Instagram is scorching right now. No other platform has its mix of cultural cachet and daily traffic (Instagram has doubled its user base in the last two years, and posts on Instagram receive more engagement than on any other platform). This means that it's become a hotly-contested digital battleground for today's brands, all of which are seeking to grow and cultivate their audience. To get the most out of Instagram, it's imperative to understand and optimize your metrics -- and partnering with a social media strategy company is often the best way to do that.

Instagram metrics: The basics

If you want to maximize the resources you devote to Instagram, skillful use of analytics is essential. By understanding these metrics, you gain deeper insight into what people truly like and respond to, plus get a better grasp on the effectiveness of your strategy.

As a social media strategy company, we want to help you refine your approach. Let's take a look at some basic metrics:

Impressions

This metric shows you how often your post, profile or story has been viewed during a specified period of time. If one person views the same post three times, that counts as three impressions.

Reach

Though similar to impressions, reach only measures the number of people who have seen the content. The percentage of your followers who have seen an individual post is referred to as the "reach rate."

Engagement

This measures all the ways someone interacts with content (likes, comments, etc.). The number of interactions divided by your follower number is your engagement rate.

Engagement-on-Reach

This metric takes the number of comments, likes etc. and divides them by reach rather than follower number. The subsequent number is your engagement-on-reach rate.

These are four of the most frequently used metrics on the platform -- all of which are easily accessible when using the "view insights" button on an Instagram for Business account. Other available metrics include follower growth, website and email clicks, as well as exits and swipe away (the latter two show you how many viewers exited a story without watching all the way through or swiped to another piece of content).

When taken in total, all of these metrics provide a fairly deep window into the relative performance of your Instagram content. It's important to view metrics such as reach and engagement for what they truly are: Not a popularity contest, but an opportunity to leverage engagement for the direct benefit of your business, ultimately creating more sales.

Using a social media strategy company to help optimize your approach

Engagement on Instagram is a staggering 15 times higher than engagement on Facebook. Instagram is also perfectly suited to brand cultivation and audience building. There is no better digital platform on which to tell your brand story and build an audience.

Working with a digital marketing agency like BIGEYE can help you better understand and optimize your metrics, and tell your brand story in the most effective and compelling way possible. If you're not getting the most out of the resources devoted to Instagram, we urge you to contact our social team today.