You can use social media to build your art practice, but sometimes it's hard to know if you’re getting the most out of your account. Running an Instagram audit is one way to make sure that your account is working as well as it should be.
What Is An Instagram Audit?
An Instagram audit is a review of your current situation. It helps you identify problems and opportunities that you may not have been aware of before.
This is all in service of CONNECTING with other humans in meaningful ways. This kind of genuine connection with people who like your art can lead to exhibitions, sales, and all kinds of exciting opportunities. Fun stuff.
An audit isn't a one-time thing. You'll want to regularly review your account like this because it’s the best way to ensure your Instagram account stays on track and keeps growing steadily over time.
Why Do You Need An Instagram Audit?
An Instagram audit can help you determine the impact your online art presence is creating and what changes, if any, you want to make. It's also a great way to set social media goals for yourself and monitor progress.
Even if things are going well, an audit can help identify areas for improvement so you know exactly how much work needs to be done in order for your Instagram efforts to reach their full potential.
For an audit to be most effective, it should include two components: review of current stats and identification of potential opportunities for growth.
Run Your Own Instagram Audit
First, you'll want to grab your notebook and your favorite pen. Or you can put your notes into a Word doc or spreadsheet. This makes it easier to find later especially if you’re like me and important pieces of paper can get lost in the maylay of collage papers (true story).
To start your audit, open up your analytics, under “insights”. You’ll see insights as an option only if you have a business account.
Next, write down your top performing posts or Reels by the engagement, reach, profile activity, and plays numbers. You can go deeper here with more information on comments, likes, shares, saves, impressions, and non-followers but for posts, those metrics are already included in the main three metrics.
For Reels, you may want to look at your specific numbers for comments, likes, shares and saves as well since Instagram doesn’t give you a metric for engagement. For the purposes of this audit, you don’t have to go too deep down the analytics rabbit hole. Starting with only a few areas of information is really helpful.
Study the type of visual post it is - video, photo of you, custom photo of your art, or a photo of something in the studio. What hashtags did you use? Anything of note in the description length or subject? Then add all of this to your notes so you can easily compare how different posts have operated for you.
Next, you'll look at similar profiles and compare them with your account. You can do this by using a hashtag of the genre or medium of art you make (“portrait art”, “landscape art”, “clay sculptures”) as well as location hashtags (“sacramento artist”).
Similar to how you evaluated your feed, look at the number of followers they have, the photos, stories, and hashtags they share as well as the number and type of comments they receive.
What do you notice? Are there approaches to posting or to Reels that would make sense for you to take? Are they using hashtags that would also be a fit for you?
How To Get The Most Out Of Your Instagram Audit?
Now that you have your Instagram audit, it's time to put the insights to good use.
Improve Your Content
If your audience is engaging with certain types of posts, this means they like what you're posting. This could be a sign that they want more of the same.
Use this as an opportunity to analyze what works and what doesn't work for you as well as others from the Instagram community so that when you post again in the future, people will be more likely to engage with your content.
The last time I did an audit, I found a lot of great hashtags that I could use to bring new eyes to my work.
Use The Insights For Better Engagement
Engagement is crucial for brands because of how influential it can be in driving organic growth and revenue down the road (and beyond).
The key here is understanding which types of engagements resonate most with your audience. This will help optimize interactions between your feed and potential buyers moving forward. Which ultimately leads to increased sales. This is largely due to having targeted your efforts correctly.
Remember Your Bio
Don’t forget to take a look at your Instagram profile every once in a while, too. It’s something that I encourage you to update regularly so it aligns with the work you create. And so all of the links you include in your bio are current. It’s really easy to forget you posted about the show you were in a couple of months ago that’s now long over. Learn more about how to do this in the article, How To Get Engagement With Your Instagram Bio.
Make Your Instagram Account Great After Your Audit
Once you’ve completed your Instagram audit, you can easily discover what’s working and what isn't. You’ll be able to see how your content is performing, who's interacting with your posts, and what kind of posts you enjoy putting out into the world the most.
This information will help you decide where to focus your efforts in order to increase engagement and grow a loyal following on Instagram.
If you want to be successful on Instagram, it’s important to monitor your account and make sure it’s healthy. An Instagram audit can help you identify any issues that may be affecting your reach and engagement, so you can fix them before spending time making a ton of posts that don’t perform as well as they could.
If done correctly, an audit provides valuable insights into how your audience interacts with your content, giving you a better understanding of what changes need to be made in order for success.