Keeping track of key engagement metrics for your Instagram Business Reels is essential to maximizing their impact. When you integrate Instagram Business with PowerMetrics, you get access to a more robust and informative set of analytics to visualize and track your data as it evolves over time.

In this example, we’ll show you how to connect PowerMetrics to your Instagram Business account. You'll then learn how to use the query builder in PowerMetrics to retrieve Reels data and create a modelled data source you can use for your custom Instagram Business metrics.

This article contains the following sections:

• Finding your Reels data in Instagram Business
• Connecting PowerMetrics to your Instagram Business account
• Creating your queries and modelled data sources
• Merging your modelled data sources
• Creating your metric

Finding your Reels data in Instagram Business

In the Meta Business Suite, you'll find your Reels metrics in the Posts & stories section under Posts & reels. You can refer to this information to verify your data as it displays in PowerMetrics. See below for an example of the page that shows data for some of the Reel metrics that we’ll be tracking in this article:

Now that you know what data we’ll be tracking, let’s connect PowerMetrics to your Instagram Business account.

Connecting PowerMetrics to your Instagram Business account

To connect PowerMetrics to your Instagram Business account:

1. In the left navigation sidebar, click your Account Name > Data Sources.
2. Click the Create a New Data Source button.
3. On the Where is your data? page, select Instagram Business.
4. If this is your first time connecting to Instagram Business:

• Click Add new account.

• Enter your Facebook login credentials and click Log In.
• Next, to further define the data you're looking for, under Choose account settings, select your Facebook Page and Business Account from the drop-down lists. Click Use account.

5. If you've connected to Instagram Business before, we assume you want to use the same account and take you directly to the next step - Creating your queries and modelled data sources. If you want to connect to a different account, you can do so in the query builder by clicking the account connection at the top of the data preview window (see below). You can either select an alternate, existing account or click “Add new account”.

That's all there is to it! You're connected and ready to move on to creating your queries and modelled data sources.

Creating your queries and modelled data sources

After connecting your account, the query builder opens. You'll start by choosing a data view. Using that data view, we'll run a query to get a list of available columns from within it and specify the data to include in your modelled data source.

In this example, we’ll be creating two modelled data sources. The first modelled data source will list the Reel’s MediaID and all the relevant metrics we want to track. The second modelled data source will list metadata about the reels, such as the caption and created date. Later, we’ll merge these two data sources into a single modelled data source that you can use to create Instagram Business custom metrics.

To create your first query and add your first modelled data source:

1. Under Data view, click the drop-down and select MediaInsightReels.

The MediaInsightReels data view contains the data for the events you’re tracking in Instagram Business. Its contents should mirror what you see in the Insights > Content tab in Meta Business Suite.

2. Under Columns, select the checkboxes for the columns to include in your modelled data source. In this example, we'll select MediaID (for the ID associated with the reel) and Comments, Likes, Plays, Reach, Saved, Shares, and TotalInteractions.

3. Click Preview data.
4. Click Save and continue.
5. Click Save and exit to save your first modelled data source. Note: The modelled data source is automatically named to match the query. In our example, that's "Instagram MediaInsightsReels".

The details page for your first modelled data source displays. Next, you'll create a second modelled data source to retrieve Reels metadata.

To create your second query and add your second modelled data source:

1. In the left navigation sidebar, click your Account Name > Data Sources.
2. Click the Create a New Data Source button.
3. On the Where is your data? page, select Instagram Business.

Note: You connected to your Instagram Business account when you created the first modelled data source. We assume you want to connect to the same account so this time we take you directly to the query builder, where you can configure your second query.

4. Under Data view, click the drop-down and select Media. (See below.)

5. Under Columns, select the checkboxes for the columns to include in your modelled data source. In this example, we'll select Id, (for the ID associated with the reel), as well as Created and Caption.

6. Click Preview data.
7. Click Save and continue.
8. Click Save and exit to save your second modelled data source. Note: The modelled data source is automatically named to match the query. In our example, that's "Instagram Media".

The details page for your second modelled data source displays.

You're ready to merge your two modelled data sources together to bring all the relevant Reels information into one modelled data source.

Merging your modelled data sources

Merging modelled data sources enables you to bring your information together. This means you can consolidate complementary modelled data sources (provided they share at least one column in common) in order to create a single modelled data source that provides a more complete version of your data.

In this example, we’ll merge together the two modelled data sources you just created: “Instagram MediaInsightReels” and “Instagram Media”. We’ll use the MediaId column (from the “InstagramInsightReels” modelled data source) and the Id column (from the “Instagram Media” modelled data source) as the join key because they contain the same information. Go here if you want to learn more about merging modelled data sources.

To merge your modelled data sources:

1. Select the base modelled data source: Click your Account name > Data Sources in the left navigation sidebar to display your list of data sources. Select the “Instagram MediaInsightReels” modelled data source to open it. This is your base modelled data source. On its details page, beside Connection, click Edit Feed. This opens the query builder. Don't make any changes here - just click Save and continue. On the Modify Data page, click the Merge data button. (See below.)

2. Select the modelled data source to merge: In the Merge data pane, select the “Instagram Media” modelled data source. This is your secondary modelled data source. Click Next. (See below.)

3. Align your modelled data sources: Select the column in the base modelled data source (“MediaID”) and the column in the secondary modelled data source that contains the same data (“Id”). This is your join key. Then, click Next. (See below.)

4. Select columns: Now that you’ve aligned your data, you can select the columns from the secondary modelled data source that you want to add to your base modelled data source. After selecting “Created” and “Caption”, click Merge. (See below.)

You just merged two modelled data sources! In our example below, you can see the new columns you added “Created” and “Caption”. Newly merged columns are always added to the right of the base modelled data source.

5. Click Save and exit.

The details page for your new modelled data source displays. You're ready to use it to create a custom metric.

Creating your metric

You now have the ability to create a custom metric for each of the columns (fields) you added to your new, merged modelled data source, including numeric values (measures) for “Comments”, “Likes”, “Plays”, “Reach”, “Saved”, “Shares”, and “TotalInteractions”. You will also be able to create count rows metrics for the text columns “Caption” and “MediaId” or add them as segmentations for your numeric value measures (as in our example below).

The following instructions describe using the modelled data source to create an Instagram Reels “Reach” metric but you can use the same steps to create custom metrics for any of the other columns in your modelled data source.

To create your metric:

1. On the details page for the "Instagram MediaInsightReels" modelled data source, click Create metrics.

The Create a custom metric page displays. This is where you'll choose the settings for your metric.

Note: If you closed the details page for "Instagram MediaInsightReels", you can reopen it by selecting it from your list of data sources (accessed by clicking your Account name > Data Sources in the left navigation sidebar).

2. In the Metric value step, choose Reach. This is the column in the modelled data source that contains the values you want to track in your metric. Make sure the default aggregation is set to Sum. Click Next. (See below.)

3. In the Segmentation step, select Caption. Click Next.

4. In the Date & time step, choose Created. It's the date column from your modelled data source. Click Next. (See below.)

5. In the Data shape step, select Transactional values. Click Next. (See below.)

6. In the Display settings step:

• Under Metric Name, enter Instagram Reels Reach.
• Under Format, make sure the data format is Numeric.
• Under Favourable trend, select Trending up is positive.

7. Click Save.

The “Instagram Reels Reach” custom metric is added to your list of metrics (accessed by clicking Metrics in the left navigation sidebar). As its modelled data source gets refreshed, new data is added to your metric, enabling you to see trends and compare your data to previous periods.