Instagram Business

NOTE: Certain information in this article may be missing or out of date. We are in the process of updating the content.

Overview

Instagram Business is a place where visual expression from business inspires visible action from people around the world, connecting passions and immersing people visually in the brands they love. Here are a few things you can expect from the Instagram Business/Grow integration.

How to Connect

Log in to your Grow account and click Add Metric. You will need to authorize your Instagram Business account before you can build a metric.

Instagram Business data operates through the Facebook API. A Facebook account is also required in order to create a business profile on Instagram, so this shouldn’t come as a huge surprise. When authorizing your Instagram Business account in Grow, just make sure that you use the credentials for the Facebook business page you originally used to create your Instagram Business account. Check out Facebook's article here on how to properly set up your Instagram Business profile.

Enter your credentials in the boxes, then click the blue Log In button, and you’re good to start building metrics with your Instagram Business data!

NOTE: if your personal Facebook account is set to stay logged in constantly, the auth window will assume that the account you’re currently logged into is the one you want to authorize. You’ll need to go to Facebook and log out of any other accounts before you can authorize a different one in Grow.

Endpoints

Below is a list of the reports you can pull from Instagram Business, along with a description of the fields available with each report.

• User Info: Returns the info for your account.
• User Posts: Comments, likes, location, text, and tagged users in your posts.
• Recently Tagged Media: Returns media that was recently tagged with a specified hashtag.
• Total Aggregated Followers: Total number of new followers you have. This only gives the number of followers you have gained.
• User Metrics: All user-specific statistics grouped by day for the selected date range, including period end date/time, impressions, reach, follower count, email contacts, phone call clicks, text message clicks, get directions clicks, website clicks, and profile views.
• Media Metadata: All Instagram content metadata. Select one or several of the following columns: caption, comments, comments count, ID, like count, media type, media URL, owner, permalink, shortcode, etc.
• Audience Demographics: A breakdown of all followers by gender and age groupings.
• Audience Locale: A breakdown of all followers by locale abbreviation.
• Audience Country: A breakdown of all followers by country abbreviation.
• Audience City: A breakdown of all followers by city and country.
• Photo Metrics: All interaction statistics for uploaded pictures, including engagement, impressions, reach, and saved.
• Video Metrics: All interaction statistics for uploaded videos, including engagement, impressions, reach, saved, and video views.
• Carousel Album Metrics: All interaction statistics for carousel albums, including engagement, impressions, reach, saved, and album video views.
• Story Metrics: All interaction statistics for uploaded stories, including exits, impressions, reach, replies, taps forward, and taps back.

FAQs & Tips and Tricks

How come my Instagram Account is not under the "Accounts" dropdown?

The Accounts dropdown only displays Instagram Business accounts that are linked to your authentication. If you have access to an Instagram Business account through your Facebook credentials with which you authenticated, it will appear in this dropdown. 

I'm noticing inconsistencies in the "Date" dropdown picker. Why? 

The date dropdown for Instagram Business changes its function depending on which reports you're selecting. For any of the "metrics" reports that are available (Story Metrics, Photo Metrics, etc.), the dropdown corresponds to when the media object was created, NOT when the metrics were collected. For any other report, the date dropdown corresponds to the date of the metric being collected through the Instagram Graph API.

Can I see historical data for the Audience endpoints?

Each of the Audience endpoints will bring in the lifetime data as of the end of the previous day (even though the date will be the current day).

• Audience Demographics
• Audience Locale
• Audience Country
• Audience City

Can I see how many people stopped following my account?

There is no way to get unfollows from the Instagram API. However, we can get a historical count, by day, of the GAINED followers, but not lost followers.

The way to get the number of accounts that have stopped following your Instagram account is:

1. Query the User Info endpoint to get the current follower count in total.
2. Query the Total Aggregated Followers endpoint (for any time period you choose) to get a list of the GAINED followers over time, by day. (This report brings in only the number of new followers by day.)
3. Run a cumulative sum of the gained followers by day to get the number of followers that you would have if you didn’t lose any.
4. Subtract the current follower count from the number you received from step 3, and you’ll have how many followers you lost during that time frame

What does the "Count" mean when selecting certain endpoints?

The count is a field that returns the selected number of most recent entries for that endpoint. For example, if you select a count of 20 for your User Posts, you will get back your most recent 20 posts.

Why aren't my IGTV posts showing?

Unfortunately IGTV data isn't supported through the API so there is no way to pull it into Grow. If you have any questions about what media is able to come through their API, you can read this article from their API documentation: https://developers.facebook.com/docs/instagram-api/reference/media

Can I see data from Sponsored Posts?

We can only get original post engagement (likes and comments) through the API so unfortunately the engagements associated with sponsored posts (sometimes referred to as promoted posts) will not be returned through the API. So for example if a post received 300 likes, 200 of which resulted from paid activities (promoting or sponsoring the post), the API call will only return a value of 100 likes.

How far back can I get data for Instagram?

Data for the New Followers Gained report is only available from Instagram for the last 30 days. See API documentation here. (Effective May 4th, 2021)

Data for the User Metrics report is only available from Instagram for the last 2 years. See API documentation here.

Why can't I see my follower count?

Followers count, online followers, and audience metrics are not available for Instagram Users with fewer than 100 followers. See API documentation here.