At this point, most marketers are aware that Instagram presents a fantastic opportunity. Around half of the platform’s monthly active users now access the app on a daily basis, bringing the total to over 300 million.

Moreover, a Forrester analysis indicated that Instagram postings earned a per-follower engagement rate of 4.21%, which is 120x more engagement per follower than Twitter and 58x more engagement per follower than Facebook.

The first step in developing a successful Instagram social strategy is to keep tabs on any and all mentions of your brand on the platform. This will give you a better idea of how people are discussing your brand on Instagram, as well as give you a chance to interact with your target demographic and gather valuable feedback.

We’ve been covering Instagram for a while, but last week we announced a number of changes, including the ability to verify Brandwatch with your Instagram account, for even more in-depth coverage.

Here’s How It Operates

There isn’t much to it. If you connect Brandwatch to your Instagram account (personal or business), we can crawl the platform more frequently and provide you with better, more consistent coverage.

Our preliminary testing have showed a 3x (and even 5x) boost your widely used hashtags. Thus, the amount of Instagram data you see in Brandwatch Analytics ought to increase, particularly when monitoring trending terms.

Next, just as with any other sort of mention within the platform, Instagram mentions are compiled and shown for you to further track, analyse, and enjoy.

Log in to Instagram by selecting the “Login with Instagram” button that appears just under your username in the header. Getting the access token is all we’re doing; we have no intention of messing with your Instagram account in any way.

In addition, you can follow as many or as few Instagram accounts as you like, track as many or as few keywords as you like (within your normal subscription limits), and use as many or as few of the fantastically useful Query operators you’re accustomed to using to get incredibly refined, relevant data as you like.

After you’ve authenticated, your regular Queries will immediately begin obtaining enhanced Instagram coverage while continuing to function normally (using your usual key words, operators, etc.). Use site:instagram.com in a Query to restrict data collection to the Instagram service and monitor certain phrases or hashtags (using the hashtags: operator).

Furthermore, in our next stage of development, we will concentrate on enhancing Instagram mentions with other metadata, such as geolocation, so that you can get even more value from them.

One Must Know

You have the option of restricting your dashboards’ data views to just Instagram by:

  • To filter out results from sites other than Instagram, prefix your query with site:Instagram.com.

  • Create a Site List consisting just of Instagram and apply it as a filter to certain widgets or the whole dashboard to hide all data that doesn’t pertain to Instagram.

  • If you’re interested in viewing information from visual platforms like Instagram and Flickr, among others, filter by the ‘Image’ page type.

For Brandwatch users who are having trouble authenticating their Instagram accounts, we recommend consulting either our comprehensive Help Center or getting in contact with our friendly support staff.

Get in contact with us for a free demo if you aren’t currently a customer and want to take advantage of the countless opportunities that come with analysing Instagram data (and millions more data sources).