Data is an essential resource in marketing. Social media marketing is no different, and more marketers are now growing to understand the importance of using the vast range of social data points to fuel their marketing campaigns.

When starting an Instagram campaign, data aggregation will help you make the right marketing moves. Using Instagram analytics and reporting tools lessens the 'trial and error' approach, enabling you to more quickly hone in on the best options for your goals.

Many argue that the native Instagram app is enough for analytics, but unfortunately the native app is not sufficient for serious marketing campaigns. You need to look for new tools that show the details you need in decision making - detailed data, historical data, statistics aggregation or data reporting.

Plus, with the recent changes to the Instagram API, some Instagram analytics tools simply no longer work - that’s why I created this list of seven Instagram analytics tools worth checking out in 2018:

1. Socialbakers

Socialbakers is a multi-faceted Instagram analytics app. It enables you to do a complete audit of your account - however the insights and features are limited unless you decide to upgrade your plan.

Some of the essential tools you get in the app are:

• Instagram analysis and reporting - Reporting helps you understand data analysis. With this, you'll be able to access data dashboards that are used for data interpretation.
• Campaign measuring - We can't talk about a successful campaign without measuring. Socialbakers enables you to measure campaigns into metrics and identify trends.
• Followers growth and engagement analysis - Examining your followers, in regards to demographic and their engagement elements, makes it easier to understand your target audience.

2. Iconosquare

Iconosquare is a great tool for Instagram. There's a 14-day free trial period, so you can test it out before investing.

The tool helps to improve interaction with your clients by giving you insights on when to post and what to post based on what your followers like.

Other features include:

• Performance tracking - Understand social metrics, including engagement rates, demographic data, and content performance.
• Planning your content - Manage your content, schedule your posts, draft and automatically post content.

3. Socialinsider

Socialinsider enables you to track your competitors on Instagram.

Looking at what your competitors are doing is essential to improving your current performance. With this tool, it's easy to conduct a full, side-by-side comparison to make informed decisions.

Some of the features of this tool are:

• Competitor analysis and benchmarking - Analyze your competitors' Instagram profiles and monitor their growth over time.
• Access historical data for any Instagram account - Understand why, and how, they've performed over time.
• White-label reports - Reporting is essential when it comes to data. This tool gives you clear reports on content performance, engagement and/or hashtags.

4. Keyhole

Keyhole is an Instagram tool which tracks your account by analyzing the keywords and hashtags. After tracking, the tool gives you reports for decision making.

Here are some of Keyhole's essential features:

• Real-time insights - Using the real-time insights, it's easy to adjust your campaign accordingly so that you can maximize your results.
• Data optimization and competitor strategy - You can compare your performance alongside significant competitors.

5. Squarelovin

Squarelovin is the best tool for marketers who love using user-generated content (UGC). With UGC, Squarelovin enables you to collect the content and analyze its performance to boost your results.

Some key features:

• Analysis - You'll get clear details, like the number of views, clicks, and even a monthly summary of the data. Keyhole can also provide you with the location, gender and other information about your followers.
• Account management - You can create albums and interact with your followers right from the tool.
• Content optimization – The optimization feature is excellent, because it helps you get the most out of your posts.

6. Pixlee

Pixlee is another Instagram tool for UGC campaigns. Pixlee helps you share stories about your brand/s with your customers.

Here are some features of the tool:

• Easy to integrate – It's easy to integrate the platform with your Instagram account, and you don't need a lot of resources to use it.
• Content performance – The photo intelligence feature is useful for optimizing your videos and images.
• Customer insights – Pixlee gives you customer insights that will help in improving your campaigns.

7. Sprout Social

Sprout Social is another great platform for managing your Instagram account.

Sprout's platform has a variety of features, including social media reporting, analysis and also competitor comparison tols.

Sprout's most important features are:

• Instagram tracking - Sprout gives you access to a range of data insights to help improve your Instagram campaigns.
• Data analysis – With this tool, it's easy to analyze your data in order to locate top posts based on comments, likes and/or engagement
• Reporting – Reporting is also easy with Sprout, providing meaningful and easy to interpret information that can aid in decision making.

Final thoughts

Using an analytics tool is becoming more essential in social media marketing - and really, given the amount of data insights available, it only makes sense to utilize all you can to boost your efforts.

Relying on the Instagram native app will not enable you to maximize your opportunities - staying ahead with third party tools like these will help you optimize for success with your Instagram campaigns.