Part 1: Defining What “Working” on Instagram Means for You & How to Measure it

I put “working” in quotes because before you can even understand what’s working on Instagram, you need to define what it is you’re trying to accomplish. Only then does it make sense to create measurable goals.

Ask yourself: what are you trying to accomplish with the ol’ gram? For example, a lot of people answer: more followers. But why? If you want more followers, how come? There’s no right or wrong answer, but what does more followers actually mean? No, like truly. What’s the point?

Really getting clear on this question can help define your goals. Once you have a goal, you can decide which tools and strategies to implement to meet that goal. And once you have a goal, you can measure performance to see if it’s actually working.

For example, if I say I want more followers, but what I really mean is that I want wedding floral clients, I may not want to create a bunch of DIY wedding floral content, even if that’s really popular. Why would I want a bunch of followers who only want to create their own wedding flowers? There’s nothing wrong with DIY wedding florals, but if my goal is more high-end design clients, my posts are not aligned. Of course, maybe I would want that if I offer the material (i.e., bulk DIY buckets). The point is, we want our content aligned with our goals.

Define What’s Working on Instagram

Defining what “working” meant for me helped clarify my content, goals, and performance. I have many goals with Instagram: Sharing my art/flowers/farm, socializing with fellow garden lovers and industry peers/leaders. But ultimately: connecting with people who want what we offer so we can better serve them.

While sharing my art and socializing is a big part of Instagram for me, let’s focus on what’s moving the needle for our actual business. Although these things are synergistic in my world, serving others is something more tangible we can measure. And the principles here can be applied to your own account or business.

So what does “working” mean for me? It means that I am serving my audience. While Instagram can certainly be used for selling (and I cover that in Part 6), for me it’s much more about serving. And really, selling is just another way of serving in my ideology.

When it comes to serving others in our business, this is a reciprocal relationship with measurable outcomes. Whether that’s retail/wholesale flowers, weddings and events, photography, presets, education, entertainment, free content, and/or plants for their farm or gardens. Once we have these defined, each one can have a corresponding goal.

Goals

I’ve always been someone who is a little non-specific with my goals, so if this is you too, don’t get too bogged down in the details. Instagram isn’t an exact science, so we don’t need to measure down to the decimal here (though by all means, go for it).

That said, each of the above examples could have a corresponding goal or goals. And each goal would have corresponding Instagram posts. For example, if I want to serve others by providing wedding flowers, the goal of my posts would be to bring in prospective wedding clients. Each post could implement one or many of strategies we’ll discuss in future parts. And these strategies are absolutely measurable.

Measure

In order evaluate if Instagram is working for me, I want to measure the outcome of the goal post (goal post–football season is on my mind). For example, did that post bring in more followers, prospective clients, newsletter subscribers, sales, engagement, etc? If so, what strategy did I use and can I replicate it?

Try and Remember to be Objective About Numbers, Because They Don’t Define YOU

I’m going to include a real-life example below that has decent numbers because I want you to see the *power* of using Instagram as a tool. I want to pull back the curtain with real-life examples and strategies. But that doesn’t mean that every post I make is a home run, NO WAY!

This is especially true when you’re just starting out! When you’re just starting, it’s statistically extremely probable that you are going to have lower engagement. But lower engagement doesn’t mean there is anything wrong with your content. Why? Because if you have a smaller following, there are less eyes on your content to begin with, which results in less algorithmic engagement.

Just remember that almost *everyone* starts from this place unless they were known for something prior to starting an account. I can tell you that I am just a normal person who started Instagram with random photos and weird filters. When I started intentionally posting, it was crickets. Instagram is the long game for most normal folks, and I will be covering this in Part 4 if you’re struggling with this.

Try and change your perception on engagement by focusing on percentages. For example, a 1% conversion on 100 followers is 1. So when it seems like an account is crushing it, just remember 10,000 might actually be 1% to someone else’s 1 million. In other words, 1 and 10,000 are BOTH 1% just from a different starting point. So if your post increased whatever your goal was by 1%, see if next time you can do 2! Don’t get distracted by the number, focus on the overall improvement percentage.

And also, please remember that engagement and numbers have nothing to do WITH YOU. These numbers are for objective measurement and sometimes the gram is weird no matter what you do. I just figure if we’re going to be on it, we might as well make it work for us (but in a fun way).

Real Life Example

OK, so let’s dive in on an example. Let’s say I want to serve our audience by creating free educational content. I’m going to use this post as an example. This post is for a free, downloadable PDF guide on lisianthus (and I’ll be covering how to know WHAT to create in Part 3). As part of this reciprocal relationship, someone signs up to receive the downloadable PDF through our newsletter.

If they want the guide, they let me know by commenting, which generates a message with a specific link. This link not only gets them the PDF they want, but it also adds them to our newsletter. I can measure this post in a number of ways.

First, I can measure how this post is doing directly in Instagram. To get all these analytics, you need a business account. This goes back to your personal goals. If your goal is to build a business, a business account is probably a good idea. By clicking on the posts insights, I can measure:

• How many people wanted the guide by how comments received (see Part 10, coming soon)
• How the reel itself performed based on how many plays and interactions it had (see Part 8, coming soon)
• How my profile is doing by how many follows it generated (see Part 5, coming soon)

Next, I can measure how well it did by how many newsletter sign-ups it had (1,390 and counting). I do this through my newsletter service provider, Flodesk. Virtually all newsletter services provide similar features. (If you want to try Flodesk, use this link for a free trial AND 50% off your first year!)

Now, do I do this for every post? Aaaaabsolutely not. As previously mentioned, some of my goals are just about sharing our farm, connecting with others, and having fun! I don’t take it (or hopefully myself) too seriously. Over time though, by trying new things, I can extrapolate what’s working for us and what’s a waste of energy.

Defining what “working” actually meant to me (and not anyone else) had a major impact on my approach to Instagram. And perhaps more importantly, understanding what *was* working for our business. I hope it will help for you too!

You can find all 10 Parts here (coming soon).