What are Instagram vanity metrics?
Vanity metrics are often considered the red herring of social media. All those lovely likes and follows are great to have, but they don’t necessarily help drive traffic or sell products.
But wait, you want likes and followers, so what’s the problem? Well, yeah, but they’re also viewed as elementary data that simply caters to the ego. If you’re running an Instagram account for your cat, the chances are, likes and followers are all you’re interested in. And that’s fine. But if you’re a marketer, graphic designer or a business owner, likes and followers aren’t sales.
In a nutshell, what are vanity metrics?
Vanity metrics are likes and followers, although some consider profile views as a vanity metric.
Measuring the right Instagram metrics
If you’re running a campaign, tracking the wrong metrics can be an easy mistake to make. While all those likes and followers can increase your legitimacy (to an extent), they aren’t necessarily giving you the best insight as to how much it is helping your business.
Instead of tooting your own horn and showing off your follower count, it is important to consider how your social media strategy is connecting to your overall marketing strategy and business goals.
In recent months, I’ve seen a focus shift towards saves and shares. Why? Because someone will only share your content on Instagram if they believe in it in some way. They will also only save your content if they need to refer back to it, see it as a source of learning/information and want it for later.
How does that work for businesses?
As a business owner on Instagram, it goes beyond likes and followers. Instead, thousands of shares can help your content reach way beyond what a few hashtags might do - Therefore putting it in the eyes of potential customers.
What are some of the benefits of Instagram for business?
Instagram can help increase brand awareness
It can build an engaged community (not just followers, an actual community!)
Allow you (as the business owner) to dig deeper into your audience
Drive sales and leads
Drive traffic to websites and landing pages
Metrics for your business goals
Moving your focus from likes and followers may seem like a hard task… However, they do come into your metrics in some way: Reach.
The more eyes on your content, the higher chance of sales and leads. So, although I may have said to disregard your followers and likes (ever so slightly) - when your posts are reaching more eyes, your followers will grow. Let’s put it this way:
You produce great content > It reaches X amount of people > Those people love it and comment, share and save it for later > It reaches more > Higher chance of sales.
Start measuring:
Actionable items - Such as clicks, shares, saves and comments.
Your demographics - Start to understand the qualities and characteristics of your target audience in order to understand your content strategy even better.
Start tracking referrals:
When a user clicks your Instagram link (you know, the one in your bio, and please don’t make it a Linktree), you need to ensure you’re tracking this traffic. A great way to track referral traffic from Instagram is with UTM parameters - Simply add a tag onto your URL and it’ll let your Google analytics know exactly where users came from. Magic, huh?
Pay attention to hashtags:
In order to maximise their performance, it’s important to track the reach and impact of your hashtags. Are you making it into their top posts? Are they actually reaching any of your audience? If not, you need to reconsider your hashtag strategy.
Have you been measuring the right metrics? Or have you been focusing on vanity metrics? Let us know in the comment section, and if you’re looking for help with your strategy, get in touch.