NEW! Open Benchmarks for Instagram Analytics

Open Benchmarks is a free resource you can use to uncover areas you’re succeeding in and other places that could use some extra love and attention to help your account grow.

Posted 3 years ago

Written by

Sam King

Posted 3 years ago

Understanding where you should focus your attention to get the results you want can often be confusing. While there are blog posts online and Instagram experts who can provide advice, this information can be quite noisy and can quickly become outdated. We wanted to create a solution for this.

Open Benchmarks is a free resource you can use to uncover areas you’re succeeding in and other places that could use some extra love and attention to help your account grow. If you’re a content creator, social media manager, small business, or just curious about your Instagram stats, being able to access reliable, up-to-date information that will help your account grow and succeed is a must.

Although we’ve all heard that age-old expression that comparison is the thief of joy (like looking up your ex’s new partner on social media), sometimes, comparison can really step up your Instagram game by showing you where you’re doing well and where you can improve against other accounts that are similar to yours.

A quick disclaimer: Although there are 40,000+ Instagram accounts (and growing!) already linked to Open Benchmarks, you’ll notice that some follower counts have sliiiiiighly more analytics available than others – we’re working on growing this resource as much as possible to give you a full and well-rounded tool that will give you a clear indication of where you rank amongst others in your group.

*Want to help us get even more detailed? Share Open Benchmarks with people you think will find it valuable—we’ll soon be adding the ability to share your Analytics without having to have a Flick Subscription first.

So … How should you use Open Benchmarks?

Each week, or month you can check whether you are over or under-performing compared to similar accounts. You’ll be able to break down specifically where you’re succeeding in (like Posting Frequency) and areas you need to show some extra attention to (like Unique Hashtags). By doing this you can clearly identify areas where you could make a positive impact on your account.
If you notice that your engagement and reach has been down for a week or so, check the date to see if it’s a you thing or if Instagram has switched up the algorithm on you once again.
Open Benchmarks is a great resource for Social Media Managers and Agencies to track their unique data to show clients their worth and ensure clients they are doing a good job. And honestly, who doesn’t want that? P.S, if you have a Flick subscription, you’ll be able to compare your account(s) live data in the same graphs within our app in the coming weeks.

What are we breaking down and what, in the world, do these metrics mean?!

Now that you have access to all of these wonderful stats, what can you actually do with them? Well, we created Open Benchmarks as a way to help all account users to figure out where they’re ranking amongst other accounts so they can improve in the areas they’re lagging behind in. We want everyone to be able to perform as well as they possibly can on Instagram (we’re all in this together—High School Musical-style), so let us break down what the metrics all mean so you can get started on narrowing down the areas you can spend more time on.

Account Performance

Follower Growth Rate
This shows how many people started following you based on the content you’re posting.

With this metric, you’ll be able to discover how your follower growth rate compares to those around you and be able to understand if the rate your account is growing is typical to those of a similar size.

Conversion Rate
The conversion rate is the number of new followers you gain divided by the number of Instagram users visiting your profile in a certain time period.

You’ll be able to discover how well your profile converts visitors into Followers – definitely a metric you should be keeping an eye on!

Click-Through Rate
The number of clicks on the link in your bio is divided by the total number of profile views your Instagram account received in the selected time period.

With this information, you’ll be able to see how well you’re converting your social traffic to your external sites (like your blog, website, or online store!). Being able to optimize this metric is incredibly important if visiting a link outside Instagram is key to your social media strategy.

Reach & Impressions
Reach is the number of unique users who saw your content, whereas Impressions refer to the total number of times when users were exposed to your content.

If you’re curious about how the average number of people that accounts like yours are reaching, this is where you’ll discover the answer.

Profile Activity
Profile activity is a combination of profile views, website clicks and email clicks.

You’ll be able to discover if your content is driving people to visit your Instagram profile and wanting to find more about you or your brand.

Feed & Story Posts

Engagement Rate
The engagement rate is the total number of Instagram users who like, comment, or save a post, divided by the total number of users who saw that post.

This will help you get a clear understanding of your REAL engagement rate on Instagram and how your content is performing compared to accounts that are similar to yours.

Reach Rate
The reach rate is the average reach of your feed posts compared to the number of followers you have.

From this metric, you’ll be able to uncover if your reach is higher or lower than those around you. This will also help you research if it’s your content that didn’t perform well, or if it was all that pesky Instagram algorithm.

Average Engagement Per Post
The average number of engagements an Instagram user gets on their posts.

If you’re wanting to see the exact number of engagements an Instagram account acquires over a number of posts, this is the metric you want to look at.

Average Post Reach

The average number of users the account reaches when they post to Instagram.

You’ll want to look at this metric to see how your account stacks up against others. This is key to understanding how your hashtag strategy is currently working for you. Need help with your hashtag strategy? We got you.

Posting Frequencies

The total number of feed posts an Instagram user makes in a given time period.

This metric will be helpful in creating a baseline for your own social media strategy. Posting too much? Posting too little? This will let you know where you stand and how you can make adjustments in the future.

Hashtag Usage & Performance

Rank Ratio

The number of hashtags you rank on, divided by the number of hashtags you use in a time period.

You’ll be able to understand how frequently accounts are ranking when it comes to their hashtags and where you fit in comparatively.

Hashtag Usage

The average number of hashtags used in feed posts by users in a given time period.

At Flick, we recommend using all 30 hashtags in your post to give you the best possible chance to reach as many people as you can. This metric will help you see how many you’re currently using across a number of posts and whether you should up your hashtag usage (you should probably up your hashtag usage…).

Total Time Ranking
The total amount of time a user spends ranking on hashtags in a given time period.

If you’ve ever wondered how long your post stays in the ‘Top Posts’ feed on Instagram when searching a hashtag, this is the place for you to find that out.

Unique Hashtags Used

The total amount of unique hashtags a user has used on their posts in a given time period.

Are you using too many unique hashtags? Not enough? This metric will help you break down your unique hashtag usage and how you can plan on using more or less in the future!

You can now explore Open Benchmarks! Get all the detailed analytics on your account and how it compares to others. Be sure to scroll through and take note of the areas you can improve on, and if you need a guide on how to improve those hashtags or further analytics into your account, be sure to sign up for a 7-day free trial of Flick and see how we can further help improve your Instagram account.