Instagram is a popular social media platform with over a billion monthly active users. That is probably why so many brands and marketers have flocked to Instagram to reach these potential customers.
Businesses and marketers use this platform to achieve a variety of marketing goals like increasing brand awareness, reach, and sales. However, not everyone is successful in their attempts owing to the tough competition faced on this platform.
To become successful at Instagram marketing and remain that way, you need to keep improving your strategy and initiatives. That is where an Instagram audit can help you.
An Instagram audit requires a thorough evaluation of all aspects of your Instagram activity to find opportunities for improvement. Conducting regular Instagram audits helps you stay at the top of your game and be successful at Instagram marketing.
If you are not familiar with the concept or are not sure about how to do it, don’t worry. We have got you covered. In this post, we will tell you everything that you need to know about an Instagram audit and how to conduct one for your business.
Rethink Your Goals and KPIs
Before you begin your Instagram audit, you need to first look at your current goals and KPIs to check if they are still relevant. If not, you need to revise your goals and KPIs before you move forward with the rest of your Instagram audit.
For a lot of brands and marketers, their marketing goals change over time. For example, a new company might be more focused on creating brand awareness than in driving sales. But, after the company has successfully built a brand image, they might then want to focus solely on conversions.
Business goals and priorities change over time and that should reflect in your Instagram goals and KPIs as well.
Therefore, the first step in your Instagram audit should be the reassessment of your current goals and ensuring that they align with your overall business goals. Once you have redefined your Instagram marketing goals, make sure that you determine relevant KPIs to measure those goals.
After all, goals are not of much use if they can’t be measured. You need to set realistic, timebound, specific, and measurable goals. And, for that, you need certain KPIs that you can use to measure your performance on those goals.
Analyze Your Current Performance Metrics
The most common thing that people check in their Instagram audit is their current performance using the built-in analytics tool. Every Instagram business account has access to this analytics tool that provides tons of useful data and insights.
You can get insights into three different aspects of your Instagram account—content, activity, and audience. Let’s look at the key metrics provided for each.
Content Analytics
This provides you insights into your content’s performance on metrics that measure reach and engagement. You can get a consolidated view of how many likes each post or Story got. You also get information on the number of comments on each without having to go through your feed post by post.
The Instagram audit for your content lets you know which type of content works for your audience and which doesn’t. This information helps you revise your content strategy to get better results in the future.
Audience Analytics
This tab provides you information on the demographics of your current audience, as well as the trend on follower growth. You can see how many people followed or unfollowed you over a period of time.
While conducting an Instagram audit, it is a good practice to look for fake followers. This can be identified by a sudden spike in followers in a short
period of time. This should not be something for you to worry about if you did not undertake any unethical measures to increase followers.
However, sometimes you might end up collaborating with a fake influencer or agency who might resort to such measures. Having too many fake followers is not good for your account and can be easily caught by the platform and your account might be categorized as fake.
To avoid that, just keep an eye out for any sudden spikes in followers while doing your Instagram audit.
Activity Analytics
This feature provides you with analytics on your overall account activity and its impact. This information is usually available for the previous week.
You can see metrics like profile visits, impressions, website clicks, etc. that you can’t track manually. Your performance on these is what determines whether your Instagram activities have yielded any positive results or not.
Use this information to see whether your current Instagram strategy is working or if it needs improvement. Good performance means that you only need to tweak your current strategy to add new things and keep doing what you were doing. Bad performance indicates that you need to do a deep Instagram audit and find areas for improvement.
Check For Consistency in Your Branding and Aesthetics
Branding and voice are two things that should remain consistent across all your online platforms. Your website and social media accounts should all represent your brand and be easily identifiable.
Therefore, your Instagram account should look and feel like any of your other marketing channels. Anyone who looks at your Instagram account hould immediately be able to identify your brand and what it is about.
This can be achieved by maintaining consistency in all your brand assets/elements. These include, but are not limited to, color palette, tone of voice, style, logo, font, etc.
Coca Cola, for example, maintains a consistent branding across all online platforms. Their distinctive red, white, and black color palette instantly helps people recognize the brand anywhere. They also use their logo on all channels to further increase brand recognition.
Just like it is important to be consistent across channels, you should also maintain consistency within Instagram. This means that your branding and aesthetic should be similar for all posts so that your feed looks consistent.
Instagram is a visual social media platform and your feed is representative of your brand. Your posts should not just look good individually but also fit well together to form a visually-appealing feed.
Ensure that when someone looks at your feed, it looks like one complete picture and not just a collection of different posts. This means that posts’ background color, frames, style, etc. should remain consistent.
Take Agencia Coral, for example, that uses solid color grids with different colors after every three posts. When you look at the feed as a whole, it looks like one complete picture.
Image via Instagram
Another element that you need to keep consistent across all platforms is your name and username. While it might not always be possible to find the exact username as your brand name, at least make sure that you add your brand name below the username.
Instagram has an option to add both username and actual name to your profile. So, make use of this and mention your brand name above your bio. Also, check the spelling of your name and ensure that the same is used everywhere.
One added advantage of doing this is that it makes your profile easily searchable on Instagram. People looking for your Instagram account will usually search using your brand name, as they might not know your username.
Revise Your Content Strategy
No Instagram audit can be complete without assessing your existing content and revising your strategy, if needed. This includes your content types, formats, captions, hashtags, etc.
Types of Content
You can use different types of content like text, images, videos, GIFs, memes, etc. It is completely up to you to select the right mix of content for your brand’s Instagram account. This should be done keeping in mind your brand image and voice, as well as the kind of information that you want to share.
Our advice is to experiment with different types of content and measure the performance of each to see which ones work best for your audience. You can also adopt a strategy where you use one type of content for your posts and entirely different for your Stories.
User-Generated Content
Apart from the branded content that you create, you should also utilize user-generated content for your Instagram. You can repost content from your customers’ accounts that mention your brand or shows your products in use. You can also run campaigns that encourage people to create content for you, for a chance to get featured.
UGC is free content that saves you time and effort and is considered more authentic. Therefore, if UGC is not currently a part of your Instagram content strategy, it’s time that you include it. Just make sure you get the permission of the original poster before you repost their content.
Content Formats
Instagram offers a variety of content formats like posts, Stories, IGTV videos, live videos, etc. You should leverage all of these to make the most of Instagram.
As part of your Instagram audit, you should first check which of these formats you are using and how. You should also assess which format is preferred by your audience by looking at the engagement metrics for each. This will help you determine where to focus more of your efforts.
If you are not currently using all types of formats provided by Instagram, it’s time that you start doing so. Here are the different options and how you can leverage them.
Stories
Instagram Stories are the best option if you want to post ephemeral content that disappears after 24 hours. These can be used to engage your customers, gain audience insights, drive conversions, and a lot more.
Here are some Instagram Story ideas that you can experiment with:
- Use these for polls and quizzes to drive audience engagement and also collect valuable consumer insights and opinions.
- Post a teaser of your upcoming post or video on Stories to create buzz and get people interested in your upcoming content.
- Launch a product or service using Instagram Stories first and then direct people to the actual product launch on your website or Instagram profile.
- Post updates about the latest products, events, and happenings from your brand.
- Leverage Instagram Stories Ads to get noticed by people, who would otherwise ignore an ad on their feed, and drive conversions.
These are just some of the numerous ways in which you can use Instagram Stories. So, if you don’t currently use these, start using them now.
Posts
Instagram posts are the most common type of content format and anyone present on the platform uses these. Just make sure that your posts align with your overall branding and aesthetics and fit together to form a coherent Instagram feed.
You can also look for new Instagram post ideas and revamp your strategy by doing some research on what others are doing.
IGTV Videos
This is a relatively new feature that has seen very quick adoption by Instagram users. IGTV videos are best for medium to long videos that you can’t post anywhere else on Instagram.
IGTV allows you to post videos that are as long as 60 minutes (for large and verified accounts), which is more than what you can post otherwise. Normally, you can post videos of 10 seconds to 15 minutes on IGTV.
Neither Instagram posts nor Stories allow you to post videos that long. Therefore, IGTV is your only option for longer videos.
If you are not familiar with IGTV, here are some IGTV video ideas to help you get started.
- Start a regular content series which entails posting similar types of videos after a certain time period.
- Host an interview or webinar and invite influential people from the industry to talk about relevant industry topics.
Instagram Live
Instagram Live is the platform’s live video streaming feature that a lot of brands and marketers are now using in a variety of ways. Live videos allow the possibility of interacting with your audience in real-time, which is something that you can’t do using any other format.
This is not something that you might need very frequently, but it is a good idea to post a live video every now and then.
Instagram Highlights
Highlights are basically Stories that you want to save on your profile for longer than 24 hours. These are displayed right at the top of your Instagram profile and immediately grab audience attention. This makes them very useful for marketers to showcase any important content that they want people to notice about their brand.
Here are some ideas for Highlights that you can use.
- Show the different product collections using Highlights.
- Create a different Highlight for different product categories.
- Highlights can also be used for DIY tricks, hacks, recipes, etc.
- Use these to answer common customer questions.
- Create a Highlight for your branded hashtags.
Hashtags
Hashtags are very important and can help you reach a large and relevant audience. Hashtags help you reach people who might be interested in the topic of your Instagram content and increase your content’s reach.
As part of your Instagram audit, you must revise your hashtag strategy. This includes finding more relevant and trending hashtags that you can use and stop using old ones that are not trending anymore.
Assess Your Current Community Engagement and Interactions
An Instagram audit does not just evaluate your content and profile but also your activity. Your job is not done after posting content and analyzing its performance. You also need to respond to comments and DMs and interact with your customers.
A lot of people post their concerns and queries on Instagram and expect brands to resolve them on priority. You should continuously monitor comments and mentions and respond to these.
Also, keep track of posts where your brand has been tagged and show your appreciation by liking or commenting on such posts.
Instagram Audit For Your Influencer Marketing Efforts
When performing as Instagram audit, you should also analyze the performance of your influencer marketing efforts on the platform. This includes auditing both influencer content as well as each individual influencer’s impact on sales conversions.
You can easily measure the performance of influencer content by looking at likes and comments. To evaluate how well an influencer performed you can use tactics like using unique discount codes. By measuring the number of customers who used a particular influencer’s discount code you’ll know who is performing the best.
This will help you filter out influencers who aren’t performing well and collaborate more with those who are.
Conclusion
An Instagram audit is essential for your business to succeed on Instagram and stay at the top of your game. Any brand or marketer who uses Instagram as a marketing channel needs to conduct regular Instagram audits to stay relevant and updated.
Instagram audits provide you with all the necessary insights that you need to improve your content, branding, and activity on Instagram.
Use this checklist as your reference on how to conduct an Instagram audit for your account. It also details how you can benefit from the information gathered during your Instagram audit. You can also add more points and create your own Instagram audit checklist.
Have any more questions on how to conduct an Instagram audit? Ask us in the comments section.