Instagram has added a new “Competitive Insights” element to its Professional Dashboard, which will give you another way to contextualize and measure your account performance.
As you can see in these images, shared by digital marketing advisor Sarah Roizman, if you have a business or creator account, Instagram’s new Competitive Insights option is now being rolled out within your “Professional Dashboard” options.
You can choose up to 10 accounts to compare your performance against, with side-by-side comparison data on relative follower growth and posting frequency (across Reels, feed posts, ads and more).
Though the comparison here is fairly binary, as it only gives you some basic numbers to measure, in terms of posting volume to follower response. And while it does also enable you to see some of your competitors’ individual post performance data as well (even, interestingly, if the account hides its like counts), it doesn’t give you in-depth breakdowns of their cumulative performance metrics, so you’re not able to view, say, graphs that compare your performance on each metric to the other account, while the comparisons are also one-on-one, side-by-side, not a grouped comparison.
So it’s probably interesting, but maybe not hugely valuable, depending on your focus and purpose in the app.
Because really, followers gained probably isn’t the best comparative metric, as what you really want is clicks, and to understand how to drive direct connection from your updates. If data on clicks generated were included here, that would be valuable, because you’d be able to then look at what each account was posting that helped them drive that response.
But followers, maybe that’s a valuable metric, depending. But then again…
Comparison like this might help you contextualize where you’re at on audience growth, and that could help you demonstrate how you’re doing to others. But the focus of social media metrics is changing over time, as fewer people actually follow accounts (due to personalized algorithms showing them what they want to see based on their activity), and views, and shares, become the focus metrics to drive response.
And again, these stats are not included in this comparison. And without them, it’s just kind of something, but also not really anything at the same time.
The three areas you should be focused to maximize your social media marketing opportunities on are:
- Awareness – Follower growth, engagement, shares, saves, views
- Nurturing – Views, Likes, replies, clicks, saves
- Conversion – Clicks, shares-to-clicks (when trackable)
Some of these elements cross over, but essentially, what I’m saying here is that a binary comparison of posting volume to follower growth doesn’t really tell you a lot as to how your strategy is performing.
You need more than this, though maybe this is only the beginning, and IG will eventually add more comparative elements. But singular data points don’t tell the whole story, and due to shifting habits, probably aren’t worth a heap.
