Evaluating Instagram Engagement

This guide is intended to help your institution utilize Instagram’s various features to create an account that compels visitors to return to your page and engage with your institution. The idea behind making your account a digital destination is that engaged online visitors can be transformed into engaged museum visitors and patrons of your institution.

In addition to the various features available to utilize, Instagram also allows you to easily evaluate the level and quality of visitor engagement. Visitors can engage in many ways, so I will discuss each engagement below with the correlating metric:

1. Followers: The first step to a creating a loyal Instagram visitor, a “follow” for your account. Many institutions measure success by the number of followers they have, but it is important to remember that each follower (just like each museum visitor) is unique and important. Once someone chooses to follow your account, they will see your content on their feed and receive notifications about your content. It’s important that you consider how you will provide new ways for each follower to engage with your institution.                                                                                                                               
2. Views: Instagram Stories provide statistics about how many people viewed your Story, as well as additional statistics about how long visitors stayed at each image and whether they let the image/video play in its entirety or whether they skipped ahead. These statistics will allow your institution to assess how many people you’re reaching and whether those people are engaging with your content enough to watch the Story in its entirety. If views are low, it may be time to rethink your Story content. On the other hand, high viewership and high engagement can be a good sign that you have a loyal following that you are managing to engage and intrigue.                                                                                                                                                  
3. Likes: The most common way for people to engage with your Instagram posts: “liking” the image. Although these numbers do not tell a complete story, you can learn a lot by comparing which posts generate the most likes, and which fall flat. For example, most Instagram accounts generate higher likes when their posts respond to current events. For example, a themed “Family Day” post or the ROM posting “pot” images in response to Canada legalizing pot. Likes can also indicate growth or decline in visitor engagement.                                                                                                                                                                                             
4. Comments: Even more telling than a “like,” a comment allows visitors to engage in a personal manner. Visitors can ask questions about your content or make comments about your institution. Sometimes comments can be negative, but these comments give viewers a platform to express themselves and feel heard. It’s extremely important to dedicate time to responding to comments, as Instagram is meant to be a dialogue, not simply a platform to post content. By talking personally and directly with visitors, your account can start to rectify the imbalance in power between institutions and individuals by giving your visitor a voice. 

All of these measures of engagement are important, as your Instagram account is a tool to engage visitors. If you create an account with intriguing content that visitors engage with, you can build a loyal following that will be more likely to frequent your institution, and you can transform the identity of your institution.

Making your museum’s Instagram account a digital destination is a major step towards putting the visitor experience at the heart of your institution.