Instagram Analytics API to Get Social Interaction Metrics

Today to stay competitive it’s crucial to know the market, your audience, and your main competitors. When it comes to the social media networks such as Instagram, Facebook, and others, it can be a challenge to obtain all the needed information for further analysis. API scrapers are here to help you. There are a vast number of APIs to use for this purpose.

But which is most suitable for those who analyze social networks and develop products in the field of social media listening: Instagram stats API or any third party solution? Next, we will try to understand this issue in more detail.

Instagram Analytics API: What, Why, How?

Let’s understand what Instagram Analytics API is, why businesses should use it, how this and alternative tools work, and what options are on offer.

What Is the Instagram Analytics API?

API (Application Programming Interface) is a way for applications to interact with social networks, which allows them to create functions for data collection, scheduling, commenting, and analytics.

When it comes to Instagram, in 2018, the social media closed its public API to protect the privacy of user data and replaced it with a more limited Graph API. However, there are a lot of third-party APIs like Data365 on the market to use for social media scraping and getting much deeper insights.

Besides different scrapers, various solutions like Instagram analytics API appeared as well so that the businesses can not only gather but analyze data to improve marketing campaigns, making them more effective and successful.

So, Instagram analytics API and its alternatives are the best way to check if the effort and budget spent on this platform and brand promotion are paying off. With the help of various statistics, anyone with a commercial interest in Instagram gets the information they need to understand their audience: who are these people (potential buyers), what they view, when they are online, and much more. In addition, Instagram's analytics tools can provide the data needed to validate a customer's ROI on social media investment.

What Is It For?

The main task of the Instagram analytics API and similar tools is to monitor and analyze posts, competitor’s accounts, customers’ accounts, and so on. But there are other features that help you grow your business profile and make your social media experience easier:

• Reports and analytics. Most services offer a standard set of reports. They provide data on the target audience (gender, age, location), level of involvement, the optimal time for publishing posts by day of the week and time of day, and transitions to the profile by hashtags.
• Paid/free period. Most services offer a free trial period.
• Integration. Many APIs integrate with various social networks. But there are those that allow you to monitor the accounts of only one social network.
• Analysis of competitors. Not all services provide this function, so it is important to pay attention to it.
• Tracking brand mentions, which can be used in the future to work with the company's reputation, to improve products, and to search for new ideas.
• Keyword filter. With this feature, you can quickly find certain words in the posts and comments of your account or the accounts of competitors.

Thus, when using Instagram analytics API or correctly chosen alternative, you can:

• Track hashtags to see how specific accounts are performing;
• Collect mention data to gauge audience attitudes towards a brand;
• Learn your target audience and track their ever-changing needs, wishes, and requirements;
• Find out the winning content type and time of publication;
• Reveal what needs to be done to retain the audience, and many more.

Where Is Instagram Stats API Used?

The Instagram Stats API is used across multiple industries to analyze and improve digital marketing strategies. It's particularly useful for businesses looking to understand their audience engagement on Instagram. 

The basic functions of the API such as Data365 are:

• Gather data on mentions of the product;
• Collect data about the audience and competitors;
• Analyze audience demographics;
• Get various metrics on posts to understand customers’ and influencers’ reactions to the company/product;
• Look for who is hashtagging your company;
• Search for fraudsters to see if anyone is using your name for their own malicious purposes.

If a company neglects Instagram analytics, it can:

• Target the wrong audience.
• Post too often (or too infrequently).
• Ignore mentions that could lead to future collaborations, address various issues, and so on.
• Post at the wrong time or day of the week.

And that’s only a few issues to name. So, tracking Instagram analytics over time will help better understand what type of content and activities in general are helping to reach the brand’s goals, understand your target audience and market better and many more. That is why companies need statistical data. And with the help of the Instagram API engagement insights received, you can collect the necessary data and use it for further analysis.

How Does It Work?

The way the API works is simple:

1. A third-party developer writes some kind of application, function, or operating system.
2. It constitutes a set of rules based on which other developers can use its development in one way or another.
3. The customer receives this API — it is either in the public domain or is opened on request for clients.
4. The API is called inside the application and the clients use the functions they need. In this case, the customer does not need to know how the API function that he calls works. It can be very complex and contain thousands of lines of code, and the main thing for the client is to get the data in the right way.

The advantage of working with API is that it allows you not to invent your own functions, but to use already-developed ones. It's like with libraries in programming languages: you can not write your own sorting function, but connect the library and use a ready-made, customized tool.

For example, you do not need to write your own comment service — you can find a suitable one, for instance, get Instagram analytics API or its alternative, connect to it and add it to your site. Or let's imagine that you have an internal CRM system, and you want to add to it a record of the time that a user spends on your page on a social network. You can develop this function yourself, or you can find an accounting service, take its API and connect it to your system. Ultimately, working through the API saves programmers time and the development budget of the business.

Instagram API: Engagement, Satisfaction, Churn Rate, and Other Metrics

Instagram contains a pool of data to scrape to get the valuable metrics needed for the business growth.

Certainly, if you're interested in analytics for your own account, Instagram Insights is likely to cover the majority of your needs. However, when it comes to getting analysis of data about other accounts (your competitors, customers, mentions, etc.) across the whole social network, then there is a need to use advanced Instagram Analytics API or similar solutions.

Such APIs can collect such data and metrics for you for further analysis. So, the most crucial metrics that can be gathered by Instagram Analytics API includes:

• Audience demographics;
• Engagement rate by various profiles and posts;
• Churn rate;
• Audience reach;
• Satisfaction rate;
• Mentions, comments, likes, and influencers reaction, etc.

For further insights on optimizing your Instagram data strategies, check out our articles on Instagram scraping best tips and tools and the Instagram Graph API.

Get Instagram Analytics API: Buy or Build?

Now the importance of using Instagram Analytics API or any alternative tool is obvious. Yet, you still need to decide whether to buy a ready-made Instagram Analytics API or build your own API. Both has its own pros and cons:

• Ready-made Instagram Analytics API is simple and budget variant but then you buy all the pack of built-in features with only a part of them used.
• Building your own API takes time and the price can be much higher, yet, it will be fully customized to meet the needs of your business.

However, there is a compromise: you can get a read-made social media API like Data365 as a basis and customize it, turning it into the Analytics API by adding the required functions. It's possible because by using Data365 you already can:

• Find influencers by collecting hashtags, profiles, comments, topics of interest, and more;
• Research your competitors;
• Monitor what customers are saying about your company;
• Identify changes in popularity by tracking likes, reposts, comments, hashtags, mentions and more;
• Gather alternative data to make effective investments and business decisions;
• Improve and track your brand/product;
• Understand reputation by collecting data on comments and likes;
• Learn more about your target audience: engagement levels, demographics, popular hashtags, posting frequency, subscriptions.

So, in this case, you will get all the advantages of Data365 Social Media API, that helps to get a large amount of public profile data based on a database of IDs or usernames of the target profiles, and satisfy your business unique needs by getting required analytics.

Today, all the companies need statistical data. Tracking Instagram analytics is crucial for any kind of business because it helps:

• Better understand your target audience;
• Research competitors and market;
• Build more effective and successful marketing strategies, and many more.

All that is left is to understand what way of scraping suits you most of all: buy a ready-made solution or build your own API. It depends on the budget and purposes of the company. However, there is always a compromise to find: get a solution like Data365 with a wide range of features provided as a basis and add some needed functionality to make it an analytics API. If you have any questions on how to do that, you can get some consultation by contacting us, and we’ll provide you with any help needed.