I think big numbers can make us intellectually lazy.

If you’re wondering which Instagram metrics matter for your business, start here: views tell you how many people saw something, not what they did next. A post gets 700k views and suddenly there’s nothing left to investigate. It worked. Wonderful. No mystery to solve, and a quiet hope that you’ll be able to do it again.

So we copy it. Same topic. Similar hook. Same bloody audio. Maybe wear the green jumper again because at this point I’m not willing to leave anything to chance.

But WHAT exactly worked?

700k people seeing something is a result of something you did. It doesn’t explain why. And it doesn’t tell you whether any of those 700k people did anything useful for your business.

Do views matter on Instagram for business?

They do. I’m not going to pretend otherwise. Views are how new people find you, and without them nothing else happens.

But views are only the first thing that happened. Everything interesting happens after.

Imagine that 700k post again. Maybe it brought 11,000 followers. Maybe everyone shared it because it perfectly explained something they were already arguing about at home. Maybe 4,000 people visited your profile and nobody tapped anything.

Now imagine another post got 37k views and quietly sent 200 people to the thing you actually sell.

Which one would you want more of?

Now my friend, we’re onto something.

Because if you only look at the big number, the 37k post looks like a flop. You’d probably never make anything like it again. And it might be the closest thing you have to a post that pays the bills.

Which Instagram metrics should I actually track?

I think content gets considerably MORE interesting once there’s an actual business or purpose behind it, because “how do I make this number bigger?” stops being the only question.

I want to know what KIND of content introduces me to new people. What makes someone who already knows me suddenly consider an offer. What gets shared but attracts people who want absolutely nothing else from me (thissssss). What makes money. What builds trust.

Each of those questions has its own numbers.

Views and reach from non-followers tell you whether a post found new people. Follows from that post tell you whether those new people wanted more of you. Shares tell you what people want to pass on, which is lovely, but it isn’t always what they’d buy. Saves usually mean something was useful enough to come back to. Profile visits mean someone got curious. Link taps, DMs, sign-ups and sales mean someone wanted the next step.

There isn’t one “right” metric. Each one answers a different question. The mistake is asking one number to answer all of them… and the number we usually ask is views, because it’s the biggest and the most fun to look at.

Why do some viral posts bring no clients?

Some posts get 900k views and achieve the commercial equivalent of everyone coming to your party, eating the cheese platter and leaving without saying hello.

Great party. Lots of people. Nobody knows your name.

This often happens when the post is about something huge and general that everyone relates to, but it has very little to do with what you sell. People enjoy it, send it to Helen, and move on. Why would they follow? They already got what they came for.

And sometimes the views were fine and the leak happened after the post. Thousands of profile visits with almost no follows or link taps usually means people arrived and didn’t find a clear next step. I wrote about that in Instagram Profile Not Converting? Check This First, because it’s one of the most common places the cheese platter people slip out the side door.

I want to know THAT. I’m not trying to feel bad about the 900k post, I just want to understand what it actually did for me.

And look, sometimes I genuinely just want the 700k views 😂 I’m not above it. Nobody is.

But if growth is the only result I’m capable of recognising as “working”, I can get incredibly good at creating attention without ever learning what that attention actually does.

How do I use Instagram analytics to plan content?

Attention gives you data. The problem is that you have to actually look at the bloody data before running off to recreate the post that gave it to you.

Otherwise we’re not experimenting. We’re just hoping the pokie gives us the same result on Tuesday at the exact same time.

So before a post goes out, decide what job it has. Is it meant to reach new people? Build trust with the people already here? Make someone think about your offer? Write it in your plan next to the post. It takes ten seconds.

Then when you open your insights, you judge each post against its own job.

A post meant to reach new people gets looked at for reach from non-followers and follows. A post meant to sell gets looked at for profile visits, link taps, DMs and sales. A post meant to build trust might get looked at for saves, comments and replies to your Stories.

Suddenly the 37k post isn’t a flop. It did exactly what it was meant to do.

And the 700k post isn’t just “the one that worked” anymore. It’s a post that was brilliant at reach and maybe not much else, which is still really useful to know. Now you can decide whether you need more of that, or whether the next one needs to lead somewhere.

Then you adjust the plan. Maybe that means fewer green jumpers and more of the KIND of content that did the job you needed done.

And you do it again next month. That’s the whole loop. It’s not glamorous, and it’s the only way I know to stop guessing.

What to do this week

• Pick your last 10 posts and write down views, follows, shares, saves, profile visits and link taps for each one.
• Next to each post, write the job it actually ended up doing: reach, trust or sales.
• Find the post that sent the most people to your offer and look at its views. You might be surprised how small they are.
• Find your biggest post and check what happened after the views. Follows? Sales? Cheese platter?
• Give every post in next week’s plan a job before you make it.
• When you check your insights, compare each post against its job, not against your best-ever numbers.

Build a plan. Test against the plan. Then improve the plan.

Want help reading your own data?

Inside The Content Engine, we don’t only plan what to post. We work out what each piece of content is meant to do for your business, then look at what actually happened and adjust from there.

There’s a live call every week to bring your questions to, and the community is there on weekdays when you’re staring at your insights wondering what on earth they’re trying to tell you.

If you’d like a plan you can actually test and improve, come and have a look at The Content Engine.