To Import Instagram data to Google Sheets, download the Instagram to Sheets add-on, connect your Facebook profile, select Instagram Business accounts, metrics, dimensions (or breakdowns), and date ranges, and schedule hourly, daily, or weekly data refreshes to monitor your Instagram campaigns performance and automate your Social media marketing reports.
By the end of the tutorial, you’ll know:
- 2 free and paid ways to connect Instagram to Google Sheets
- Schedule automatic data refreshes
- Free Instagram report templates for Sheets
- Customize your Instagram reports on Google Sheets
- Available Instagram metrics and dimensions
Free and paid ways to import Instagram to Google Sheets
Instagram add-on for Google Sheets
To import Instagram data to Google Sheets automatically, follow these steps:
Step 1: Install the Instagram to Google Sheets add-on and open a new sheet.
Step 2: Go to Extensions – Porter Metrics – Launch.
Step 3: Choose the Instagram integration and connect your Facebook profile. Porter will bring all the Instagram Business accounts associated to it.
Optionally, connect multiple Facebook personal profiles to retrieve other Instagram Business accounts’ data yours doesn’t have access to.
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 “Campaign performance”.
Step 5: Choose the Facebook profile and the Instagram account(s) you’ll import to your report.
The Porter Metrics add-on lets you pull and combine data from multiple Instagram accounts in a single query, quite useful for agency client monitoring or companies that manage multiple brands in different Instagram 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 metrics and dimensions available and suggested Instagram KPIs.
Click on Create report and wait some seconds to load your data on the selected cell.
Downloading CSV files from the Instagram manager
To import your Instagram data to Google Sheets (free forever), download your Instagram 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 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 report templates for Sheets
Some Instagram templates for Google Sheets include:
- Instagram monthly report template (Soon)
- Social media tracking report template (Soon)
- Social media client monitoring report (Soon)
- Instagram KPIs tracker (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 to 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 reports on Google Sheets
We’ll share some tips to make your Instagram 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, weekly summaries.
With the refresh scheduling feature, you can automatically update your Google Sheets with your latest Instagram 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 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 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, common use cases of goal tracking include:
- Ad pacing monitoring
- 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 metrics and dimensions
As a reference, see the Instagram fields list and suggestions for choosing Instagram KPIs.
The Instagram connector for Google Looker Studio offers all the +100 metrics and dimensions available on the Instagram Insights API, including:
Instagram Insights metrics
Instagram metrics include:
- Conversion: taps on website, taps on link, etc.
- Engagement: post engagement, post comments, post likes, post shares, post saves, stories taps, etc.
- Visibility: Post and profile reach, impressions, and views.
Instagram dimensions
To monitor your Instagram performance, break down your data by dimensions.
The dimensions type offered by Instagram include:
- Profile or account: break down by Instagram Business Profile if connecting multiple accounts
- Posts: break down by post and include images, messages, type, and comments
- Stories: break down by stories links and images
- Audience: break down followers by gender, age, and region
For analyzing Instagram data with breakdowns, some popular use cases are:
- Best-performing posts
- Profile growth monitoring
- Stories report
- Audience report
- Best-performing post type and media type
- Break down your social media data by topics or hashtags
