Instagram added a new one ‘Competitive Insights’ element to the professional dashboardthat allows you to contextualize and measure your account performance in a different way.
As you can see in there these imagesshared by digital marketing consultant Sarah Roizmanif you have one business or creator account, Instagram’s new Competitive Insights option is now rolling out within your “Professional Dashboard” options.
You can choose up to 10 accounts to compare your performance with, with side-by-side comparison data on relative follower growth and post frequency (across Reels, feed posts, ads and more).
Although the equation here is fairly binary, as it only gives you some basic numbers to measure, in terms of posting volume to follower response. And while this also lets you see some individual post performance data from your competitors (even, interestingly, if the account hides his equal counts), it doesn’t give you in-depth breakdowns of their cumulative performance metrics, so for example you can’t view charts comparing your performance on each metric to that of the other account, while the comparisons are also one-to-one, side-by-side, and not a grouped comparison.
So it’s probably interesting, but maybe not hugely valuable depending on your focus and purpose in the app.
Because the number of followers gained is probably not the best comparative metric because what you really want are clicks, and understanding how to generate a direct connection through your updates. If data about the clicks generated were included here, it would be valuable because you could look at what each account posted that generated this response.
But followers, maybe that’s a valuable metric, depending. But again…
Making a comparison like this can help you contextualize where you are in terms of audience growth and show others how you’re doing. But the focus of social media metrics is changing over time, as fewer and fewer people actually follow accounts (thanks to personalized algorithms that show them what they want to see based on their activity), and views and shares become the focus metrics to drive responses.
And again, these statistics are not included in this comparison. And without them it’s just something, but at the same time not really something.
The three areas you should focus on to maximize your social media marketing opportunities are:
- Awareness – Follower growth, engagement, sharing, saving, views
- Care – Views, Likes, Replies, Clicks, Saves
- Conversion – Clicks, shares-to-click (where trackable)
Some of these elements intersect, but what I’m essentially saying here is that a binary comparison of post volume versus follower growth doesn’t really tell you much about how your strategy is performing.
You’ll need more than this, although this may be just the beginning, and IG will eventually add more comparative elements. But individual data points don’t tell the whole story, and probably aren’t worth a dime due to changing habits.
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