When running an Instagram account to promote your artistic practice it can be important to keep track of the analytics to understand how best to grow your following and reach more accounts. To access the Instagram analytics page you must set your Instagram page to be a business account, as opposed to the classic personal account.
The business account introduces the insights feature to your Instagram account, which provides you with a look into the analytics for your account.
The insights page allows you to view specific details regarding the posts or stories you have released over either the last 7 or 30 days, and outlines amount of people your content is reaching, the quantity of post interactions you are receiving and the followers you have gained or lost over that time period.
You are also able to gather information about your personal following, such as
•the gender divide
•the geographical location of your followers
•the age range of your following
• their activity surrounding your content
This allows you to understand what times of day is the best for you to post your content, to guarantee the most amount of likes, depending on the day of the week or the time at which you post. Personally I have found the best time of day to post is 6pm, as this is when my content receives the most interaction. I have tested posting at earlier times of day, but have noticed a lower level of interaction.
Your analytics and reach can be affected when you decide to reformat your Instagram, as a sudden deletion of a high quantity of posts can have a negative affect on your statistics. This is a main reason why Instagram introduced the archive feature, so you can choose to hide the posts you do not want to appear public, as opposed to permanently deleting them from your profile. This is a point to note if you were wanting to tidy up or restart your page for any reason.