9 key social media listening metrics every marketer needs to know in 2026

Social media can sometimes feel like the wild west.

Brands know they should post content on social media. But without the right metrics, it’s hard to understand if these efforts are moving the needle and helping them reach their target audience.

Social metrics such as comments and likes provide a basic look at whether a post resonates with an audience. However, the art of social media listening goes deeper. Using social media listening metrics can help you understand what content your audience wants and how they feel about your brand on a deeper level.

These metrics provide valuable insights into what consumers are saying about your brand, how you measure up against competitors‌ and what trends are driving engagement in your industry.

In this post, we’ll explore which metrics can be used to listen to different parts of a social media campaign to drive results. Also, learn how to use listening metrics to edge out the competition‌ and improve your social media strategy.

Why should you track social media listening metrics?

Social media listening metrics, like volume of brand mentions and sentiment score, help you understand who’s talking about your brand and products online, what they’re saying and how they feel.

Tracking social media listening metrics isn’t just useful—it’s essential. These metrics are an important part of any marketing strategy as they tell you about people’s emotions about a brand. Monitoring audience sentiment toward your brand can help you understand your audience, identify trends and respond to customer needs effectively.

You can also apply the learnings from these metrics to other parts of a business, like customer service or social media strategies, to align messaging with your target audience.

9 key social media listening metrics to track

Social media listening metrics are key to understanding how your brand is perceived, how your campaigns are performing‌ and what opportunities exist for improvement.

However, there are different social media listening metrics to use across your strategy. Some metrics track brand and sentiment, while others track engagement and campaign performance.

Here are nine key social media listening metrics every strategy should use.

1. Brand mentions

Tracking how often your brand is mentioned on social media is a way to gauge brand awareness and reputation. On a basic level, this metric monitors how actively people are talking about your products or services.

Brand mentions can be used in different ways to track how your audience is feeling, such as:

• Product launches. Monitor the public’s reaction during and after a new product launch and tweak your strategy based on real-time feedback.
• Customer service. Track customer mentions across platforms and respond quickly. If someone is unhappy with your product and mentions your brand, dealing with it as soon as possible is best to avoid reputation damage.
  • By integrating Sprout with Salesforce Agentforce, support teams can view this customer social intelligence directly within their service console, connecting sentiment history to active cases for faster, more personalized resolution.
• Overall sentiment. Tracking your brand across social media can measure whether your audience is happy, upset or indifferent. This can help your brand make decisions over everything—from the content you post to how you reply to customers and resolve issues.

To simplify how to track brand mentions, a tool like Sprout’s Queries by AI Assist allows you to simply describe a topic, and our AI will generate the relevant keywords and Boolean strings for you, making it easier than ever to build a granular campaign to track your mentions. It can track brand mentions and monitor common phrases or keywords (including nicknames and misspellings) associated with your brand to gauge how audiences feel about your company or products.

These insights are essential for making informed decisions that’ll drive your social media strategy forward.

2. Engagement metrics

Tracking likes, comments, shares and overall social media engagement rates is one of the best ways to understand which listening topics you should be focussing on to understand customer intent and experience.

Engagement metrics are important to see who is interacting with your brand and how often, and each engagement metric indicates a slightly different level of interest. While likes indicate initial approval of an overall message or topic (think of it as the lowest form of engagement), comments show a deeper level of interest in what your brand is saying or other specific keywords that you’re tuning into.

Sprout’s Connected Profiles in Listening now allows you to analyze owned engagement—such as comments on your TikTok videos and LinkedIn Company Pages—directly alongside your broader public listening topics for a holistic view of the conversation.

The bonus of tracking audience engagement is that it also helps you understand the demographics of the people talking about your brand. Analyzing who is engaging with specific topics and keywords makes it easier to identify patterns and craft future strategies.

3. Hashtag performance

Tracking the performance of specific hashtags can help marketers understand which topics or campaigns resonate with your audience.

Relevant tags make it easier for your target audience to find your content. But it’s important to know which hashtags are performing best to optimize this strategy. Sprout’s Hashtag Analytics can track multiple hashtags for your overall brand alongside specific hashtags for different demographics.

Tracking this metric allows you to swap out hashtags for better-performing tags and maximize post reach to your target audience.

4. Demographic insights

Understanding who is talking about your brand and their demographic features can help tailor your marketing strategies more effectively.

Demographic insights track information like age, gender and location to see if the people who are looking at your content match your target audience. For example, Sprout’s demographic data in Listening tracks what topics your audience is engaging with, where they live and the level of engagement they have with your campaigns.

Social media marketers can also see how different groups interact with content at different times. This can help them target people for seasonal campaigns.

5. Share of voice

Share of voice tracks your brand’s visibility on social media against your competitors. This metric lets you see exactly how strong your brand’s market presence is and whether you outperform the competition.

This metric gathers multiple different data points. For example, it can track social media engagement metrics like shares, comments and likes and benchmark them against your competitors. This will then determine if your target audience is engaging with your brand more than others.

Sprout’s Competitive Analysis Listening template has a Share of Voice tool that tracks all of these separate data points and aggregates them into user-friendly graphs.

Collecting and aggregating data can also be used for other marketing efforts, like PPC, SEO and media market share. It’s a quick and easy snapshot to understand how well you’re reaching your audience compared to the competition across various channels.

6. Sentiment analysis

Sentiment analysis is a temperature check on how your target audience feels about your brand. It analyzes the tone and emotions behind your brand’s social media mentions and conversations.

What makes sentiment analysis different from other metrics like brand mentions or engagement is that it tracks your audience’s net sentiment over time. Tracking helps you spot patterns and link positive and negative sentiments to specific campaigns or events.

A sentiment analysis tool, like Sprout’s, tracks overall sentiment across social media and bundles it into a positive or negative score. It also tracks how sentiment trends change over time, which helps understand how efforts like marketing campaigns or crisis management land with your audience.

With Sprout’s AI agent, Trellis, you no longer need to read thousands of posts to understand these shifts; you can simply ask, “Why did sentiment drop yesterday?” and the AI will analyze the data to explain why people feel the way they do.

7. Trend analysis

When you identify and analyze social listening trends within your industry or topic-related conversations, it helps you adjust strategies to current events or changes in consumer behavior.

Listening trend analysis goes beyond jumping on the latest meme trend. It looks at niche and industry-specific trends to see what words, brands and products your target audience is talking about.

A simple way to analyze these trends is with Sprout’s Conversation Overview. It gathers trending keywords and hashtags to help you see what content resonates with your audience during a specific timeframe.

For deeper analysis, use Trellis, Sprout’s AI companion. Instead of manually digging through charts, you can ask Trellis questions like, “What are the emerging trends in this topic?” to uncover insights through natural conversation.

8. Campaign performance

Campaign performance is an overarching measure of a specific campaign’s effectiveness and how an audience responds to your messaging.

Monitoring campaign performance allows you to understand the sentiment and interaction with specific hashtags and keywords related to your brand’s campaign. This broad look at a social media campaign helps marketers understand how well it met its objectives and what messaging resonated with your audience the most.

To stay ahead of the game when tracking campaign performance, a tool like Sprout’s Campaign Analysis Listening template can help. You can set up your Listening topic before launching your campaign, adding specific keywords and hashtags related to your campaign messaging. This helps you monitor conversations promptly, so you can see spikes and sentiment trends and make campaign adjustments as needed.

9. Influencer engagement

Finally, if your social media campaign also involves influencers, it’s important to measure the impact of their efforts.

Influencers are used to add a little extra fuel to a social media campaign, introduce your brand to a broader audience‌ and generate more interest in your posts. When measuring influencer engagement, look at metrics like engagement rate on influencer posts, the reach of these posts‌ and if their posts positively impact conversion rates.

Sprout’s influencer analytics tool, Sprout Social Influencer Marketing (formerly Tagger), can accurately measure and report ROI from your influencer campaigns alongside other campaigns you run.

These insights not only monitor the progress of influencer campaigns in real-time, but give you real data around how your target audiences respond to the influencer’s content.

Using Sprout Social to track social media listening metrics

Social media campaigns are looked at through various lenses to decide if they are successful or not.

The key for social media managers is to pick the right metrics to gauge performance. Social media listening metrics can go deeper into a campaign and track how your target audience feels, what people say about your brand and how well your posts tap into trending topics.

Sprout Social’s extensive social media listening tools and AI-driven intelligence provide insights into every piece of a campaign. Marketers like you can use social media listening tools to generate customizable reports with real-time data‌, see what posts are resonating most with an audience and make informed decisions to drive your social media strategy forward.

To start using social media listening metrics, you need a fail-proof framework. Download Sprout’s social media listening guide and map out your strategy to get insights into every area of your campaigns.

The post 9 key social media listening metrics every marketer needs to know in 2026 appeared first on Sprout Social.

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How to work with Irish influencers and drive ROI

For social media practitioners, effective influencer marketing isn’t just about identifying popular Irish creators. It’s also about finding local influencers who fit your brand and respect cultural nuances. That’s how you build partnerships that feel genuine and deliver ROI.

Explore 20 Irish creators who drive results, along with strategies to help you find influencers who’ll supercharge your brand.

The rise of influencer marketing in Ireland

More people in Ireland are using social media than ever. In fact, DataReportal’s Digital 2025: Ireland report shows that 77.8% of Ireland’s population uses social media, with 100,000 new users joining in the last year. The number of networks Irish users engage with jumped 5.9% since 2024, highlighting social media’s growing role in daily life.

But what are Irish people doing on social? DataReportal found that 29.2% use social media for inspiration on what to do, while 27.6% follow influencers or other experts directly. Whether users intentionally follow creators they trust or discover their content while searching for ideas, influencers are shaping tastes, trends and ideas.

This mix of conscious trust and accidental discovery means influencers don’t just inspire. They also affect purchasing decisions, and brands are taking notice. DataReportal notes that year-on-year influencer ad spending in Ireland rose 11.6% as companies strengthen these relationships and drive ROI.

Sprout Social’s 2025 State of Influencer Marketing Report echoes this trend globally, showing 86% of social users make at least one influencer-inspired purchase per year.

In short, Irish audiences aren’t just spending more time online. They’re using social media to explore, connect and buy, and influencers are at the heart of that shift.

Where Irish audiences engage most with influencers

Irish audiences are highly active on social media platforms, but where they spend time varies by generation and intent. Knowing where your Irish target audience scrolls makes it easier to pick the right networks and tailor content to them without spreading your budget too thin.

Here’s where different Irish user groups congregate online:

Platform preferences in Ireland

TikTok leads in discovery, especially among younger audiences. DataReportal’s Ireland report shows that 18–24-year-olds make up the largest slice of TikTok’s targeted ad audience in Ireland. TikTok‘s targeted ad reach is also growing among 25–34-year-olds, showing the network isn’t just for the youngest groups anymore.

For Gen Z in particular, TikTok is now a place to connect with influencers. Sprout’s 2025 State of Influencer Marketing Report shows 27% of Gen Z interact with creators on the app, making it ideal for targeting this age group.

Despite TikTok’s growth for discovery, Instagram remains the dominant social network for lifestyle content. DataReportal shows Instagram has a slightly older Irish audience than TikTok, with a female-led base. Women aged 25–34 form the single largest ad audience at 14.5%, followed by men of the same age at 12.9%.

Meanwhile, Facebook and YouTube still attract midlife audiences. According to DataReportal, Facebook’s largest group is 35–44-year-olds, while YouTube draws strong engagement from those aged 35–54. This makes the two networks ideal for family-focused, financial or community campaigns.

For practitioners, the takeaway is clear:

• TikTok dominates discovery among Gen Z
• Instagram builds lifestyle credibility with Millennials
• Facebook and YouTube sustain longer-form engagement for midlife audiences

But network is only half the battle. The content format you use is what truly drives conversion.

Content formats that drive engagement in Ireland

When it comes to staying on top of social trends, the 2025 Sprout Social Index™ reveals people favor video-forward networks. More than half (54%) turn to Instagram, 45% to Facebook and 38% to TikTok. TikTok’s short-form video format, combined with Meta’s confirmation that Reels deliver the highest engagement, proves video isn’t just popular. It’s what drives results.

Creators follow the same trend. Knowing short clips perform best, influencers now focus on 15–30 second videos, according to Sprout’s 2025 State of Influencer Marketing Report.

And it’s working. According to the Index, 35% of social users say they make impulse purchases from social posts several times a year. Additionally, the 2025 State of Influencer Marketing Report shows that nearly half of social users buy on social networks monthly because an influencer inspired them. With networks and creators both confirming that video drives engagement, short videos should take priority.

But don’t write off longer videos entirely, as they still have an impact on the right networks. In fact, Sprout Social’s 2024 Social Media Content Strategy Report shows more than half of YouTube users engage most with content over 60 seconds long.

Static content also holds value. The 2025 State of Influencer Marketing Report found that 48% of influencers still create static posts, with originality driving their effectiveness. The Index confirms originality remains a top factor in brand appeal.

Irish fashion influencers

Ireland’s fashion influencer scene is thriving, and local creators who mix style, personality and relatability drive that community.

From TikTok fashion influencers to Instagram style bloggers, these Irish content creators turn everyday Galway strolls and Dublin coffee runs into Paris Fashion Week-esque trendsetting moments:

1. Sophie Murray (@sophie_murraayy)

• Instagram: 417k followers
• TikTok: 411.7k followers
• YouTube: 88.1k subscribers

(Source: Instagram)

Sophie Murray shares a vibrant mix of outfit inspiration, family life and beauty routines, all styled with her signature playful tone. Her content spans seasonal staples, wardrobe roundups and Get Ready With Me (GRWM) videos, and she often tags the brands behind her looks so you can shop the products.

2. Terrie McEvoy Fitzpatrick (@terriemcevoy)

• Instagram: 385k followers
• TikTok: 67k followers
• YouTube: 5.03k subscribers

(Source: Instagram)

Terrie McEvoy blends fashion, motherhood and lifestyle content so her feed moves seamlessly between GRWM clips, hair-care tutorials, event outfits and behind-the-scenes family life. Polished yet endearing, her content resonates with followers drawn to sophistication and authenticity.

3. Charleen Murphy (@charleenmurphy)

• Instagram: 337k followers
• TikTok: 321.1k followers
• YouTube: 25.8k subscribers

(Source: Instagram)

Charleen Murphy is a top Irish fashion and beauty creator who effortlessly blends holiday looks, event outfits and seasonal styling videos. Her GRWMs showcase makeup, skincare and hair tutorials, and she adds outfit tags that make her posts shoppable.

4. Naomi Clarke (@the_style_fairy)

• Instagram: 229k followers
• Facebook: 134k followers

(Source: Instagram)

Naomi Clarke, founder of @nomi.ireland, shares her life as a mum of three and fashion entrepreneur. Her content features outfit breakdowns, styling tips and event updates. Relatable, engaging and community-driven, she represents the intersection of Irish entrepreneurship and accessible style.

Irish beauty influencers

Beauty influencers in Ireland blend Irish elegance, artistic expertise and everyday relatability.

You’ll see a broad mix of makeup tutorials, skincare tips, self-care rituals and product reviews across Instagram, TikTok and beyond:

5. Pippa O’Connor Ormond (@pipsy_pie)

• Instagram: 458k followers
• Facebook: 276k followers
• TikTok: 13.5k followers

(Source: Instagram)

Pippa O’Connor Ormond is a cornerstone of the Irish beauty and lifestyle space, blending makeup tutorials and GRWM content with updates about her own brand, @pocobeautyofficial. Her posts range from holiday skincare tips to family life and self-tanning hacks.

6. Jodie Matthews (Lawson-Wood) (@jodiewood_)

• Instagram: 151k followers

(Source: Instagram)

Jodie Matthews brings an elegant, editorial-style approach to beauty and fashion. Her feed features favourite looks, makeup product reviews and skincare routines, all shared with a focus on luxury and simplicity.

7. Chelsey Harrington (@sincerely_chelsey)

• Instagram: 47.1k followers
• TikTok: 33.4k followers
• Facebook: 13k followers

(Source: Instagram)

Chelsey Harrington brings warmth and realism to the Irish beauty influencer world. A mum of two, Chelsey offers affordable makeup finds, mini beauty vlogs and tutorials on everything from laser hair removal to nail care. Her content strikes the perfect balance between family life and relatable, budget-friendly beauty.

Irish food and drink influencers

Irish food influencers bring tradition, creativity and everyday practicality to their content.

Covering everything from home-cooked recipes and family-friendly meals to local ingredients and budget-friendly food hacks, they shape how audiences cook, eat and share:

8. Donal Skehan (@donalskehan)

• YouTube: 1.04M subscribers
• Instagram: 667k followers
• TikTok: 244.5k followers

(Source: YouTube)

Donal Skehan is one of Ireland’s most recognisable food influencers, famous for his easygoing cooking style and engaging video recipes. A TV host, producer and cookbook author, Donal creates content like step-by-step recipes, cooking tutorials and food reviews. He also provides glimpses into his creative projects and personal life.

9. Lili Forberg (@liliforberg)

• Instagram: 546k followers
• TikTok: 168.8k followers
• YouTube: 2.35k subscribers

(Source: Instagram)

Lili Forberg brings Irish family vibes and creativity to the Irish food content creation scene. Her “Fakeaways” recipes, where she shows followers how to recreate takeaway favourites at home, are highly popular, and she also shares family meals, breakfast ideas and travel-inspired dishes.

10. Ciara Turley (@thetummyfairy)

• Instagram: 225k followers
• TikTok: 33.1k followers
• Facebook: 8.1k followers

(Source: Instagram)

Ciara Turley, aka The Tummy Fairy, combines healthy eating, family cooking and wellness in her content. As a self-taught cook with a passion for gluten-free and whole-food recipes, she shares herbal teas, lunchbox favourites, air fryer meals and cost-saving kitchen hacks.

Irish comedy influencers

The Irish comedy influencer scene combines sharp wit and social commentary, with creators turning everyday life into laugh-out-loud moments.

From TikTok sketches to YouTube skits and Instagram Reels, these Irish content creators use humour to capture the quirks of Irish culture and connect with audiences at home and abroad:

11. Foil Arms and Hog (@foilarmsandhog)

• YouTube: 1.19M subscribers
• TikTok: 708.1k followers
• Instagram: 680k followers

(Source: YouTube)

Foil Arms and Hog are one of Ireland’s best-known comedy acts, famous for clever sketches that turn everyday moments into brilliantly absurd humour. Their content ranges from wordplay-driven skits to relatable Irish scenarios about work, family and culture. Alongside their online sketches, they share tour updates and live-show highlights to keep fans engaged both on and offline.

12. The 2 Johnnies (@the2johnnies)

• Instagram: 563k followers
• TikTok: 483.7k followers
• YouTube: 159k subscribers

(Source: Instagram)

The 2 Johnnies are an Irish comedy duo who post high-energy sketches and podcasts that lean into rural Irish life with a playful twist. On social, they share quick-fire humour clips, behind-the-scenes banter, local-culture references, live show highlights and short sketch videos that spark laughs and community connection.

13. Kayleigh Trappe (@kayleigh_trappe)

• Instagram: 359k followers
• TikTok: 200.6k followers

(Source: TikTok)

Kayleigh Trappe is a comedian and digital creator reshaping online humour with her viral lip-synced comedy. Her social content is built entirely on digital creativity, blending pitch-perfect lip-syncing with commentary on local Irish nuances and everyday life, offering audiences a mix of sharp, original and locally authentic humour rooted in her performance.

Irish travel and lifestyle influencers

The Irish travel and lifestyle influencer community captures the heart of modern Ireland through authentic storytelling and visual creativity.

These Irish content creators share everything from hidden travel gems and weekend getaways to daily routines and personal reflections:

14. Janet Newenham (@janetnewenham)

• TikTok: 185.6k followers
• YouTube: 169k subscribers
• Instagram: 160k followers

(Source: YouTube)

Janet Newenham is a Dublin-based travel creator who showcases authentic Irish and global adventures through a local lens. Her content highlights Ireland’s coastlines, hidden villages, scenic roads and rural experiences, alongside vlogs from destinations like Bali and Vietnam.

15. Niamh Flynn (@niamhxtravels)

• Instagram: 82.6k followers

(Source: Instagram)

As the founder of Irish Travel Gang and a creator who uses outdoor-first travel storytelling, Niamh Flynn focuses on hiking in tucked-away Irish locations. She engages her audience through immersive nature trips and local food experiences.

16. Dev Skehan (@dev_skehan)

• Instagram: 64k followers
• TikTok: 44.1k followers

(Source: Instagram)

Dev Skehan is a Dublin-based travel and lifestyle influencer who posts an energetic mix of adventure, style and self-discovery content. Her socials feature Irish staycations, weekend getaways and city explorations paired with motivational storytelling.

Emerging and micro-influencers from Ireland

Ireland’s micro-influencers are building strong communities through local-first, down-to-earth content.

Here are emerging creators who share real glimpses into their lives, whether in fashion, sport or family:

17. Olivia Spuds (@olivia.spuds)

• Instagram: 21.7k followers
• TikTok: 18.5k followers

(Source: Instagram)

Olivia Spuds is a rising Irish micro-influencer who’s famous for her “mini mic” vox-pop style videos in everyday Dublin spaces. Her content captures local Irish culture, from corner shops to DART stations, through a playful lens.

18. Aisling O’Reilly (@ashoreilly_)

• Instagram: 21.4k followers

(Source: Instagram)

Aisling O’Reilly is an Irish sports broadcaster and former football and camogie player who won Silver Sports Broadcaster of the Year in both 2023 and 2024. Her social feed features behind-the-scenes media work, athletic commentary and inspiration for women in sports, rooted in Irish sporting culture and personal experience.

19. Elaine Porter (@elainecporter)

• Instagram: 21k followers
• TikTok: 16k followers

(Source: Instagram)

Elaine Porter is an Irish lifestyle influencer and mother whose social content captures the joy and juggle of modern family life. Her feed features parenting moments, home styling and everyday snapshots of Irish culture.

20. Melissa Tyndall (@melissajtyndall)

• Instagram: 17.6k followers
• TikTok: 14.4k followers

(Source: Instagram)

Melissa Tyndall is a Dublin-based lifestyle creator whose feed blends family life, fashion moments and beauty exploration. Her content features her and her daughter’s outfits, along with GRWM videos and beauty tips for trendy parents who are keen on everyday style and authenticity.

How to evaluate and choose the right Irish influencers

The best influencer marketing campaigns in Ireland come from creators whose audiences match brand goals, not just those with the biggest numbers.

Here’s how to pick Irish influencers who resonate most with your brand:

What matters more than follower count

Since not every follower is active or relevant, a high follower count doesn’t guarantee results. Many large accounts attract passive audiences who scroll past branded posts without engaging.

When vetting Irish content creators, focus on measurable quality. Look at factors like:

• Engagement rate: Likes, comments and shares per post reveal a creator’s true influence. Smaller creators often experience higher engagement because their communities are tighter-knit, which fosters greater trust and leads to better conversion rates.
• Content fit: A creator’s tone, style and posting habits show whether they naturally align with your brand. When an influencer’s usual content, values and voice already match your message, their audience is far more likely to respond positively.
• Platform strength: Every network has its own strengths. The key is matching them to your goals. For example, TikTok is ideal for discovering new creators and products, while Instagram is better for connecting with trusted voices and known brands. Aligning with these patterns ensures your campaigns reach the right people with the right mindset.

Signs of real engagement and audience alignment

True influence is about connection, not clicks. When assessing Irish influencers, consider how well they cultivate a community that actively engages with their content. Followers who connect personally with influencers are more likely to trust, share and act on recommendations.

To understand real connection, dig deeper than surface metrics such as likes and follows by focusing on high-quality engagement, including:

• Comment quality: Real conversations, not repetitive emojis or generic praise, indicate an engaged audience.
• Shares and saves: People sharing and saving posts show they’re getting genuine value from the content.
• Audience demographics: The demographic makeup of an influencer’s audience reveals whether their reach aligns with your brand goals since age, location and interests all shape how messages land. For example, a creator popular with Dublin Gen Z audiences engages differently than one followed by Cork parents or professionals.
• Growth patterns: Steady, organic follower growth usually means audiences are discovering the creator naturally through content they enjoy, not through giveaways or bots. This indicates more sustainable influence and consistent engagement over time.

These insights show that influence requires connection, relevance and alignment with your brand. Focusing on these factors helps you find Irish creators who engage their audiences and drive results.

How to use Sprout Influencer Marketing to shortlist creators

Finding the right Irish influencers shouldn’t feel taxing. Instead of manually trawling creators, Sprout Influencer Marketing (formerly Tagger) allows you to filter, evaluate and shortlist creators based on real performance data.

Filters help narrow results by location, audience demographics, engagement rate and content category, making it easy to surface Irish creators whose audiences align with your campaign goals. When you filter by the topics that influencers talk about, their content niche and the networks they post on, you’ll find those who naturally fit your brand’s identity.

With your shortlist in hand, organise potential influencers directly within your campaign planning dashboard. Then track outreach, manage deliverables and generate detailed performance and ROI reports in one place.

Ultimately, Sprout’s Influencer Marketing Platform helps you move from manual research to a scalable, data-driven influencer strategy, ensuring your next Irish campaign relies on insight, not instinct.

How to collaborate with Irish influencers

Working with Irish influencers requires cultural fluency and genuine collaboration. The most successful brand deals feel like real partnerships where both parties understand each other’s backgrounds, nuances and goals.

Here’s how to brief, empower and manage Irish creators effectively so your partnerships are mutually beneficial:

Align your brief with Irish cultural context

Irish audiences respond best to content that feels real, relatable and rooted in local life. That means using tone and humour that match the creator’s own voice, not forcing corporate phrasing or slogans.

While briefing your creators is important, remember to leave room for Irish colloquialisms, wit, regional references and local-style storytelling. Irish creators thrive when they interpret ideas through their own personality and cultural lens.

Empower creators to tell their own stories

The most engaging influencer campaigns in Ireland happen when brands hand creators the mic.

Whether they involve covering local events, creating UGC-style product demos or sharing personal stories about using a product day to day, these moments must feel genuine. The best way to do this is to allow your creators to be themselves and showcase what matters to them.

According to Sprout’s 2025 State of Influencer Marketing Report, 65% of creators “wish they could be brought into creative or product development conversations with brands sooner to help inform strategy, rather than following a rigid brief.” They’ve built their audiences by knowing what resonates, so there’s value in trusting them to do the same for your brand.

Use Sprout to streamline campaign approvals

Even the most creative partnerships need structure. Clear approval workflows provide the framework to keep campaigns on track.

Tools like Sprout Influencer Marketing let you manage every stage of collaboration, from briefing and content uploads to review, approval and reporting, all within one shared workspace. The platform lets you assign approvers, leave time-stamped feedback and monitor version history so nothing slips through the cracks.

Once you approve the content, the system stores and organises assets for easy access during and after the campaign. This keeps feedback loops short, approvals transparent and creators focused on producing great work while your team maintains full visibility and control.

Measure the impact of Irish influencer partnerships

To prove ROI, Irish influencer campaigns rely on more than just reach stats. They require measurable business results. If you need a few pointers on what to track, Sprout’s guide to influencer marketing metrics shows how to monitor impact across the funnel and strengthen your case for future investment.

Here are a few tips to help you get started:

Track influencer performance with UTM and pixel data

To get real value from influencer partnerships, go beyond vanity metrics. UTM parameters and pixel tracking show which creators and posts actually drive traffic, sign-ups or sales, helping connect engagement to measurable ROI.

Sprout’s Premium Analytics (a paid add-on) brings that data together in one dashboard to compare creator performance side by side. This makes it easy to spot top converters and refine future collaborations based on evidence, not assumptions.

Define KPIs your leadership will care about

Before you measure influencer success, define what you’re trying to achieve. Clear goals focus reporting and prove the real business impact of every campaign.

Here’s how to match metrics to your goals:

• Reach for awareness: Track impressions, follower growth and views to see how effectively influencers expand your brand’s visibility.
• Engagement for credibility: Measure likes, comments and shares to understand how deeply audiences connect with both the creator and your brand.
• Conversions for ROI: Use tracked links, UTMs or discount codes to tie influencer content directly to sales, sign-ups or leads.

Clear KPIs translate influencer success into business terms, showing leaders that campaigns drive growth, not just visibility.

Bring Irish influencer campaigns to life with strategy, not guesswork

The best influencer marketing strategy in Ireland uses insight, planning and high-quality influencer marketing platforms to build meaningful creator partnerships, reach the right audiences and turn engagement into results.

Sprout Influencer Marketing streamlines the process. It allows you to find creators who truly fit your brand, manage collaborations seamlessly and measure results that demonstrate real business value.

Ready to build partnerships that last? Book a demo today to see how Sprout’s Influencer Marketing Platform helps you discover Irish creators and measure the impact of their work.

The post How to work with Irish influencers and drive ROI appeared first on Sprout Social.

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B2B SEO: How to turn search intent into revenue with a social-first approach

Strong B2B SEO recognizes the link between intent and revenue. Even when you’re on Google’s first page, searchers aren’t always looking for your solution. To turn clicks into sales, your SEO must attract high-intent buyers.

But decision-makers aren’t only on Google. They’re also using social media search to find answers. That’s why it’s important to optimize for social and search engines.

By merging search intent with social insight, you’ll strengthen both channels and improve discoverability everywhere. Here’s how that relationship works and how you can leverage it to grow.

What is B2B SEO?

B2B SEO is the strategy of optimizing your digital presence so the right decision-makers can find you when they’re actively looking for solutions. The goal is to identify what your buyers are searching for and deliver content and experiences that nurture them through the evaluation process.

Unlike B2C SEO, which targets broad audiences and often aims for quick, impulse-driven conversions, B2B SEO focuses on smaller, highly qualified groups of buyers making considered decisions. B2B customers usually research thoroughly, compare multiple vendors and look for evidence of results before choosing a solution. Because the buying journey is longer and more complex, your SEO and content strategy must answer their detailed questions to build credibility at every step. This starts with knowing the exact questions they’re searching for.

On top of that, to reach B2B buyers, you’ll need to understand not only what they search for but also where they search—and today, that’s not just Google. Social platforms like LinkedIn, YouTube and even TikTok now act as search engines in their own right.

In this respect, an effective B2B SEO strategy connects every layer of optimization across search, social and site experience. Here are the core areas that work together to create a connected, high-performing B2B SEO:

• Technical SEO: These are the optimizations you make to the backbone of your website. It covers areas like your XML sitemap, load speed and a responsive design.

• Content SEO: B2B content marketing for SEO takes what you learn about your audience and their search intent, then turns those insights into content that meets them where they are. That typically involves a cycle of research, ideation, content creation and promotion.

• On-page SEO: This is the optimization of the content itself. On a page or blog post, it includes optimizing the meta description and title tag, alt text on images, and the content’s structure so information is relevant to both the user and findable by search engines.

• Off-page SEO: Off-page SEO refers to the authority your site earns from external sources. High-quality backlinks and positive engagement across the web help signal this credibility and expertise to search engines.

• Social SEO: Optimizing content for social search to drive qualified traffic to your website, reinforcing your visibility and strengthening your holistic SEO strategy.

Together, these layers help your brand meet buyers where they are on Google, social or elsewhere while turning intent into action across every channel.

What’s the difference between B2B and B2C SEO?

B2B and B2C SEO share a goal: helping your target audience find you through search. However, the B2B buyer’s journey is fundamentally different than B2C, and your SEO must reflect those differences.

But it’s not just the way they research products that’s different. In B2B SEO, the audience is smaller, the stakes are higher and the buying process is far longer. Instead of optimizing for quick clicks, you must build trust, nurture intent, and confidently guide decision-makers through a multi-touchpoint customer journey.

Here’s what that difference looks like in action and why it changes how you should approach your SEO strategy.

B2B buyers move more slowly but expect more proof

B2B buyers rarely convert on the first visit. Instead, they navigate research-intensive sales cycles that can stretch across months.

During that time, they’ll compare vendors, evaluate pricing and seek reassurance through case studies, white papers, webinars and detailed landing pages.

Did you know? Dreamdata reports the average B2B deal requires 62 touchpoints across three channels before closing.

Early on, buyers will search for general educational content like “how to automate reporting for finance teams,” for instance. Later, when they have a better understanding of their needs, they’ll look for more specific B2B SEO content, such as “best reporting software for SaaS companies.”

Each search signals a different level of intent. Your content must match each level with proof that establishes your authority and demonstrates you know exactly what customers need.

Low-volume, high-intent keywords win

In B2C SEO, large search volumes often signal success because consumer audiences are broader and decisions happen faster.

For B2B SEO, matching your content to the searcher’s intent is the real growth lever. If you target broad, high-volume keywords, you tend to attract visitors who are still exploring a general topic rather than seeking a solution. That traffic might spike your numbers, but it rarely generates conversions because those searchers either aren’t evaluating vendors yet or they’re not looking for your specific product.

However, when you focus on low-volume, high-intent keywords, you qualify your audience before they ever click. This approach tailors your visibility to the people who are actively evaluating a solution like yours, which means more qualified leads who are more likely to convert.

That’s why long-tail keywords are your greatest asset. When you use longer terms like “project management software for finance teams” rather than just “project management software,” you reflect problem-solution queries from people who already know what they need.

And when you target these specific keywords with answers to the exact problems your ideal buyers are searching for, you’ll attract people who already want a solution like yours.

Content needs to convince a committee

Unlike consumer decisions, B2B purchases usually involve several stakeholders, like executives, practitioners and procurement teams. And each party is looking for different information before signing off.

That means your B2B content marketing requires layered messaging: strategic proof for leadership, product depth for users and clear ROI metrics for finance.

The image below shows some of the types of content that B2B SEO strategies use at each stage of the buying journey:

(Source: Adrienne Smith)

To be most effective, your B2B SEO needs to map the entire decision-making chain. Understanding what each stakeholder is trying to decide at every stage makes it easier to create content that answers their specific questions and demonstrates your authority as an expert on the topic.

Keep in mind: Ranking highly with empty content only damages your credibility. A product-focused, ‘salesy’ approach does the same.

According to the 2025 Sprout Social Index™, customers don’t want “corporate,” pushy content. Instead, a strong SEO campaign builds trust across the buying committee by showing that you understand their challenges and will deliver real results.

How social search reshapes B2B SEO

As mentioned earlier, searchers no longer only use Google to search. Now, decision-makers are turning to social media to ask questions, read reviews and validate vendors before they ever visit your website.

This shift is changing B2B SEO. Visibility now depends on understanding intent across every search channel, not just Google.

Here’s what that evolution looks like in action and why it’s reshaping how marketers think about discovery.

How social search has evolved

Social platforms have quietly become search engines in their own right. Each query reflects what the buyer is trying to figure out at that moment, whether they’re exploring options, comparing solutions or validating a decision. And they’ll go to the platform that best helps them do that.

For example, on LinkedIn, B2B buyers often search for thought leadership, in-depth case studies and content marketing that reflects real-world results. On YouTube, they look for webinars, tutorials and product explainers. And on Reddit and X, they search for unfiltered opinions and peer recommendations.

That’s why your content needs to match how and where buyers search. If decision-makers turn to Reddit for peer opinions, for example, you’ll show up with customer stories. Or if they head to LinkedIn to research solutions, you’ll be able to meet them with practical insights and real results.

When you align your content with the intent behind each platform, your target audience will be able to discover you more naturally in the places that they’re already looking.

Why social and search are interconnected

Social insights help you strengthen your SEO campaigns because they reveal what buyers care about and how they phrase their questions. When you use that data to shape your keyword research and content strategy, your web pages will start speaking the same language as your audience. This means you’ll match how people actually search and will attract more relevant organic traffic as a result.

But searchability doesn’t stop there. If your brand is easy to find on social and your content performs well, people will discover you directly through social networks, too. Then, if they’re interested in what you have to offer, they’ll often head to Google to learn more. That extra search demand boosts your visibility even further.

On top of that, when you optimize your social content with keywords, captions and hashtags, your social posts can start to rank in Google, too.

Effectively, when you shape your organic search strategy using social insights and optimize your social content in tandem, you’ll create a bridge between social discovery and traditional search engine optimization.

How social search diversifies SEO funnels

Integrating social search with traditional SEO gives you a broader, more connected funnel. This is because social platforms often catch buyers earlier, while they’re still defining their problem. When you show up in those searches, your brand becomes part of their consideration before they reach Google.

When those buyers later move to Google to dig deeper, they already know who you are and what you offer. That familiarity gives you an edge, which means your result will stand out in a list of unfamiliar names, making buyers more likely to click, explore and eventually make a purchase.

In this way, social search helps you capture attention earlier in the funnel, stay visible longer and turn early discovery into measurable growth.

The modern B2B SEO strategy framework

Modern B2B SEO works best when search and social strategies are synchronized. To achieve this, you need to build SEO and social content side-by-side so each supports the other.

Here’s a framework to use to connect your B2B SEO strategy across search and social:

Understand intent

Strong B2B SEO starts with understanding what buyers are trying to solve and the context behind what keywords they search with.

Keyword research reveals the exact terms buyers use when looking for information or evaluating solutions. But by truly understanding what searchers want to discover, your content achieves stronger resonance and greater impact.

Create for context

Early in the buyer journey, people are just realizing they have a problem. This is where social posts are going to be most relevant. Posts, short videos or infographics spark awareness by showing a problem, hinting at a solution and linking to more info on your website.

For example, Acoustic’s LinkedIn carousel gives tips on using audience insight to improve marketing performance. It’s quick to digest, sparks curiosity and helps early-stage buyers recognize their problem. The post then links to a detailed blog article that explains how its tools solve this issue.

(Source: LinkedIn)

That link does double duty. It moves potential customers deeper into the funnel, guiding them from curiosity to consideration.

When your content reflects what buyers actually need at each stage, you’ll build trust instead of frustration. That way, you’re not overwhelming new audiences with technical detail or giving decision-makers surface-level fluff. You’re meeting people where they are instead and then help them take the next step.

Optimize for humans and algorithms

Effective B2B SEO is both search-friendly and human-friendly. This means your content should be simple for search engines to understand and index and genuinely useful to the people reading it.

Remember: People read the internet differently than a book. They scan, jump between subheadings, skim visuals, and skip to what’s most useful.And they often do it on a small phone screen. That means your content needs to speak the language of online readers: short paragraphs, clear headers, concise sentences and visuals that guide attention to what matters most.

This same clarity also helps Google. When your structure makes sense, Google can clearly see what your page is about and match it to relevant search queries. Add in the technical details—like descriptive headers, accurate meta descriptions, alt text and schema—and you’re speaking Google’s language.

This combination creates content that performs for humans and algorithms alike, amplifying your visibility while maximizing reader engagement.

Measure and refine

Search intent changes constantly, so your strategy has to evolve with it as buyer language and search patterns shift over time. That’s why strong B2B SEO marketing is a cycle: observe, adjust and evolve.

By tracking performance across both search and social media, you’ll be able to see which topics attract attention, which posts drive conversions and where you need to rethink your SEO marketing efforts. With the right analytics tools, you replace guesswork with data that shows what truly connects with your audience and where to double down.

Tips for creating an effective B2B SEO strategy

The modern B2B buyer journey is complex and spans multiple channels. To ensure your brand is discovered—and chosen—you need a strategy that moves with your customer. Below are the core, actionable steps you can take right now to create a high-performing B2B SEO strategy that drives real business impact.

Build buyer personas using real audience data

You might think you know who buys your product, but data often tells a different story. Maybe you built a tool for IT teams, only to discover that HR uses it to track holiday requests. Or you spent months targeting CFOs when it’s actually the interns who are using your tool to make prettier reports.

That’s why the best buyer personas come from real data, not hunches. Using analytics, CRM insights and social listening, you’ll see who actually engages, who buys and how they behave. After all, the people who are already chasing your product are the real personas. And the easiest audience to win over is the one that looks like them.

When you base personas on real buying and engagement data, you spot how your best buyers search, talk online and interact with content. This process puts you in a stronger position to create more of what resonates to attract more people who act just like them.

Combine keyword research with social listening for smarter insights

Traditional keyword research tells you what people type into Google. Social listening tells you what they’re talking about in their own words. Put them together and you’ll spot intent before it peaks.

For example, noticing increased LinkedIn chatter about ‘AI security compliance’ is your early signal to create content before it becomes the next crowded keyword. By combining keyword data with real-time social insight, you’ll change your SEO strategy from guessing what people might search to understanding what they’re already thinking about. This approach keeps you ahead of demand so you’re not scrambling to catch up.

Social listening adds another layer by showing how your buyers describe their challenges, priorities and pain points in their own language. Creating content with that context can increase its impact and reach to your audience.

Optimize your website for visibility and experience

Signals like fast load times, mobile-friendly layouts and clear structure signal that your site is easy to use, telling search engines it’s worth ranking. After all, who stays on slow sites with messy content?

Clean design, accessible formatting and fast loading speed make your site smoother for readers, while structured data, clear meta tags and consistent E-E-A-T signals show Google that your content is trustworthy and relevant. Together, these optimizations signal to both people and search engines that your site is trustworthy and worth the click.

Create content for every stage of the B2B buyer journey

At every stage of the buying journey, decision-makers are asking different questions. Your job is to recognize what they’re asking and where they’re asking it, then answer in the format that fits. That way, your content will feel less like a pitch and more like a conversation that moves buyers naturally down the funnel.

When you’ve aligned your content to the buying stage, the next step is ensuring you’re visible across all the search channels they use—and today, that includes social media.

Integrate social search into your SEO strategy

Social media search is now part of the discovery journey. Understanding how people compare and validate solutions on social media boosts both your SEO signals and the trust buyers feel when they find you.

That’s why it’s essential to optimize your social content with relevant keywords, consistent posting, descriptive captions and hashtags that mirror how your audience actually searches and talks on social. Doing so increases visibility where intent actually happens and drives people toward your site when they’re ready to dig deeper.

Here are a few ideas on how to use each platform or network:

• LinkedIn: Publish educational posts that answer professional intent queries.
• YouTube: Create long-form explainers that mirror “how to” searches.
• Reddit: Join relevant threads to build trust and earn backlinks naturally.
• TikTok and Instagram: Use short, visual posts for early-stage awareness.

Leverage influencers to expand organic visibility

Influencer marketing is a powerful organic discovery strategy because creators act like human search signals, which helps your brand surface naturally in the right conversations.

When credible voices in your industry share or reference your content, you’ll reach new audiences, build trust and earn backlinks that strengthen your SEO. This process gives you a wider reach and more credibility without relying solely on ads.

To explore how Sprout’s Influencer Marketing Platform will help you find influencers that fit your brand, schedule a demo now.

Measure what matters and optimize continuously

Search intent, algorithms and buyer behavior evolve constantly. To keep your content relevant, you need to move with these shifts.

To do this, track what drives qualified traffic and real engagement, then refine your strategy to align with what performs.

How Sprout helps you connect SEO and social insights

Today, strong B2B SEO depends on understanding how people search, talk and make decisions across every channel. That’s where Sprout Social helps. It surfaces the social insights that show how your audience discusses their needs, allowing you to connect what they say on social with how they search on Google.

Here’s how Sprout helps you turn social insights into smarter SEO decisions:

Listen to what your buyers are searching for

Sprout Listening helps you understand what your audience really wants. It does so by surfacing the exact language buyers use, the questions they ask and the pain points that drive conversation.

These insights offer early intent signals that guide your B2B SEO and social media strategy, which helps you create content that matches how people actually think and search.

Prove impact with analytics

Sprout’s Premium Analytics, an add-on for Sprout’s Analytics, gives you a comprehensive view of how your social content performs across channels and shows what drives engagement, reach and clicks. With it, you see which posts and campaigns resonate most with your audience and which formats inspire the most action.

When you connect Premium Analytics with Google Analytics 4 (GA4), you’ll be able to connect the data story of how your brand’s social interactions influence traffic, on-site behavior and lead generation.

Together, Sprout and GA4 give you a data-driven picture of how social activity drives measurable SEO impact.

Turn insights into content that ranks and resonates

When you combine social listening with search analytics, you see not only what buyers are searching for but also why they care and how they talk about the problem. That clarity gives you the language, examples and angles your audience already connects with.

From there, you will shape content that does two things at once:

• Ranks by aligning with the terms and intent behind high-value searches
• Resonates by reflecting real buyer questions, phrasing and priorities

The result is content that performs in Google and feels relevant in social feeds and communities, reinforcing trust, encouraging engagement and strengthening your presence across every touchpoint.

Build a B2B search that drives lasting impact

B2B SEO has shifted from chasing clicks to building a connected presence that supports real buying decisions. The buying journey is now a multi-step process that spans different channels. Combining SEO with social insight allows you to meet high-intent audiences wherever they search.

Sprout Social reveals the language, topics and signals that matter to audiences, allowing you to shape a search strategy that aligns with how buyers actually think and decide.

Try a free demo today and start building a B2B search strategy that drives lasting growth.

The post B2B SEO: How to turn search intent into revenue with a social-first approach appeared first on Sprout Social.

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37 essential Instagram metrics to measure performance in 2026

The only constant in life is change, and that’s especially true for social networks. Meta in particular is no stranger to evolving their networks, and Instagram in particular is doubling down on creators.

Instagram made a significant shift in how it measures and displays content reach, moving away from the long-standing “impressions” and “plays” metrics to a new, universal “views” metric. This update also includes renaming “plays” to “views”, and applies across all content types, making views the primary metric shown in dashboards and Instagram analytics tools. The aim is to better enable creators in particular to track and measure their success.

This change reflects Meta’s intent to provide a clearer, more unified picture of how often content is actually seen or played, regardless of format—offering brands and creators a more granular look at true audience engagement.

As brands adjust to this new measurement standard, understanding which Instagram metrics to track—and how to interpret them—has never been more important for evaluating content performance and refining social strategies. This article will walk you through what ‘views’ actually mean and 36 other Instagram metrics you can track.

What are Instagram metrics?

Instagram metrics are measurements of performance that help you gauge how your Instagram content is doing and how your audience is responding to it. Instagram metrics include how many people viewed, interacted with and liked your content.

We’ll talk about specific social metrics later on, but some of the key Instagram metrics you should be measuring include reach, views, impressions, engagement rate and connected reach (or follower growth).

Why you should track your Instagram metrics

If you manage your Instagram account without ever looking at your social media analytics, you’ll be left in the dark when it comes to understanding the results of your efforts.

These efforts likely coincide with company or department goals (or even just your own Instagram KPIs), which will naturally help inform which Instagram metrics you should be reporting on.

Therefore, when answering the “why,” you’ll also reveal your key IG metrics to report on. Here are three reasons why you should be tracking your Instagram metrics.

Instagram metrics show which content your audience prefers

If you’re testing different types of content, you need to check out your post metrics to see which types are getting the most attention. Having this knowledge helps you create an Instagram content strategy that resonates with your audience by consistently posting their preferred types of content.

Instagram metrics keep your strategy in line with company objectives

If your current goals are to increase your company’s engagement, you’ll want to make sure you’re actually making that happen. Same goes for if you’re wanting to increase views or post traffic. You need to be able to check the metrics to measure growth to see if you’re hitting your KPIs.

Instagram metrics help you measure specific campaign success

If you’re running a major campaign on Instagram (let’s say for a product launch, holiday sale or important partnership), you want to know how well the campaign is performing. Your Instagram metrics let you see this so you know if you need to adjust your messaging or not.

How to track Instagram metrics

In order to view insights and metrics on Instagram, you need to have an Instagram business or creator account. Once you have a business account you can view Instagram metrics on a social media marketing platform like Sprout Social or natively via the app.

How to track Instagram metrics using Sprout Social

Sprout Social makes it easy to track your performance with clean, visual reports.

From an overview of reach and engagement to follower growth to post-level breakdowns, all your data is laid out in a way that’s easy to understand and act on.

Below is a quick step-by-step for accessing your Instagram metrics in Sprout.

Step 1: Don’t have a Sprout Social account? No problem, start a free 30-day trial with your business email (you don’t need a credit card).

Step 2: Log into Sprout Social, click on Connect a Profile on the right and select Instagram.

Step 3: Follow the prompts to connect your Instagram account to Sprout.

Step 4: From the dashboard, click on the Reports tab in the left-hand menu bar.

Step 5: Select Instagram Business Profiles under the Profiles by Network category.

Here you can track different Instagram metrics like views, engagement and follower growth alongside other useful analytics (like demographics).

And if you want a quick overview of your overall Instagram performance, here’s what that looks like in Sprout’s report:

You can also see your top posts to understand content performance better.

Step 6: Use the filters to select specific Instagram profiles and set your desired date range.

Pro tip: You can also access cross-network reports (e.g. Post, Profile and Tag Performance Reports) in Sprout to analyze how your Instagram metrics fit into your overall social strategy.

How to track Instagram metrics using the Instagram App

There are a couple of different ways to access your insights from the Instagram app. (Keep in mind that these are only accessible on the mobile app and not on desktop.)

1. Head to your profile and tap on the Professional dashboard button. The very first option is your account insights for reach, engagement, followers and content. Tap each category to view specific metrics related to it.

2. You can also tap the hamburger menu icon in the top right corner of your profile and then tap Insights to access them directly.

You can find all of the below metrics inside your Instagram Insights—or you can take advantage of a third-party analytics tool like Sprout Social to get even more in-depth reporting.

37 key advanced Instagram metrics to track

Let’s explore 36 Instagram metrics and walk through what each means. You’ll see these metrics in Instagram’s native analytics, and we’ll share where you can find them in Sprout Social.

Awareness metrics

While several different metrics make up this category, Instagram considers “views” to be the primary metric users should look at to understand how your content is performing regardless of format. Why views? Instagram believes this is a stronger indicator of success over follower count and impressions. This makes sense given reach has a stronger correlation to discoverability, which Instagram’s algorithm and user behavior seem to favor.

1. Views (formerly plays)

The number of times a reel started to play or was replayed, and the number of times a non-reel appeared on a user’s screen. This is the primary metric used across all organic and boosted media on Instagram. The ‘plays’ metric is being phased out and relabeled ‘views’.

In Sprout, you’ll find views in the Instagram Business Profile report, displayed as a chart within the Overview tab.

2. Replays

Distinct from initial views, Replays tracks how many times users watched your video content more than once. This is a new metric if your Replay count is high relative to your Reach, it signals to the algorithm that your content is sticky or loop-worthy, often triggering a push to the Explore page.

3. Reach or content reach

The total number of unique viewers a post has. Reach and impressions are often confused because they are similar. Here’s a quick explainer: If you were to see a post three times, that’s considered three impressions, but you would only count as one person reached.

To find your reach in Sprout, head over to your Instagram Business Profiles Report. Your reach is located in the exact same section as your views. You can see total and percent change right below your impressions metric, making it easy to see both at once.

4. Reach by region

The number of unique users who have seen your content, segmented by geographical location. So you know which areas are more engaged with your content.

5. Impressions

The number of times an individual piece of content was displayed to users. Instagram recommends looking at “views” instead of impressions, and impressions will no longer appear within Instagram Insights. It will continue to be available in other tools, such as Meta Ads Manager and Sprout’s cross-network reports.

In Sprout, you’ll find impressions in the Cross-Network Reporting, where views are included in the Impressions metric. Below is an example of the Profile Performance Report, which includes impressions for all your connected profiles.

6. Profile visits

The total number of times users have visited your social media profile over a specific period. This metric is useful for gauging interest in your brand.

7. Brand mentions

The number representing how often your brand is mentioned on social media platforms. This can include social mentions like direct @-mentions in comments, captions and Stories. It helps to measure brand visibility and engagement.

8. Branded hashtags

The number of times others use the hashtags specifically created for your brand or campaign. This aids with tracking the impact of campaigns or promotions. You can view hashtag analytics in Instagram natively or using a social media management tool.

9. Share of voice

The measure of the market your brand owns compared to your competitors. Share of voice measures the amount of conversations about your brand compared to competitors. It acts as a gauge for your brand visibility and how much you dominate the conversation in your industry. The more market share you have, the greater popularity and authority you likely have among users and prospective customers.

10. Content you shared

This includes any content you’ve posted and shared across Stories, feeds and video.

12. Interactions

Any action users take when they like, share, save, comment or reply to your content. The location of this metric in Instagram Insights has shifted with the introduction of “views”.

12. Saves

The number of times a post has been bookmarked.

Alongside sends, saves is a high-value signal. The algorithm weighs a save significantly heavier than a like because it indicates the user found the content valuable enough to return to later.

To find this in Sprout, head to your Instagram Business Profiles Report. You can view the total number of saves on your posts and Reels here. You can also track the number of saves on individual, high-performing posts by locating the Post Performance section of the report.

13. Sends (formerly Shares)

Renamed from Shares, Sends tracks the number of times a post/content was sent privately to another user. In 2026, Sends per Reach is a powerful viral signal for the algorithm. A private share indicates a personal endorsement and high relevance, which Instagram prioritizes heavily over public likes.

14. Instagram Stories views

The amount of people who viewed an Instagram Story. You can also see replies, impressions and navigation for each slide in a Story.

Engagement metrics

These metrics go a layer deeper, giving you insight into how people are interacting with your content and brand. In Sprout, you’ll get a granular view in the Post Performance Report, where you’ll see a breakdown of the performance for each Instagram post.

15. Engagement rate

This metric refers to the percentage of your following that’s engaged with your content whether it’s liking, commenting, sharing or saving.

16. Engagement rate by follower

This metric calculates the engagement (likes, comments, sends) a post receives relative to the number of followers you have. It provides a percentage to assess how effectively your content resonates with your audience.

17. Engagement rate by impressions (views)

This measures the percentage of viewers who interacted with your content (by liking, commenting, saving and, where available, sending it) after coming across it. With the deprecation of impressions, this is often calculated using “Views” or “Reach” as the baseline for total audience. Unlike engagements per follower, this metric focuses on everyone who actually saw your content, rather than just your follower base.

In Sprout Social, look for the engagement rate metric in the Overview section of the Instagram report. You’ll see the engagement rate (per impression) in a chart, which you can customize to show organic, paid or both.

18. Saved posts

The number of times users save your posts. This metric indicates the value or interest users find in your content because they want to refer to it later.

19. Comments per post

The average number of comments each post receives. This metric shows how much your content prompts conversations.

20. Click-through-rate

The percentage of people who see an Instagram ad and click on it. It helps measure how effective your paid content is at driving action.

21. Average watch time or retention (formerly video completion rate)

Replacing the binary video completion Rate, this metric tracks the average time users spent watching your Reel. With Reels now supporting durations up to 20 minutes, completion is less relevant than retention. A user watching 3 minutes of a 10-minute video is a strong signal, even if they didn’t “complete” it.

22. Accounts engaged

This refers to the number of unique accounts that interacted with your content. This includes demographics information from the profiles you reached, such as top cities and countries. The location of this metric in Instagram Insights has shifted with the introduction of “views”.

23. Accounts reached

The number of unique accounts that have seen your content at least once. This includes the demographic information on the accounts you reached, such as top cities and countries. It also includes your followers and non-followers. The location of this metric in Instagram Insights has shifted with the introduction of “views”.

24. Live interactions

The number of comments and shares for a stream on Instagram Live.

25. Profile interactions

This metric tells you how well your Instagram profile drives action or generates leads by measuring profile clicks. For example, how many people are clicking on your contact button? How many are visiting your website? How many are getting directions to your business location?

In your Sprout Social Instagram Business Profiles Report, you can find this metric in Profile Actions within the Performance Summary or under the Engagement section of the report.

26. Peak concurrent viewers

This refers to the busiest point of the livestream when there were the most viewers.

27. Accounts reached during broadcast

The number of profiles that came across the livestream.

28. Most engaged hashtags

Your top-performing hashtags with the highest engagement. Instagram hashtags encourage engagement and provide another lens on your audience and what they are searching for on the platform.

Other metrics to track

The following metrics provide specific insights in your content and audience that can help you determine the health of your strategy and specific tactics.

29. Total followers

The sum of every profile that follows your account. View your follower growth, top locations, age ranges and times they’re most active on Instagram.

30. Follower growth rate

The percentage rate your followers are increasing over a specific period to the number of followers at the start of that period.

Sprout enables you to analyze various aspects of your follower growth, from a comprehensive growth chart to percentage growth. Select the time period to see the differences in followers gained and lost for that reporting period with the Instagram Business Profiles overview. You can then dive into the Post Performance Report to see what content resonated most (and least).

31. Engagement rate by reach

This metric measures the engagement a post receives relative to the number of unique users who saw the post. It provides insight into how engaging your content is to those who see it, not just your followers.

32. Click-through rate from bio

The number of clicks generated from the links included in your bio relative to the number of profile visits.

33. Story completion rate

The percentage of viewers who watch your entire Instagram Story from start to finish without skipping. This metric is useful for evaluating how compelling your Stories are.

34. Audience growth over time

The amount of followers you lost or gained over time.

35. Audience demographics

The age, gender, location or other characteristics of your followers. Instagram’s native analytics data include audience demographics (age, gender, location). These data points can highlight whether you’re getting in front of your target audience via Instagram or not.

36. Traffic

The number of visitors Instagram drives to your website.

37. Instagram ad analytics

This refers to the performance data available for Instagram advertising. You can check Instagram ad analytics in a few ways, including Ads Manager. It shows your campaign performance overview, demographics, delivery data, campaign spend and cost per result.

Start tracking your Instagram metrics today

With so many different metrics and ways to cut your Instagram performance data, the real success comes from narrowing your focus to the metrics that truly align with your business goals—whether that’s boosting engagement or increasing conversions. Honing in on the most meaningful data points will help you prove the value of your Instagram efforts, optimize your campaigns and ultimately achieve stronger business outcomes.

With Sprout’s Instagram analytics, you’ll be able to customize reports to highlight the specific data that’s translating to ROI, as well as go deeper with competitive comparisons, social listening and more. Our AI-powered analytics will free up valuable time for you to make smarter, more strategic decisions without getting bogged down by tedious data mining. See for yourself by taking advantage of our free 30-day trial.

The post 37 essential Instagram metrics to measure performance in 2026 appeared first on Sprout Social.

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