They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but what’s it worth to a brand? Specifically, what’s that photo’s value when it’s on Instagram? As the picture-sharing platform continues to gain popularity with marketers, brands want to see more than a quick snapshot of Instagram’s impact. And while there are countless tools out there to measure social performance, Instagram analytics tools are still in their infancy. In order to optimize your Instagram content for better engagement, you need to gain deeper insight into your audience. And that’s where the following four tools come in. I’ve done a quick comparison to help you decide which one might be the best option for you.
Statigram
This great online community management tool features top-level metrics to help analyze your audience and content.
Strengths:
Optimization metrics reveal the best day/time to post, most engaging filter, most popular tags, etc., all of which enable you to optimize your content and increase fan interactions.
Statigram makes it easy to set up, promote, manage and measure results of an Instagram contest.
Under “tag impact,” you can do a side-by-side comparison to see where your hashtags and Instagram’s most popular hashtags overlap.
Considerations:
Users can only see the past 7 days and a rolling 30 days (i.e., there’s no way to look at a specific period over time). A custom date range feature would be helpful.
Data is only collected from the date you sign up with Statigram moving forward. You must be proactive in setting up an account before the time period for which you’d like data.
Simply Measured
A deep dive into Instagram analytics, Simply Measured offers a strong and competitive comparison component.
Strengths:
The engagement activity section lets you see your engagement outside of Instagram. When a photo is also shared to Facebook or Twitter, you can compare the number tweets and Facebook likes, comments and shares a photo receives.
Reports can be exported to Excel and PowerPoint for easy access to raw data, graphs and visualizations. This is especially helpful if you don’t want to spend time creating custom reports or dashboards.
Competitor comparison reports allow to you easily compare similar brands and benchmark against your competitors.
Considerations:
Pricing is expensive. If you’re looking to use Simply Measured for just Instagram Analytics, it may be too costly. On the other hand, brands looking to analyze across various social channels and accounts might find it to be a worthwhile investment.
Nitrogram
Nitrogram is an in-depth Instagram analytics tool that provides both user and hashtag analysis.
Strengths:
Nitrogram’s greatest asset is its ability to track and measure hashtags. It shows you the number of photos containing the hashtag, top contributors by potential impressions generated, likes and comments received, most popular hashtags associated with the searched hashtag and more.
Raw data can be exported, which eliminates the time-consuming process of manually pulling data while still letting users create custom reports and visualizations.
The tool’s multi-type search feature allows you to comb through Instagram to find the most relevant users or hashtags surrounding your brand.
Considerations:
Nitrogram’s cheapest option, which is available for $150/month, serves up insights on 5 users or hashtags and exportable insights data. A free or lighter version for smaller brands or those with clients who do not pay for analytics would be beneficial.
Crowdbabble
The newest offering in the mix, Crowdbabble is a simple and user-friendly Instagram analytics tool.
Strengths:
Crowdbabble provides a top-level engagement snapshot for a quick idea of how your brand is doing, with metrics like total posts, followers, engagement rate, and engagements by likes and comments.
With its most expensive account at only $99 a month, Crowdbabble is a very affordable option for both businesses and individuals.
Considerations:
As Instagram analytics have just recently been added to Crowdbabble’s tool lineup, there is some room for improvement. For instance, a competitive analysis would be beneficial for brands looking to benchmark against competitors.