8 min read
| February 8, 2023
In this article, we are going to discuss why it’s so important to conduct thorough research when you look for an Instagram influencer to work with your brand. We will also explain which Instagram KPIs you need to evaluate to ensure that the influencer you pick is able to meet your expectations and launch a successful campaign for your brand.
Why Instagram KPIs Are So Important
Instagram is one of the most effective platforms for influencer marketing campaigns. With millions of active users looking for engaging visual content to inspire them, it can be a great platform for reaching new audiences and building brand awareness. But your campaigns will only be as successful as the influencer you choose to work with, which is why it’s so important to conduct thorough checks before you contact an Instagram influencer.
Instagram KPIs are a great tool for measuring the success of an influencer and identifying how well their past campaigns have performed. These Key Performance Indicators can help you determine an influencer’s reach, their follower growth rate, how much their audience engages with their posts, and how active they are on the platform. You can also calculate the quality of their audience and what their Earned Media Value is, amongst other factors. All this can help you decide whether they are equipped to meet your expectations or whether investing in them is likely to bring you very few rewards.
Instagram KPIs To Look Out For
Whether you’re looking for a celebrity influencer, a nano-influencer, or a niche local influencer for your agency or brand, the process you use for researching them is the same. You need to see beyond their vanity metrics and get down to the essence of what they are actually capable of producing.
But with so many metrics available, which Instagram KPIs should you be focusing on? Which insights will help you determine if an influencer is a good match for your campaigns and worth investing in?
Here’s a rundown of the most relevant Instagram KPIs for measuring the performance of an active influencer.
Reach and Impressions
Reach and impressions are some of the most talked about KPIs when it comes to influencer marketing, so you are probably already familiar with the concept. However, as these terms are often confused, let’s look at what they actually mean.
An influencer’s reach is the number of Instagram followers who could potentially see their content. This includes their direct following and the number of people who might see their campaigns through search results or recommendations. Impressions are the number of times content has been displayed on Instagram, regardless of whether a user has seen and interacted with it. Impressions also don’t consider whether a post has been seen multiple times by the same user. You should therefore focus more on an influencer’s reach as this will give you a clearer picture of how many people might actually see your campaign.
Engagement
Engagement is an essential Instagram KPI. This is because there’s no point in collaborating with an influencer with a broad reach if none of their followers engage with their posts.
When you evaluate an Influencer’s engagement level, don’t focus solely on vanity metrics like audience size or basic engagement metrics such as the number of likes, comments, and shares on their posts. Instead, look at how many interactions they get with their posts in relation to their audience size. If they get 20 interactions on a post but they have 1 million followers, then their content is not very engaging.
Follower Quality
When you research an influencer it’s just as important to evaluate their audience. You need to be sure that they are genuine and that they are likely to be interested in your brand. The best way to do this is by calculating the quality of their audience.
For example, you can use Influencity’s Follower Quality Metric to calculate this Instagram KPI and work out which influencer has the most relevant and engaged audience for your campaigns. The tool scans an influencer’s audience, identifies accounts that are fake or inactive, and gives you a final score that represents how many real and engaged followers they actually have. That way, you can be sure that an influencer hasn’t falsely inflated their numbers by purchasing fake accounts and bots.
Earned Media Value
Earned Media Value (EMV) is the monetary value given to all the exposure that you gain when you collaborate with an influencer on a post. It takes into account the number of social interactions on an influencer’s posts, including shares, likes, and comments. Think of it as the equivalent advertising value of your campaign. For example, if an influencer’s EMV is $1,000 and you collaborate with them on a post, this publication will generate the equivalent of $1,000 spent on paid advertising on Instagram.
If you’re comparing two Instagram profiles with similar content and interests and one has $1,000 EMV while the other only has $850, the influencer with higher EMV will give you a bigger value for your money.
You can find out more about how to calculate this metric here.
What About Aggregated Influencer KPIs?
Finally, it’s also important to analyze aggregated influencer KPIs if you are planning on working with a group of influencers on a campaign. This will help you understand how well they are likely to work together and what combined Instagram KPIs they are potentially able to generate.
For example, with Influencity’s platform, you can use the Influencer Relationship Management feature to analyze the aggregated Instagram KPIs of a group of influencers. You can then analyze their combined engagement, EMV, and audience metrics to see the impact they could generate.
In addition, you can also see the percentage of their audience that overlaps – that is, the percentage of followers who they share and are therefore likely to see your content published by various influencers. Influencer campaings with high overlap are great for generating brand awareness, as users are impacted by your content through various types of content. With time, they become familiar with your brand and may start to consider it when they need a solution that you offer.
Access to all these Instagram KPIs can help you make an informed decision about whether a collaborating group of influencers is the right fit for your brand and whether they can meet your campaign performance objectives.
