How to access historical insights data for Instagram

Being a business on social media can be a minefield. Having as much data to hand about your business profile, the audience you’ve amassed and the posts that gain you the most traction can help navigate this ever-evolving terrain. Accessing more analytical data for your social media profiles could help you develop an engaged audience, gain more customers and grow your business online. This is why having as much information to hand as possible is invaluable.

When it comes to historical data, this can help you hit the ground running. If you have data relating to your social media posts and profile available to you as soon as you choose to seek out insights, you'll have information ready to interpret and enhance your social media presence immediately. Instagram insights are only available in-app or via a third-party tool if you have a business or a creator account.

Today we’ll be looking at historical Instagram analytics, the data available within the in-app insights and the data available when you connect your Instagram profile to the analytical tool Minter.io.

Set Up Instagram Insights & Analytics

On Instagram, insights are only available for content you’ve posted since converting your account to a professional account (business or creator). You can change your account type following this guide. Insights through Instagram are only available on the mobile app.

You can connect your Instagram account to Minter.io to get more in-depth insights over a longer time frame. Your Instagram account must be a professional account to do this.

Audience

Audience demographics are the key for making engaging content which your audience will love. Without having information on gender, location, language etc. it can be difficult to share content that is relevant to the people who follow you on Instagram.

Instagram

You can only view audience demographic data if you have over 100 followers. The audience demographic data always shows information about all your followers.

Minter.io

Historical information on followers and follower change graphs is available for up to 30 days, or since the Instagram profile was converted to a business or creator profile, for most profiles regardless of follower size. There may be longer backdated data available for some larger Instagram profiles.

Once your Instagram profile is connected to Minter.io, the information is viewable for longer than 90 days. You can view your total audience demographics by selecting ‘All Time’ with the date picker or select specific historical date ranges - something that is not possible through the Instagram app.

Profile

Data about your profile gives you a better overview of how many people are seeing your profile and the actions they are taking on it.

Instagram

Profile data is only accessible for up to the last 90 days. After 90 days, the profile analytical data for your profile is no longer available to you through in-app insights. This includes: accounts reached, content interactions overview and followers.

Using the date picker you can choose to view insights from the last 7, 14, 30 or 90 days, the previous month, or a specific date range within the past 90 day period. Interestingly, although profile insights are capped by a 90 day window, Instagram insights still compare some metrics with the relative previous date range by percentage, such as content interactions.

Minter.io

All profile historical data is available for up to two years, or since your account was converted to a business account. Once your profile is connected to Minter.io, the data collected afterwards is available for as long as you stay connected, so you can track your progress over a significant time frame and get a better picture for metric trends in the long term. Use the date picker to choose the time frame that suits you and organise information by your choice of day, week or month.

Posts

Dive into data about posts to find the content that gains the most traction with your following.

Instagram

No historical information is available prior to converting to a business or creator account. As soon as you create a professional account, insights going forward are available to you. Information about posts are available to view for up to 2 years. This includes feed posts, stories, IGTV videos and reels.

Within your insights data, when you select a specific type of content (posts, stories, reels and IGTV) you can organise those posts by metric and date range. The date range options are currently: last 7 days, last 30 days, last 3 months, last 6 months, last year and last 2 years. There is no date picker when looking at specific types of content shared.

Minter.io

As soon as you connect your Instagram account to Minter.io, all posts are available except archived posts. You can access historical data for likes and comments on all your past media. You can access historical reach, impressions, saves and video views data for up to two years, or for posts published since the Instagram profile was converted to a business or creator profile.

You can access up to two years of historical data for boosted posts and separately created Instagram ads (“dark posts”). You can also access optimization historical data, which is available for all posts except archived posts. This feature lets you see the best times to posts, the post types your audience is engaging with the most and the hashtags and filters that have been most effective for you.

Stories

Although only available to view for 24 hours by your audience (unless added to a highlight), this popular Instagram feature adds another dynamic to a business profile.

Instagram

With a professional account you can view stories insights for up to 2 years. After this time frame the data is no longer available to you.

Minter.io

No historical data is available, however once your Instagram account is connected to Minter.io, all the data captured is kept so you can look beyond the 2 year constraints held by Instagram.

Get More With Minter.io

There are more analytics available with Minter.io which you can’t currently get through Instagram insights. These even include historical data, to help you hit the ground running. Get up to one month of historical data for tags on Instagram posts and up to 3000 historical top posts for Instagram hashtags.

Minter.io aims to give you as much information as possible to help your business grow successfully on social media. It includes data on your profile, audience demographics and content, as well as benchmark data and specific hashtags you choose to track. You can also look at audience, posts, optimization and benchmark data for competitor accounts.

Find out how you can grow your business on social media with Minter.io. With in-depth insights for your presence online, we aim to help your business go down in history.