How To Create A Custom Instagram Report for Your Clients

We all know that social media isn’t just about creative campaigns and eye-catching visuals. Creating an Instagram report can be time-consuming but is essential to understanding your audience’s expectations.

Not to mention that a great report is a one-way street to your clients’ hearts.

But out of all the social media platforms, Instagram seems to be drawing in the most engagement, according to Socialinsider’s competitive benchmark data. 

We’ve teamed up with them to find out how to get the best custom Instagram report for your clients and save time doing it.

Socialinsider looked into the top players in 21 of the main industries, and the results highlight Instagram’s supremacy when it comes to engagement, compared to Facebook and Twitter. 

Now, let’s dive in.

What is an Instagram Report and How Can it Help Your Business?

When it comes to your Instagram account, a comprehensive analysis gives you an inside look. It’s a marketing success report that gives you all of the numbers you need to adjust the marketing strategies of your brand by breaking down the Engagement, Reach, Interactions, and many other metrics.

This kind of report is your (and your client’s) key to finding out what the audience wants and expects from you: 

• Which campaign is more interesting
• Which campaign was unsuccessful
• What type of messages are more appreciated: emotional or product oriented
• What communities and micro-communities should you create around your brand
• Do people prefer images, carousels, or videos
• At what time of the day can you reach more people
• Which are the hashtags that help your message
• How many hashtags should you use

All of these answers are given through actionable insights meant to increase your brand’s social media success.

Definition and Purpose

An Instagram report analyzes key metrics like follower growth, engagement, reach, and top-performing posts. It helps assess the effectiveness of social media strategies. It also guides improvements.

Importance of Customization for Client Needs

Customization is key when creating Instagram reports to align with clients’ unique goals and KPIs. Tailoring reports to highlight relevant metrics ensures actionable insights that help businesses refine strategies and achieve better results.

Benefits of a Comprehensive Report That Includes Competitive Benchmarks

Using Instagram to get insights into your audience’s behavior can help both agencies and brands optimize their campaign strategies, both online and offline. 

To take things one step forward in understanding the do’s and don’ts on Instagram, it’s essential to see where you stand compared to your main competitors. 

This is the beauty of Socialinsider: it also provides you with a comprehensive competitive benchmark analysis. This opens the door for a full view of the landscape in which brands operate – which should always be included in a comprehensive Instagram report.

Simply put, the more information you get, the easier it becomes to create successful campaigns.

Using Data Insights to Improve Campaign Strategies 

A detailed Instagram report offers insights that can improve campaign strategies. By analyzing metrics like engagement, reach, and follower growth, businesses can see what content works best, refine their approach, and boost engagement.

Strategic Planning and Competitive Benchmarking

Instagram reports enable businesses to compare their performance with competitors, identify trends, and spot new opportunities. This helps in setting realistic goals, creating targeted strategies, and using resources efficiently. 

Components of an Instagram Report

An Instagram report includes important metrics like follower growth, engagement (likes, comments, shares), reach, top posts, audience demographics, and content performance (photos, videos, stories). 

It may also show hashtag performance, how often posts are made, and the best times to post. This helps businesses understand their audience and improve their strategy.

Key Metrics to Include

Here are the key metrics you need to know about:

Engagement Metrics (e.g., likes, comments, shares)

Engagement metrics show how well your content connects with your audience. These include likes, comments, and shares. High engagement means your content is interesting to your followers, helping increase visibility and reach.

Reach Metrics (e.g., impressions, reach rate)

Reach metrics measure how many unique users have seen your content. Impressions refer to the total number of times your posts are viewed, while reach rate is the percentage of your followers who have seen your posts. 

Interaction Metrics (e.g., clicks, saves)

Interaction metrics show how users engage with your content beyond likes and comments, such as clicks on links or saved posts. High interaction means your content connects well with your audience and drives action. 

Visualizing Data Effectively

Visualizing data through graphs and charts makes it easier to understand complex metrics at a glance. Bar graphs, line charts, and pie charts can effectively display trends in engagement, reach, and follower growth over time. These visual tools help identify patterns and anomalies, making it easier to adjust strategies accordingly.

Using Graphs and Charts

Visualizing data through graphs and charts makes it easier to understand complex metrics at a glance. Bar graphs, line charts, and pie charts can effectively display trends in engagement, reach, and follower growth over time. 

Case Studies or Examples

For example, a fashion brand encouraged their followers to share photos wearing their products using a specific hashtag. By featuring the best photos on their Instagram feed, they saw a 50% increase in engagement rates. The report highlighted the top-performing user-generated posts, showing how authentic content can drive higher likes and comments.

Custom Client Reports Lead to More Effective Campaigns

Whether you decide on generating an Instagram report monthly, quarterly, or annually, or even a one-off report, it’s important to feel the pulse of your communication efforts to create a well-rounded strategy for your next actions.

But while all brands want high engagement, reach, and interactions, not all of them have the same KPIs.

As a social media agency, it’s important to anticipate your client’s needs for future ad campaigns, by highlighting the exact data that is of most interest to them and their marketing plans. 

For example, a brand might need to know how successful a certain campaign has been compared to other campaigns, while another brand is more focused on the micro-community formed around a certain hashtag. In these cases, generating a full report with waves of information isn’t the best course of action.

Make sure you know the purpose of each report, to include only relevant information.

What You Need to Know Before Creating a Report With Your Instagram Account Activity

With specific tools, you can extract presentation-ready reports, with built-in graphics that highlight your data, and catch your client’s eyes immediately. However, you still need to know what exactly you want to highlight.

A plan is always a great starting point.

Define the Instagram KPIs

Do you need a one-off report for a particular campaign?  Do you want to see if your follower count is higher? Or do you just want to see if your performance has increased compared to last year?

Choose specific, measurable, and relevant KPIs that are time-limited.

Choose Which Metrics to Track

Quality over quantity. Make sure that the metrics you choose to track provide valuable information and drive growth. Metrics regarding audience, engagement, conversions, and type of content, will always show you how your next Instagram actions should look.

In other words, actionable insights will always be more valuable.

Keep Track of the Changes in Instagram

All social media platforms go through constant changes. Just because a certain strategy worked yesterday, doesn’t mean it will also be effective today.  You need to always be aware of the latest best practice tips and include them in your reports.

Use the Numbers For Your Future Strategies

Client reporting for Instagram combines data to guide strategy. For example, hashtag insights help decide the best combinations to use. BMW uses 4-5 hashtags, with #m4 driving high engagement. This analysis informs KPIs, audience behavior, and content preferences, helping create effective, presentation-ready reports.

See How Your Clients Rank Against Top Competitors on Instagram

You may think your strategies are working, but the only way to fully understand whether you offer the best services to your clients is to see how the data stacks up against the main competitors. Analyze what is and isn’t working, and plan your next steps accordingly.

Build A Plan

All data, including the not-so-flattering stats, is an asset. In your Instagram report, you should include an improvement plan based on the findings, and your clients will know they’re in good and capable hands.

What Kinds of Data Does an Instagram Report Contain?

Socialinsider likes to include a wide range of metrics that tell a brand’s story. Apart from the data that you can usually find in Instagram Analytics, they also include any other metrics of value. 

The aim is to also help you save time, by generating presentation-ready reports, as well as give you quick access to every stat you may need for a well-rounded performance report.

You can download a main report, with the most important data, but also a report of your Insta Stories or a competitive report.

Typically, this is what’s included in the main report.

Start with a profile summary of all the key metrics.

This includes:

• Total number of posts
• Total number of followers
• Followers’ evolution: followers’ count and growth 
• Total engagement 
• Total engagement per post
• Average engagement rate per post and the increase or decrease of this engagement rate
• Average engagement rate per profile and the increase or decrease of this engagement rate

Followed by an insight into the top-performing posts.

You can also include data on posting behavior and content performance. This helps you see if you’re posting too much or too little, choosing the right times, and if you should post more images, videos, or carousels.

Of course, a more detailed view of the page’s engagement also has to be included, detailing the distribution of comments and likes per day, and type of post.

One SocialInsider’s most requested Instagram features has been the hashtag analysis section, which can help determine which hashtags are more likely to bring more engagement, as well as how many hashtags should you use in your posts.

Dig Through the Data: What Are the Most Important Instagram Metrics?

To save some time, you have the option to download it.

Typically, the information we include in your main report should highlight:

• Engagement
• Reach
• Stories Retention Rates
• Traffic and Sales
• Audience Demographics

Step-by-Step Guide to Using Socialinsider

Using Social Insider to create comprehensive Instagram reports involves a few straightforward steps. Here’s a guide to help you get started:

1. Sign Up and Log In:
   • Visit the Socialinsider website and sign up for an account. If you already have an account, log in using your credentials.
2. Connect Your Instagram Account:
   • Once logged in, link your Instagram account to Socialinsider by following the prompts. This will allow the platform to access your account data and generate reports.
3. Select the Profile to Analyze:
   • Choose the Instagram profile you want to analyze from your connected accounts. You can also add competitor profiles for benchmarking.
4. Choose the Period:
   • Select the period for your report. You can choose predefined ranges like the last 7 days, or last month, or set a custom date range.
5. Generate the Report:
   • Click on the “Generate Report” button. Socialinsider will compile the data and create a comprehensive report based on the selected profile and period.
6. Review the Report:
   • Once the report is generated, review the various sections including follower growth, engagement metrics, reach, impressions, top-performing posts, and audience demographics.
7. Export the Report:
   • Export the report in your preferred format (PDF, CSV, etc.) for easy sharing and further analysis.
8. Analyze and Apply Insights:
   • Use the insights from the report to adjust your Instagram strategy, optimize content, and improve overall performance.

Audience Demographics

Knowing your audience’s demographics is key to creating a custom Instagram report. This data helps you understand your followers’ age, gender, location, and interests, allowing you to adjust content and strategies. 

Hashtag Performance

An Instagram report’s analysis of hashtag performance reveals which hashtags receive the most reach and engagement. You can refine your approach and concentrate on the most effective hashtags by monitoring each one. This ensures that your content resonates with your audience by increasing visibility and interaction.

Case Studies or Examples Illustrating Metric Impact

For example, a skincare brand analyzed their audience demographics and discovered a significant portion of their followers were women aged 18-34 from urban areas. 

They launched a targeted campaign featuring products tailored to this demographic, resulting in a 25% increase in engagement and a 15% boost in sales. 

The report highlighted how understanding their audience demographics helped the brand create more relevant and effective marketing strategies.

How Can You Generate An Instagram Report With Social Insider?

You can download a presentation-ready report, directly from your dashboard for your general stats, your posts, or your stories, or download a side-by-side analysis of your brand and one of its main competitors.

Caption: Generating a presentation-ready report.

Hacks For Your Instagram Report – Final Tips And Tricks

1. Create a plan and set KPIs before starting to work on your report.
2. Instead of creating one big report that includes a vast amount of data, try making a few smaller reports, centered around specific goals.
3. Track the most important metrics for your report
4. If time is of the essence, turn to professional tools to quickly generate the reports
5. Make custom reports for each client to better meet their needs
6. Include side-by-side visuals to highlight the data and the differences in results
7. Draw clear conclusions and use your findings to put together a new plan of action.

Strategies for Setting Goals and KPIs in Reporting

Setting clear, SMART goals (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound) is key for Instagram reporting. For example, aim to grow followers by 10% in three months. Track KPIs like likes or comments and compare results with industry standards. Regularly check progress and adjust strategies as needed. Clear goals keep your team focused and accountable.

How to Effectively Present Data and Draw Actionable Insights

Presenting data is key to making Instagram reports actionable. Use graphs, charts, and tables to highlight trends and focus on relevant metrics. Provide context to explain why certain changes matter and show trends over time. 

Conclusion 

Creating a custom Instagram report is about planning, analyzing data, and communicating clearly. Set goals and KPIs that align with your client’s needs, focusing on key metrics like audience demographics, hashtag performance, and content effectiveness. 

Use tools like Socialinsider to gather data and present it in simple, visual charts. Explain the data in an easy-to-understand way, showing how it shapes future strategies. 

A well-structured report with comparisons and actionable recommendations will not only help your clients make smart decisions but also empower them to succeed and grow on Instagram!