Taps Back: The number of taps to re-watch the previous Story. This is a very good sign! It means something caught their eye and they wanted to see it again.
  • Next Story (Swipes Forward): The number of swipes to a different account's Story. This suggests your Story wasn't engaging enough to keep them watching.
  • Exited: The number of people who left Stories altogether from your slide. Lots of exits on a particular frame is a clear sign that you lost their attention.

Final Thoughts

Understanding your Instagram metrics isn't about becoming a data guru, it's about listening to what your audience tells you through their actions. By regularly spending a few minutes checking your post performance and audience analytics, you can move away from guesswork and start creating a content strategy that consistently hits the mark, deepens your connection with your followers, and helps you achieve your goals.

Once you’ve used your analytics to figure out what’s working, the next step is building a smart, consistent content plan around those insights. That’s where we wanted to make things easier. We designed the Postbase analytics dashboard to give you a clean, unified view of your performance across all platforms, so you can quickly spot your winning content and drag-and-drop it into our visual calendar to plan your next week or month. It takes the insights one step further by helping you turn them into action, simply.