Instagram Ads: What Metrics Should Nigerian Brands Track?

Social media has changed the way brands target their market. That’s not news.  We live in a world that is fast evolving technologically and potential consumers are increasingly getting out of reach of traditional media, so the to create awareness for their brands, marketers now turn to social media. That’s not news either.

Now, these social media platforms provide tools that are designed to target a brand’s ideal customer through advertising and at quite some speed. What’s more is that they also make available an insane amount of data on your target audience and that helps the brands better understand their customers and their interests.

Reading this, you’re probably thinking, “Who is this guy telling us what we already know?” Most platforms have ad tools with data trackers. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube….they’ve all got em. However, my focus is on the one platform I believe will be the toast of visual marketing – Instagram.

Instagram focuses on sharing moments of your life as they happen, and is known for its simple, singular focus on images. Infact, Instagram was so focused on images that up until the release of Instagram Advertising (not yet available for the Nigerian Social Web), the only place on an Instagram account a clickable link was allowed was on a profile page. Inspite of this, a lot of brands have been attracted to the app and will be needing analytics tools to learn how to grow.

Like I mentioned earlier, Instagram Advertising is not yet available in the Nigerian Social Web, but when it eventually comes our way, Nigerian brands will need the best tools to track all available data. That way, they can measure real-time trends and that in turn will help the brands to grow.

 So, as a Nigerian brand marketer looking to use Instagram Ads, what metrics need to be front and center in your dashboard? Let's take a look.

Hashtags

On Instagram, hashtags are everything. With very few options for generating meaningful Instagram analytics, hashtags are often the only way to tease out otherwise hidden trends - the better you can track them and compare them, the more insights you'll have.

So which hashtags should you be tracking? For starters, track the hashtags that are most relevant to your industry, your company and your competition – hashtags that engage.

Not all hashtags are created equal, and some hashtags have a much stronger influence on the number of follows, like and comments your posts will get. Testing your hashtags is a good way to identify which ones will drive greater interaction.

Postplanner came up with a list of Instagram hashtags that are quite popular:

1.        #love

2.       #instagood

3.       #me

4.      #tbt

5.       #cute

6.      #follow

7.       #followme

8.      #photooftheday

9.      #happy

10.    #tagforlikes

11.     #beautiful

12.    #girl

13.    #like

14.    #selfie

15.    #picoftheday

16.    #summer

17.    #fun

18.    #smile

19.    #like4like

20.   #instadaily

21.    #fashion

22.   #igers

23.   #instalike

24.   #food

25.   #friends

 Likes and Comments

Likes are a relatively weak kind of Instagram metric so it’s not a good idea to base your brand’s current performance on it. A 'Like' is a simple tap on the screen, and most often it’s not clear what exactly the viewer likes. Is it the content of the photo? The brand? The hashtag?

Comments, on the other hand, are a very strong indicator - apart from the fact that it takes more time to type a comment, those comments themselves contain loads of data on your fans and their interests.

Follower Growth

This may surprise you, but similar to likes, one of the least meaningful performance indicators is your overall number of followers. It's great to have lots of fans, but knowing the rate at which you're gaining new followers is way more important and insightful. 

One useful Instagram tip will be to track the number of relevant follows (people who are actually interested in your brand) against hashtag followers (people who follow other users because they used a specific hashtag related to your brand). You can tell the difference by when a person follows you - was it after you posted an image using the hashtag or was it at an unrelated time?

Clicks from Instagram Profile

Like I mentioned earlier, until the open release of Instagram Advertising, the only place a clickable link was allowed was on a profile page. Without purchasing ads, Instagram limits you to a single "tappable" URL. While this can be limiting, tracking these clickthrough provides you with very strong data about overall brand interest.

Visits from Shortened Links within Posts

While Instagram doesn't allow links in posts to be clickable, it is possible to post short, easy-to-remember URLs along with your images. By using a custom URL shortener like Bit.ly, you can easily create unique and trackable links for your individual campaigns. Tracking the performance of these links can give you valuable insight on how your Instagram promotions are being received. This is a metric that's absolutely worth the hassle to track.