Instagram chief says 'reach' is the most important metric of all
By Meg Dowell
Instagram has revamped its analytics to shift creators' focus toward views and away from more traditional metrics.
According to the official Instagram creators account, creator insights will soon be updated to focus primarily on "Views," or the amount of reach accounts get on various posts rather than how many likes or followers posts generate.
"In the coming weeks, we are introducing Views as the primary metric across all organic and boosted media formats," the post reads. This includes reels, live, photos, carousels, and stories.
Views are said to measure the number of times a non-reel appears on a user's screen, or how many times a reel plays or replays for a user. This update seems to plan on showing creators on Instagram how many people they are reaching, regardless of format, across the platform.
This attempted shift away from focusing on followers and likes is likely in response to the changing social media landscape of recent years. It used to be that Facebook and Instagram feeds, for example, mostly showed users content from accounts they followed. That's not the default case anymore. Algorithms focus more on showing you content you might be interested in, regardless of whether you are following certain accounts or not. Followers and likes are no longer as important as whether or not your content reaches someone on their main feed.
A lot of social media users aren't following accounts anymore. There is much less of an incentive to do so when you aren't guaranteed to see content from accounts you are following anymore. Building a following online matters much less than creating content algorithms will recommend to as many users as possible.
It might be interesting to see, according to Instagram creators' insights, what views look like on a dashboard and how this influences what and how much creators post on the platform in the months to come.