Track Facebook and Instagram mentions in Insights

You can monitor conversations from specific Facebook Pages and Instagram accounts in Insights. Track posts, comments, and hashtags to analyze mentions around specific topics, and discover how people are talking about them. To comply with Facebook’s privacy policies, you need to allow Insights to collect data on your behalf.

The following table lists the data that Insights can collect from Facebook and Instagram.

Add Facebook and Instagram data sources

To include Facebook or Instagram data in your searches, you need to add each account and hashtag that you want to monitor as targeted data sources.

Add an owned Facebook Page or Instagram account

Before Insights can collect data from your own Facebook Pages and Instagram Business accounts, Facebook's privacy policies require that you authenticate with a Facebook account that is an admin of those Pages. Your Instagram Business accounts need to be connected to Facebook Pages too. See Connect an Instagram account to a Facebook Page for details on setting up your Business accounts.

1. In Insights, select Data management, and then select Track Data Sources.
2. Select Owned Facebook Pages and Instagram Accounts and then select Next.
3. Select Connect with Facebook and then log in to your Facebook account.
4. Select Continue as (profile name), and then select Continue again to give Insights permission to collect data. Your name now appears in the Who is connected section of Data management.
5. Select the Facebook Pages and Instagram Business accounts you want to add to Insights as tracked data sources, and then select Track.

Invite another user to authenticate with Facebook

If you don't have access to the Facebook account that owns the Page you want to monitor, you can invite the account admin or another person with access to the account to authenticate for you. They don't have to be an Insights member to authenticate the Facebook account.

1. In Insights, select Data management, and then select Track Data Sources.
2. Select Owned Facebook Pages and Instagram Accounts and then select Next.
3. Select Copy to copy the link and then share it with the person who can authenticate the Facebook account.

Add an Instagram hashtag

To add an Instagram hashtag as a targeted data source, you need to have one of your own Instagram Business accounts added to Insights. See Add an owned Facebook Page or Instagram account for details. Up to 30 hashtags can be tracked for each authenticated Instagram account. Insights starts collecting data as soon as you add the data sources, but can't retrieve any data for the period before that.

1. In Insights, select Data management, and then select Track Data Sources.
2. Select Instagram Hashtags, and then select Next.
3. Select an Instagram account from the list, and then enter the hashtags you want to track, separated by commas or spaces.
4. Select the acknowledgement about your hashtag quota, and then select Add.

Add a non-owned Facebook Page or Instagram account

You can add Facebook Pages, Instagram Business accounts, and Instagram Creator accounts that aren’t your own as data sources. To add a non-owned data source, you need at least one Facebook account authenticated with Insights. See Add an owned Facebook Page or Instagram account for instructions for authenticating with Facebook.

1. In Insights, select Data management, and then select Track Data Sources.
2. Select Other Facebook Pages or Other Instagram Pages, and then select Next.
3. Enter the accounts you want to track by username (or Page URL or ID for Facebook Pages), separated by commas or spaces, and then select Track.

If you get an error that an account cannot be found, check for typos. It’s also possible the Instagram account is not a Business or Creator account connected to a Facebook Page.

To add accounts in bulk, you can upload a CSV of Facebook Pages or Instagram accounts. CSV files should contain a single column of accounts with no header.

Inactive data sources

In Data management, if you see an Inactive status in any of your lists of tracked data sources, it means that the Facebook account used to authenticate and track that data source needs to be reconnected. To reconnect, complete the following steps:

1. Select Track Data Sources.
2. Select Owned Facebook Pages and Instagram Accounts and then select Next.
3. Select Connect with Facebook and then log in to your Facebook account.

Delete a data source

Remove targeted data sources when they’re no longer relevant, or when you need to make room for new data sources. Deleting a targeted data source is permanent and cannot be undone, but you'll keep the content collected from it so far.

1. In Insights, select Data management.
2. Select the tab for the type of data source you want to delete.
3. Locate the data source (account or hashtag) in the list, point to it, and then select Delete .
4. Select Confirm.