To Import Instagram Public data (aka Instagram Competitors) to Google Sheets, download the Instagram Public data Competitors to Sheets add-on, connect your Facebook profile, select metrics, dimensions (or breakdowns), and date ranges, and schedule hourly, daily, or weekly data refreshes to monitor your competitors for social media competitive analysis.
By the end of the tutorial, you’ll know:
- 2 free and paid ways to connect Instagram Public data to Google Sheets
- Schedule automatic data refreshes
- Free Instagram Public data report templates for Sheets
- Customize your Instagram Public data reports on Google Sheets
- Available Instagram Public data metrics and dimensions
Free and paid ways to import Instagram Public data to Google Sheets
Instagram Public data add-on for Google Sheets
To import Instagram Public data data to Google Sheets automatically, follow these steps:
Step 1: Install the Instagram Public data to Google Sheets add-on and open a new sheet.
Step 2: Go to Extensions – Porter Metrics – Launch.
Step 3: Choose the Instagram Public data integration and connect your Facebook profile. Porter will bring all the Instagram Public data Business accounts associated to it.
Step 4: name your query so you can save it for later and schedule automatic data refreshes.
For this example, we’ll call the query “Direct competitors”.
Step 5: Choose the Facebook profile and the Instagram Public data account(s) you’ll import to your report.
The Porter Metrics add-on lets you pull and combine data from multiple Instagram Public data accounts in a single query, quite useful for agency client monitoring or companies that manage multiple brands in different Instagram Public data Business accounts..
Step 6: set a dynamic or fixed date range for your report.
Dynamic date ranges refer to “Yesterday”, “Last month”, “This week” that will vary based on the current date; fixed date ranges are about defining a specific start and end date.
Step 7: Choose metrics and dimensions.
Metrics refer to the numbers. Dimensions are the way we can break down our data (by).
As metrics, select Profile impressions and Profile views.
As a dimension, break down by Date.
Access all the Instagram Public data metrics and dimensions available and suggested Instagram Public data KPIs.
Click on Create report and wait some seconds to load your data on the selected cell.
Downloading CSV files from the Instagram Public data
To import your Instagram Public data to Google Sheets (free forever), download your Instagram Public data as a CSV file from the Ads Manager and upload the CSV on Google Sheets.
However, this process is manual and you’ll need to repeat it every time you need a new query.
Schedule automatic data refreshes
Scheduling data refreshes on Google Sheets let you have your data automatically updated so you can monitor your Instagram Public data hourly, daily, weekly, and monthly.
Go to your saved queries and go to options – Schedule.
Enable or disable your schedule to turn on and off the automation.
Set a refresh frequency (e.g. Daily).
Set a start date (e.g. Now or Tomorrow at the same time).
Choose an option to refresh your data.
- Replace previous import: new data overwrites old data.
- Append to import: new data will display in rows underneath the current data, useful to log and store historical data.
- Create a new sheet for every refresh: create a new Google Spreadsheet for every single query refreshed.
Free Instagram Public data report templates for Sheets
Some Instagram Public data templates for Google Sheets include:
- Instagram Competitors Tracker on Google Sheets (Soon)
- Monthly Instagram Competitors report on Google Sheets (Soon)
Google Sheets templates help you speed up your marketing reports setup.
To download a Google Sheet template, go to File – Marke a copy, and name the new copy.
To use them, notice first that the templates have two types of sheets: backend and frontend sheets.
Backend sheets contain the raw data that you can import and automatically refresh
with the Instagram Public data to the Sheets add-on. It’s like the database.
To sync your data correctly and keep consistency, make sure to create the query from the first cell (A1) that matches the metrics and dimensions suggested in the template.
Frontend sheets contain the user interface with the dashboards, charts, and text, meant to be accessed by your team or clients.
Just like in software, frontend sheets are fed by the backend sheets.
If you update your frontend sheets, make sure to keep the cells with the formulas calling up the backend sheets data to avoid breaking your report.
Customize your Instagram Public data reports on Google Sheets
We’ll share some tips to make your Instagram Public data more useful for marketing data analysis.
Set alerts and notifications
Send notifications to your team via email or Slack when data updates for daily, and weekly summaries.
With the refresh scheduling feature, you can automatically update your Google Sheets with your latest Instagram Public data.
Then, use Zapier or Make and trigger a new automation every time a Google Sheets row is updated or created, and send its data to Slack or via email.
Suggested tutorials:
- Automatically send a Slack message for new Google Sheets activity.
- How to send an email when updates are made to Google Sheets rows.
Visualize Google Sheets data on other tools
Once your data is on Google Sheets, you can quickly connect it to other tools for further analysis and better reporting and presentations:
Data Visualization and Business Intelligence:
- Connect Google Sheets to Google Looker Studio
- Connect Google Sheets to Microsoft Power BI
- Connect Instagram Public data to Google Looker Studio (directly)
Best for client and team dashboards and reports or performance monitoring.
Data presentations and slides:
Best for weekly/monthly team or client presentations.
Data warehouses (for dev teams):
Best for engineering teams to centralize companies’ data.
Track Instagram Public data goals
Add context to your data by comparing it against goals or using conditional formats.
Suggested tutorials:
- How-To: Conditional Formatting Based on Another Cell in Google Sheets
- How to use conditional formatting in Google Sheets
For Instagram Public data, common use cases of goal tracking include:
- Agency client overview
- CPA monitoring + markups or commissions
- Campaign performance
- Cross-channel paid media analysis
Goals will help you add context to your data so your team and clients are aligned and they can tell if your marketing performance is good.
Instagram Competitors data metrics and dimensions
For reference, see the Instagram Competitors data fields list and suggestions for choosing Instagram KPIs.
The Instagram Competitors data connector for Google Looker Studio offers all the +100 metrics and dimensions available on the Instagram Competitors data API,, including:
Account
Account fields let you pull data related to the Instagram profile such as:
- Account picture
- Account name
- Followers and follows count
- Media count (total number of posts by an account)
- Bio
- Website link
Media
Media fields are related to the public data of Instagram posts, including:
- Media picture
- Media creation date
- Media permalink (to access directly to the post)
- Media type (to break down by photos, videos, carousels)
- Media caption
- Media comments
- Media likes
Hashtags
You can track the latest posts and top posts that include particular hashtags that you define in the configuration. You can pull the same media fields for these posts.
For analyzing Instagram Competitors data some common use cases are:
- Best-performing posts
- Number of posts over time
- Best performing post types
- Engagement rate VS total followers
- Engagement over time
