Request statistics
The most obvious way of analytics is to study statistics. Even at the stage of agreeing the terms of cooperation, agree with the blogger that he will provide screenshots of account statistics after the release of advertising materials. However, there are subtleties here too. You need to know what to watch and when to watch.
Request statistics on posts 5-7 days after posting – during this time most of the audience will view the publication. It’s better to request Stories statistics as a maximum the next day: if the blogger shoots a lot of stories, your publication will be lost in the archive.
What you should pay attention to:
- Link conversions. If your audience was directed to your site or another account via the link in Stories, you can calculate the click-through rate (CTR) using this formula: clicks ÷ views × 100%.
- Coverage is the number of unique users who viewed the publication. Based on the reach, you can assess the objectivity of the blogger’s rates. Compare it to the cost of your ads on other channels, and you’ll see how profitable or unprofitable it is for you to work with bloggers.
- Views are the number of times a post is viewed. One user may view a post or story several times. Knowing this figure, you can calculate the cost per thousand impressions (CPM) using the following formula: cost per ad ÷ number of impressions of the ad × 1000.
- Likes, bookmarking, and reposts. These are “vanity metrics,” but you can use them to understand the audience’s attitude towards integration.
Use links with UTM tags
If your ad uses a link to a website, ask your blogger to add a UTM tag to it, which is a small piece of code added to the URL. All data from UTM tags goes to analytics systems connected to the Google Analytics website. You can find out where your audience came from and accurately track its further actions.
If some action is supposed to be the result of an ad – make a purchase, pre-order a product, make an order – you can use UTM tags to calculate the collaboration cost according to the CPA (Cost-Per-Action) model. You can calculate the price of attracting one lead using the formula: ad spend ÷ number of leads.
Give promo codes
If you can offer your audience special terms – discounts, special offer – use promo codes in your promotional campaigns with bloggers. A personalized promo code (for example, help me write my paper) allows you to track that the user came from a specific blogger, even if the person decides to use the offer later.
Track reactions
Look at the comments on the promotional publication, their quality and tone. Assess what and how users write. Sometimes users have questions and you can get in touch with an interested audience by responding in the comments. Monotonous and little-worded comments can point to bot scamming.
Knowing the number of reactions, you can calculate the average engagement rate per post – Engagement Rate Per Post. Calculation formula: (likes + comments) ÷ number of subscribers × 100%.
Compare user behavior patterns
Alas, sometimes bloggers may come across not too conscientious people. To show the effectiveness of advertising, they can use various tricks: to gain likes, views, comments. The advertiser looks at the results – everything is fine, but in fact – the budget was drained.
For example, Popsters shows statistics on activity, sorts post by likes and comments, calculates ER, and helps measure any account’s content by reach, reactions, engagement and other criteria.
Monitor brand mentions
If native advertising has been used to boost awareness, calculating its results will be difficult. You can try to measure the effectiveness of the collaboration by monitoring the mentions.
See how much the dynamics of user interest in the search for key queries has changed. You can do this, for example, using the Wordstat service. But keep in mind that the results will appear in the service’s database about a month after the end of the advertising campaign with the blogger.
Calculate ROI
ROI is a measure of return on investment. It shows the effectiveness of your investment.
If you have used UTM tags or promo codes while working with bloggers, and you can calculate the return on investment from advertising, you can calculate ROI using the formula: ((net income – ad spend) ÷ ad spend) × 100%.
If the result is more than 100%, you have recouped your investment, and the collaboration was effective.
Note that the net income in this case does not mean the total amount of revenue from sales by UTM-links or promotional codes, but revenue minus all additional costs (taxes, salaries, etc.).
Conclusion
To evaluate the effectiveness of collaborating with bloggers on Instagram:
- Request and study in detail the statistics of the advertising publication;
- Use UTM tags to count click-throughs in your ads;
- Apply promo codes to track the audience of a specific blogger;
- Evaluate user reactions to the ad publication;
- Watch for changes in the dynamics of interest in a brand or product;
- Whenever possible, calculate the return on investment based on net income.
