Many brands have made Instagram the most powerful social media platform. Instagram is a powerful social platform that many brands use to promote their products and reach new customers.Social media is the largest network for influencers. These celebrities are the most visible influencers, and everyone wants to emulate them.It’s the perfect marriage. Companies hire influencers that they trust to endorse their products. Instagram users are not celebrities but have made a career out of endorsements. click here
This is what brands and influencers both want to see. This means that both brands and influencers need to be able to see the changes in Instagram’s services.Instagram has made much information unavailable to third-party services since December 11, 2018. This means that social listening capabilities are now limited.This will be explained in detail for influencers and brands.
Instagram business accounts vs all other users
Instagram has fewer profile types than its parent company Facebook.There are only two types of Instagram accounts: personal and business.
Regular (personal) Instagram accounts
This is the account you use if you have an Instagram personal account. You can upload photos, videos, and Stories, view your friends’ content and follow other users.You can make your account private if you don’t wish for others to see your posts. Accounts for businesses
Business accounts offer many more features than most users need.
These include:Analytics your Stories, posts, and promotions to determine which ones perform best.Get insights into the behavior of your followers and their interactions with your content.
You can advertise on Instagram.
Contact information such as your physical address, website, or phone number.
If influencers want to connect with new clients, this should be all very interesting. If they don’t have business accounts, we’ll discuss why. It’s enough, for now, to say that they should.
Notable: Many celebrities and influencers have a verified account (with a blue tick next to their usernames). A verified Instagram account means that Instagram has “confirmed” that the version is authentic and represents the celebrity, public figure or global brand. Verified accounts and business accounts can be confusing. A verified account can be a business account but not a verified one.
Why is this important? API changes have significantly reduced the amount of information available about user accounts daily.
Instagram API changes to social media data
Instagram has made significant changes to its API to protect and increase users’ privacy. This data stream allows third-party companies, including social listening tools, to gather Instagram information.
This change means that third-party tools cannot collect personal data from individuals. They cannot see:
- What a user posts
- How many followers do they have
- They follow who
- Engagement rates for their posts
- Commentaries of others on posts
- Simply put, an Instagram post from a regular user won’t be picked up by your social listening tool unless it’s using the Hashtag Search API.
What you can learn from Instagram using social listening
There is still much to be gained from social listening. Social listening can automate the manual labour you would otherwise have to do.Social listening allows you to view your competitors’ posts and those of industry leaders (more about them later).
These Instagram data points can be accessed from business accounts.
- Post content
- Caption content
- Media content (what’s on the image or in the video)
- AI allows content analysis
- Estimated impressions
- Estimated reach
- Likes
- Comment
- Analytics on authors
- The exact date of the post
Good social listening tools can then analyze all of this data and give you key insights to help you make better business decisions. Tip: The Meltwater social media marketing solution can help you understand your social reach and collect rich audience data.
Anonymized Instagram data
The Instagram API allows you to access anonymous data in addition to the details from business accounts. You can track the volume of conversations but not know who they are.
You can see what you want by searching for a hashtag or topic.
- Post content
- Caption content
- Image or video content
- The volume of all the above
Let’s take, for example, a sneaker company monitoring the “dad shoe” trend. To track the hashtag “dad shoes” on Instagram, you can see how many posts have been made (and whether it is growing), what brands are most frequently mentioned, which hashtags are preferred, and the sentiment towards the trend.It’s just not possible to know who is having these conversations.
How Instagram updates affect brands and marketers
For marketers who are addicted to social listening, this may come as a surprise. It was possible to view not only what others posted on Instagram about your favourite topics but also some insight into the personalities of these people.The most critical data, however, is still there. You can still track:
What do people think about your brand?
They share their images and videos, along with captions and comments.
It doesn’t matter if they post about you more often than your competitors.
Additional critical topics related to your brand name
