You've researched the best time to post on Instagram, carefully crafted your captions, and used all the recommended hashtags. Yet despite following these best practices, your Instagram engagement remains inconsistent and unpredictable. Your carefully planned product announcement barely receives any interaction, while a casual behind-the-scenes photo garners three times more likes and comments.
This discrepancy isn't random—it's rooted in the visual elements of your content that traditional Instagram analytics tools simply don't measure.
Standard Instagram analytics track when you post, which hashtags perform best, and how your audience demographics evolve. However, research published in the International Journal of Research in Marketing reveals that these factors only tell part of the story. According to their findings, images with the right combination of visual elements get an average of 3% more likes and 19% more engagement even after controlling for all other factors (Social Media Examiner, 2023).
The study explains this phenomenon by highlighting how viewers process visual content: people can interpret Instagram images in just 100 milliseconds—significantly faster than reading captions or checking hashtags. This instant visual processing creates immediate engagement decisions that happen before conscious evaluation of text elements.
While tools like Social Blade can track follower growth and some engagement metrics, they don't analyze the visual components that actually drive engagement.
According to 2025 Instagram benchmarks from Socialinsider, carousels are currently the most engaging content type with a 0.55% average engagement rate, followed by Reels at 0.50%, while static images trail at 0.45% (Socialinsider, 2025). However, when considering time spent, Reels account for 50% of all user time on Instagram, indicating their growing importance in capturing audience attention (Sprout Social, 2025).
This data reveals an important insight: while carousels generate more engagement actions per post, Reels capture significantly more viewer attention time. A balanced content strategy needs to leverage both formats to maximize your Instagram engagement rate.
Research published in the Journal of Communication Management provides empirical evidence that specific image-based features significantly impact digital visual engagement on Instagram. Their experimental study demonstrated that:
These findings demonstrate that strategic visual composition choices directly influence not just engagement, but also conversion metrics—something that's far more valuable than simply focusing on how to get followers on Instagram.
A comprehensive study from Baylor University's Keller Center for Research examined what drives customer engagement on Instagram, analyzing how different visual and textual elements influenced likes and comments.
Their research concluded that "emotional appeals influence customer engagement more than informative appeals for both visual and text content" (Baylor University, 2021). The study specifically found that positive high-arousal emotional content—images conveying ecstasy, amazement, or admiration—generated significantly higher engagement than informational content.
Importantly, the research also discovered that overtly promotional visual content actually decreased engagement, with informative appeals leading to "a diminished number of likes" and potentially causing followers to unfollow accounts that appeared too sales-focused.
While knowing the best time to post on Instagram remains important, research shows that visual content quality has a far greater impact on engagement than posting time alone. According to WebFX (2025), visual content gets 94% more views than text-only content, highlighting the fundamental importance of optimizing your visual strategy.
That said, combining optimal posting times with high-performing visual content creates the strongest results. Generally, the best days to post on Instagram include Tuesday through Friday, with engagement peaks typically occurring between 10 AM and 2 PM. However, your specific audience's behavior may differ, making it essential to analyze your Instagram insights regularly.
Traditional engagement rate calculators focus on basic metrics like:
Engagement Rate = (Likes + Comments) / Followers × 100
However, this formula fails to account for how visual elements drive those engagement actions in the first place. Using visual analytics, you can calculate a more sophisticated engagement rate that considers:
Using visual analytics, many creators and brands have increased their engagement rates by 38-180% compared to industry benchmarks.
Converting research insights into actionable strategy requires a systematic approach to content planning and analysis:
Begin by categorizing your existing Instagram content based on visual elements rather than just performance metrics. Group similar posts by:
This approach goes beyond what free Instagram analytics tools can provide, giving you insights into the visual patterns that drive engagement.
Analyze which visual categories correlate with higher engagement metrics. According to research from ResearchGate (2015), visual content has a significant effect on purchase decisions, both directly and indirectly through brand engagement as an intervening variable.
Look beyond simple like counts to evaluate which visual elements drive meaningful actions like saves (indicating high-value content) and shares (indicating content that users want to be associated with).
If you're wondering how to become an influencer or how to become an influencer on Instagram, mastering visual analytics gives you a significant competitive edge. While most aspiring influencers focus exclusively on timing, hashtags, and captions, those who analyze and optimize their visual content gain a measurable advantage.
Research conducted with successful influencers found that specific visual elements—including "inspirational quotes, color, prizes, funny memes, selfies, and photos of friends and families"—significantly increased engagement (PMC, 2020). Different niche audiences respond to varied visual cues, making it essential to analyze what works specifically for your target audience.
Meanwhile, Sprout Social's 2024 research found that 69% of social users report seeing "the most engaging brand content on Instagram," with 44% wishing brands would use the platform even more frequently (Sprout Social, 2025). This indicates a significant opportunity for creators who can master Instagram's visual engagement factors.
Every image you post on Instagram contains valuable performance data that basic Instagram analytics tools simply don't capture. Free Instagram analytics provide surface-level metrics, but they miss the crucial visual patterns that actually drive engagement.
The research is clear: strategic visual content development based on data-driven insights leads to measurably higher engagement rates, follower growth, and conversion metrics. While most accounts rely on follower count updates from Instagram follower tracker tools, truly successful creators focus on the quality of their visual content and the resulting engagement.
Ready to unlock the full potential of your Instagram content? The visual data that will transform your Instagram engagement rate is already waiting in your feed—you just need the right analytics tools to measure and optimize it.
Experience the power of data-driven visual analytics by joining Highviz today and get free lifetime access to our advanced Instagram analytics report platform.
