Article updated: April 16, 2025
Instagram Business metrics
Instagram Business metrics help you figure out how you're doing on Instagram. Analytics collects data for your posts- it does not include data from posts you collaborated on. This article goes over the Instagram Business metrics available in Analytics. Use CTRL+F (CMD +F on Mac) to search content in this article.
Important: Meta deprecated some Instagram metrics. To learn more about how this may affect your reports, see Changes to Instagram metrics - April 17, 2025.
To collect analytics data for Instagram, you must have an Instagram Business profile connected to a Facebook Page. See Meta's help article Connect or disconnect an Instagram account and your Page for setup instructions.
Hootsuite Analytics does not support IGTV.
Hootsuite retrieves data for Instagram Business metrics every 48 hours, but it may take up to 64 hours to see the latest data in your reports.
For details and limitations on how we collect, backfill, and store data for each social network, see Understand data in Analytics.
Instagram Business Page-level metrics
Page metrics or Page-level metrics display results that occurred during the selected date range for all posts published to a Page, regardless of when the posts were published. So, if you track any Page-level metrics in your reports, the data you see is for the entire Page. For example, a metric like Page views shows you the total number of views that your posts received during your selected date range - it doesn't matter if the posts were published during or outside of that range. Learn more about the difference between post-level and Page-level metrics
| Metric | Description |
|---|---|
| Audience > Age | The number of followers broken down by city, country, gender, and age. Does not include current day's data or data from paid promotion |
| Engaged audience | The countries, cities, gender, and age of the engaged audience. Does not include current day's data or data from paid promotion. Instagram requires at least 100 followers to return this data |
| Followers | The number of people following your accounts |
| Followers online | The number of followers who were online during the selected date range, broken down by day of the week and time of day. When you select more than a week, it displays the average number of followers. All times are in GMT |
| Inbound messages | The number of inbound messages (direct messages and comments posted by others) your accounts received |
| Inbound messages table | The list of inbound messages (direct messages and comments posted by others) your Instagram accounts received, analyzed by sentiment, gender, and language |
| Lost followers | The number of followers who unfollowed you or left Instagram during the selected date range. Instagram requires at least 100 followers to return this data |
| New followers | The number of new followers gained per day in the selected date range, without paid promotion. Instagram requires at least 100 followers to return this data. The data may be delayed by up to 48 hours due to network limitations |
| Page engagement | The number of interactions (reactions, comments, shares, and more) content you published during the time frame received. Content includes posts, stories, reels, videos, and ads. Instagram requires at least 100 followers to return this data |
| Page engagement rate | The average engagement rate for all posts, calculated as the sum of engagement rates for each post divided by the number of posts. The engagement rate for a post is calculated as the number of interactions (reactions, comments, shares, and more) for posts, stories, reels, videos, and ads you published during the time frame, as a percentage of the number of people who saw them. To chart daily values over time, we recommend using Line, Area, and Column visualizations. Number, Gauge, Pie, and List visualizations can only display average daily values |
| Posts | The number of posts published to your accounts. Posts include photos, videos, carousels, reels, and stories |
| Posts ROI | The total return on investment (ROI) for all posts published to the selected Advanced Analytics accounts during time frame. We calculate ROI as the sum of metric values assigned by the social network (for example, 12 likes) multiplied by metric values assigned by you (for example, 2 points) |
| Profile daily average reach | A daily average of how many people saw at least one of your organic or boosted posts or ads. Repeat views and views across different types of posts (photo, video, or carousel) by the same person are counted as a single view. To calculate the average per profile, we add each day's value and then divide that by the number of days in your selected time frame |
| Profile reach | The number of people that have seen at least one of your organic or boosted posts or ads. Repeat views and views across different types of posts (photo, video, or carousel) by the same person are counted as a single view |
| Profile views | The number of times your posts were played or displayed on people's screens. Posts include photos, videos, carousels, reels, and stories. This metric is estimated by Meta |
| Reached audience | The countries, cities, gender, and age of the reached audience. Does not include current day's data or data from paid promotion. Instagram requires at least 100 followers to return this data |
| Received DMs | The number of direct messages your Instagram accounts received |
Instagram Business post-level metrics
Post metrics or post-level metrics only display results for posts published during the selected date range. So, if you review your post performance results or track any post-level metrics in your reports, like Post impressions, the data you see is only for the posts published during your selected date range. Learn more about the difference between post-level and Page-level metrics
| Metric | Description |
|---|---|
| Plays table | The list of reels you published during the time frame |
| Post comments | The number of comments on content you published during the time frame. Content includes photos, videos, carousels, reels, and stories |
| Post engagement | The number of times someone liked, commented, or saved content, or shared reels you published during the time frame. Content includes photos, videos, reels, and carousels. Note, this metric does not support stories. If you include this metric in a report, and filter by stories, it will return a 0 value |
| Post engagement rate | The average engagement rate for all your posts, calculated as the sum of engagement rates for each post, divided by the number of posts. The engagement rate for a post is calculated as the number of people who liked, commented, or saved a photo, video, reel, or carousel, or shared a reel you published during the time frame, as a percentage of the number of people who saw it. To chart daily values over time, we recommend using Line, Area, and Column visualizations. Number, Gauge, Pie, and List visualizations can only display average daily values. Note, this metric does not support stories. If you include this metric in a report, and filter by stories, it will return a 0 value |
| Post follows from a post | The number of people that started following you from content you published during the time frame. Does not include followers from IGTV or stories |
| Post likes | The number of times someone liked organic posts you published during the time frame. Does not include likes received after a post was promoted. Posts include photos, videos, carousels, and reels |
| Post reach | The number of people who saw content you published during the time frame at least once. Content includes photos, videos, carousels, reels, and stories |
| Post reels average watch duration | The average time reels you published during the time frame were watched, including replays and views of less than three seconds. Returns 0 for reshared reels |
| Post reels watch duration | The time reels you published during the time frame were watched, including replays and views of less than three seconds |
| Post saves | The number of times people saved content you published during the time frame. Content includes photos, videos, carousels, and reels |
| Post shares | The number of times people shared content you published during the time frame. Does not include stories |
| Posts table | A list of posts published to your accounts. Includes organic engagement metrics (likes and comments) |
| Post views | The number of times people saw the organic posts you published during the time frame. Posts include photos, videos, carousels, and reels |
| Profile activity from a post | The number of actions people take when they visit your profile after engaging with posts you published during the time frame. Does not include actions from IGTV or stories |
| Profile visits from a post | The number of times people visited your profile from content you published during the time frame. Does not include profile visits from IGTV or stories |
| Story exits | The number of times people swiped out of stories you published during the time frame before they ended |
| Story replies | The number of replies to stories you published during the time frame. This does not include replies made by users in Europe and Japan. For stories created by users in Europe and Japan, the number of replies will be zero |
| Story taps back | The number of times people tapped to see the previous photos or videos in stories you published during the time frame |
| Story taps forward | The number of times people tapped to see the next photos or videos in stories you published during the time frame |
| Top posts | The best performing posts on all your accounts |
Can't find what you're looking for? We're here to help