Open Instagram Insights, Meta Business Suite and Google Analytics side by side and you’ll see well over a hundred numbers. A small team has time to act on maybe five.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
These are the five we’d pick, and a few popular ones we’d happily ignore.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
How many different people saw each post, on average.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is the first number that moves when you change what you post, which format you use, or how often you post<\/a>. If it’s rising, the platform likes what you’re doing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Compare it month to month on the same<\/em> platform. Instagram reach and LinkedIn reach are different audiences, so comparing them tells you nothing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Anyone can double-tap a post while scrolling past. Saving it means “this is useful, I’ll come back”. Sharing means “someone else needs to see this”. Replying means you’ve started a conversation, and conversations are where sales happen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That’s also why carousels do so well<\/a>: people save them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Each month, list your top five posts by saves plus shares. That short list is the best content brief you’ll ever get.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Clicks from social media include plenty of people who bounce in two seconds. So look at engaged visits instead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In Google Analytics 4, a session counts as engaged<\/em> if it lasted longer than 10 seconds, triggered a key event (a form submission, say), or included at least two page or screen views (Google Analytics Help<\/a>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n To know which post or campaign sent those visits, add UTM tags to every link you share. You always need three: Ugly, yes. But it’s the difference between “Instagram sends us traffic, I think” and actually knowing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This is the number closest to money that marketing directly controls: a form filled in, a call, a booking, a “pls send price” on WhatsApp.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That last one matters a lot in India. For many small businesses, most enquiries never touch the website at all. They arrive as WhatsApp messages. So count those too. The WhatsApp Business app lets you label chats; add a label for where each enquiry came from (Instagram<\/em>, Google<\/em>, Referral<\/em>) and count them at the end of the week. On your website, mark form submissions and WhatsApp-button clicks as key events in GA4.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ad spend divided by the enquiries those ads brought in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n On its own this number means nothing; it only makes sense next to what an enquiry is worth to you. If one in four enquiries becomes a \u20b92,000 order, each enquiry is worth about \u20b9500, and paying \u20b9150 for one is a good deal. Paying \u20b9700 is not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Track it per campaign, every week. But before you change anything, read our small-budget Meta ads playbook<\/a>. Fiddling with ads every day usually makes this number worse, not better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Follower count.<\/strong> It’s nice to see it go up, but it tells you little about sales. If you want a follower number, use the growth rate (new followers divided by what you started with) and treat it as a side metric.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Likes on their own.<\/strong> They’re the lowest-effort signal there is. Saves, shares and replies tell you more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Total impressions.<\/strong> The same small group seeing a post five times inflates this. Reach is the more honest number.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Industry benchmarks as targets.<\/strong> Average engagement on Instagram fell about 24% year on year in 2026 (Socialinsider<\/a>). Chasing somebody else’s average is a losing game. Your own trend line is the one to beat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Copy this into a Google Sheet and give it ten minutes every Monday morning:<\/p>\n\n\n\n2. Saves, shares and replies<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
3. Engaged visits to your website<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
utm_source<\/code> (where it came from, like instagram<\/code>), utm_medium<\/code> (the type of channel, like social<\/code>) and utm_campaign<\/code> (which push it was, like diwali_giftboxes<\/code>) (Google Analytics Help<\/a>). A tagged link looks like this:<\/p>\n\n\n\nhttps:\/\/yourshop.in\/gift-boxes?utm_source=instagram&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=diwali_giftboxes<\/code><\/p>\n\n\n\n4. Enquiries<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
5. Cost per enquiry (only if you run ads)<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
What we’d happily ignore<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
The Monday dashboard<\/h2>\n\n\n\n