11 Jan Top 3 metrics to get Instagram working for your restaurant

On this post Im going to talk about my three favourite Instagram metrics. I know that for most people reporting and metrics are boring. But here’s the thing for marketing: if you’re not measuring what you’re doing, you’re wasting your time.

Wouldn’t you like to know that if you’re going to put that time in it’s worth it? So you’re not wasting your time on things that don’t work. With these three metrics you’re going to focus better on what works and watch your Instagram account.

The first metric is comments and for me it’s really important. I don’t care about followers, I don’t care about likes, they’re useless to be honest. But if I want to work with someone, the number one thing I look at is comments (genuine ones, not bots!). It shows that:

A) You’re making efforts to build a community

B) People actually care about what you have to say and have an emotional connection with the restaurant  

So the more comments you get, the more you are building a community of super fans who are going to be following your journey and hopefully keep coming back to your restaurant.

Å bonus is the more comments you get the more Instagram flags your post as great content and pushes it out to a wider audience

Here’s a little tip for you: to get more comments all you need to do is to leave a question at the end of every post.

My second metric is reach, which is the number of individual people that each of your posts is reaching. This shows the power of Instagram because the more people you’re reaching the more potential customers are seeing your message. And again, it always comes back to content. The better your content, the more people you’re going to reach.

To check this every week, you can look at the “Insights” part of your Instagram if you have a business profile. Look at your weekly reach – and you should always be trying to improve that. Also look at every individual post and the reach of it to see what is working – don’t forget to look at things like time and day of week the content was posted as that will make a difference.

The more your content connects with other people, the more Instagram is going to show it and the wider will be the reach.

You should be trying to improve those metrics each time. The more you bring in followers, the more people you’re going to reach as well. So an increased reach will in turn show the benefits of all your follower growth efforts.

Another tip is the better your images and the better your videos, the more people you’re going to reach. So really try not to post unless it is a great quality photo or video.

And my last metric is profile views. This is really important because it shows how many people are coming to check your page out. Logically, if they come and check you out, they’ll probably come and visit. Also, if you have invited an influencer or if you’re getting a lot of press, you’re probably going to get a lot of spikes in your profile views, which is a really good way to see it is worth working with that particular influencer or if that press is a good channel for you.

However, if you’re getting a lot of profile views but no one is really following you, then you have a content problem, because people aren’t connected with your page. That means your bio, your content, or your overall look is going wrong and you need to fix that and profile views are a great way to track it.

Here is another tip for you: use stories. You have no doubt heard stories are important. For me, one of the main reasons is that if people check you out then if you have a story running they are going to see your story. If they like your story then they are much more likely to follow you. As you never know who is going to be looking at your profile it’s always good to have at least one story running.

To sum up, just measure those metrics each week, try to improve them and you’ll be a long way to getting building an awesome Instagram community.