Within this context, using Instagram analytics is vital in building out a successful marketing strategy. You have personalized data at your fingertips to help you build out a killer Instagram marketing strategy for your restaurant. By using these analytics, you can see what works and double down on the strategies that are rewarding your tactics the most. Here’s how:
How to use Instagram dashboards for your restaurant marketing
Your first port of call when it comes to building your Instagram marketing strategy? Using Instagram’s new professional dashboard. Realizing the potential for content creators overall, Instagram has been hard at work consolidating their various marketing tools and allowing businesses to gain more insight into their performance.
Specifically, the dashboard allows businesses to track performance and account growth and access to professional marketing tools. You can track followers, hashtags, and engagement in a more streamlined way, which will be vital in helping you build your strategy.
Once you get a feel for the dashboard, it’s time to build it out to track the most critical metrics for your business.
Metrics for measuring your restaurant marketing strategy on Instagram
The main purpose of Instagram dashboards is to give you access to your metrics so you can track what is most relevant to you. It’s crucial to track metrics to understand what content works and what doesn’t. Knowing which of your content resonates most with your audience and at what times, will enable you to double down on a strategy that works.
Before we dive into it, these are some of the common terms you’ll come across:
- Reach: This refers to the number of unique people that have seen your post.
- Impressions: This is the total number of times your post has been seen – basically, it adds up both unique users and people who came back to look at your post again.
- Engagement: Anytime someone watches your story or likes, comments, or saves your posts, it counts as engagement.
Bear in mind that each of your campaigns may have a different measured KPI (or key performance indicator) depending on your goals, so objectives won’t always be the same. However, as a broad overview into getting started with metrics, here are some of the key figures you should keep an eye on:
- Followers: Tracking follower counts in general, but also specifically looking at which days see an increase after a certain campaign has been put into effect (like influencer marketing or paid ads). This can help you plan content accordingly.
- Impressions: If your impressions are higher than your reach, that means your audience keeps coming back to your content. That will give you a better idea of what kind of content to push out more often.
- Reach: How many users is your content reaching overall? Are you acquiring new followers as a result?
- Engagement rate: (There are several different ways to measure engagement rate, as shown here, so it’s important to pick a method that best matches your campaign strategy) Instagram’s algorithm typically rewards posts with higher engagement rates by showing it to more people who may be interested in your type of content. Engagement metrics such as sharing, commenting, and saving are more rewarded methods of engagement according to Instagram’s algorithm.
Other information to look at on your dashboard and insights that will help you better plan out your content strategy is to break down who your followers are:
These are some of the primary metrics that your Instagram dashboard should feature, and they can help you plan out your content better. Most likely, you’re going to see a varied pattern of user behavior. Some posts, such as promotions and discounts, might get more impressions overall. Tips and tricks shared might get saved more often. High-quality photography of your food will likely get a lot of engagement and likes.
The key to a great Instagram strategy is to balance out all the different types of posts that perform well across these metrics and create a comprehensive content calendar. You’ll cover all your bases in terms of metrics, and you’ll see a more significant uplift overall when you go for a more holistic strategy.
Interested in learning more on how to create an Instagram strategy that brings in customers? We’re here to help. Gourmand Group is a digital marketing agency specializing in social media for the food, beverage, and hospitality sector. Get in touch today, and let’s chat about how to optimize your brand’s Instagram!
