Using Insights in Buffer
Want to know how your content is landing without diving into a full analytics report? Insights has you covered. It's a lightweight analytics view built right into Buffer — check in on a single channel's follower growth, engagement, and impressions, or get a cross-channel overview of how all your channels are performing, all without ever leaving your publishing dashboard.
⚠️ Insights is available in Beta on the Buffer web app only. We hope to make it available in the mobile apps soon! Learn more about how to test Buffer's Beta features here.
In this article:
- Video: How to Get the Most Out of Your Buffer Insights
- Why use Insights?
- How to access Insights
- Filtering Insights
Video: How to Get the Most Out of Your Buffer Insights
Watch the video below to learn more about Buffer's Insights feature, including both ways to access them:
- All channel metrics aggregated for a birds-eye view, and
- Individual channel insights with our AI-powered Takeaways feature!
Why use Insights?
- Stay in your workflow. Key performance data lives right inside Buffer — no need to jump to a separate analytics dashboard.
- Get a quick pulse-check. See how a channel is trending at a glance before you plan your next post.
- Check in on a single channel or all at once. Drill into one channel's performance or zoom out to see how all your channels are doing from the All Channels view.
- See what's working at a glance. Period-over-period comparisons show you instantly whether things are trending up or down.
- Find your best posts fast. The Performance per Post table ranks your content by engagement rate so you can spot what's resonating and do more of it.
- Watch your audience grow. The Metrics chart makes it easy to visualize follower growth and other key stats over time.
- Make smarter content decisions. With reach, impressions, and engagement rate at your fingertips, you always have clear insights to guide your next steps.
How to access Insights
There are two ways to access Insights:
For All Channels - Click Insights in the left sidebar of the web dashboard. Here, you'll see an overview of your Insights across all channels.
For a specific channel - In the left sidebar, select the channel you'd like to view and then click Insights beneath the channel name.
You'll land on the Insights dashboard for that channel. It defaults to the last 30 days, but you can adjust the date range using the options at the top of the page.
Available date ranges:
- Last 7 days
- Last 30 days
- Month to date
- Last month
- Custom
💡 Tip: The Custom date range is handy for tracking specific campaigns — great for reviewing how a product launch or seasonal push performed.
No data for the selected period? If there are no posts or no metrics available for your selected date range, Insights will show a "No Data Found" message in the chart. Try widening your date range or switching to a period when you were actively posting. If you've just connected a channel, data may take a short time to populate.
Filtering Insights
Both Tags and Channels filters are available in the All Channels view, making it easy to narrow down your Insights to just the posts or channels you care about. If you're viewing a single channel, you can still filter by Tags to focus on specific content categories.
Filter by Tags:
- In the top right of the Insights dashboard, click Tags.
- A dropdown will appear with a search bar and a list of your available tags.
- Check one or more tags to filter your Insights to only posts that have those tags applied. You can also search for specific tags or select Untagged to see posts without any tags.
Filter by channel (All Channels view only):
- In the top right of the Insights dashboard, click Channels.
- A dropdown will appear with a searchable list of your connected channels.
- Check one or more channels to narrow Insights down to just those channels. You can also use Select all to include everything, or search by channel name to find one quickly.
💡 Tip: Tags and Channel filters can be used together so you can see how a specific content category performed across a subset of your channels.
Summary
The Summary section gives you a snapshot of how your channel performed during the selected date range, compared to the previous period of the same length.
You'll see the following metrics:
- Posts — the number of posts published during the period
- Likes — total likes received across all posts
- Comments — total comments received
- Impressions — total number of times your posts were displayed
- Shares — total shares
- Saves — total saves
- Follows — new followers gained during the period
- Reach — the number of unique accounts that saw your content
- Engagement Rate — the percentage of people who engaged with your posts out of those who saw them
Each metric includes a comparison indicator (e.g. ↑ 28.6%) so you can see at a glance how things have changed.
📝 Good to Know: Not all metrics are available for every channel — it depends on what each social network shares through its API. For example, Saves may only appear for Instagram, and Reach may not be available for all networks.
Performance per Post
The Performance per Post table breaks down how each individual post did during the selected date range.
For each post, you'll see:
- Post — a thumbnail and preview of the post content
- Eng. Rate — the engagement rate for that post
- Reactions — the number of likes/reactions for that post
- Comments
- Views
💡 Tip: Your top posts by engagement rate are a goldmine for content inspiration. Look for patterns in format, topic, or timing and lean into what's clicking with your audience.
Metrics chart
The Metrics section shows a line chart of a single metric over your selected date range. It defaults to Followers, but you can switch to any available metric using the dropdown — things like Impressions, Profile Views, Posts, or Reach.
Use the Compare dropdown to overlay data from a previous period so you can see how things have shifted over time.
Takeaways
The Takeaways section provides AI-powered observations about your recent content performance — things like which post formats are resonating, what topics are driving engagement, and patterns worth repeating.
Unlike the Summary and Metrics chart, Takeaways are not affected by the date range selector. They reflect a broader view of your content performance and stay consistent as you explore different time windows in the chart above.
Use Takeaways alongside the date-filtered chart to get both the big-picture story and the granular trend data at the same time.
Supported channels
Insights is available for all channels connected to Buffer, including:
- Instagram (Professional accounts — Business or Creator)
- Facebook Pages
- X/Twitter
- LinkedIn Pages and Profiles
- TikTok
- Threads
- Bluesky
- YouTube
- Mastodon
📝 Good to Know: The metrics available in Insights will vary depending on the channel. Each social network controls what data it makes accessible through its API, so you may see different metrics for different channels.
Good to Knows
- The numbers may differ from your native analytics. Small discrepancies between what you see in Buffer and what you see in Instagram, Facebook, or other native dashboards are completely normal. Each platform calculates and updates data in its own way. For a full breakdown of why, check out Why your data in Buffer might differ from your native analytics.
- Insights and Analyze are separate tools. Insights is your quick per-channel check-in. For deeper reporting (e.g. multi-channel comparison, audience demographics, stories analytics, custom reports, and more) head to Analyze via the link in the top right of the Insights dashboard.
- Historical data availability varies by channel. When you first connect a channel, Buffer backfills data going back a set period. Here's what to expect:
| Channel | Backfill period |
|---|---|
| 30 days of post data; 6 months of channel-level data | |
| Instagram (Professional) | 30 days of post data; stories collected from connection date onwards only |
| X/Twitter | 30 days of post data; no channel-level data available |
| LinkedIn Pages | 30 days of post data; 6 months of channel-level data |
| TikTok | 60 days |
| Threads | 60 days |
| 90 days | |
| YouTube | 90 days |
| Bluesky | No backfill — data collected from connection date onwards only |
| Mastodon | No backfill — data collected from connection date onwards only |
If you're not seeing historical data you expected, reach out to our team at hello@buffer.com.
⚠️ Instagram Personal accounts have limited data. To get the full range of metrics in Insights for Instagram, you'll want your account connected as a Professional (Business or Creator) account. Personal accounts have restricted API access. See Connecting your Instagram account to Buffer for more details.
FAQ
How far back can I view data?
You can use the preset date ranges (Last 7 days, Last 30 days, Month to date, Last month) or set a custom range. How far back data goes depends on the channel — for example, Facebook and LinkedIn Pages backfill 6 months of channel-level data and 30 days of post data when first connected, while Instagram and X/Twitter backfill 30 days of post data. Check the Historical data availability table in the Good to Knows section above for a full breakdown.
How is engagement rate calculated?
Engagement rate is based on the interactions a post received (likes, comments, shares, etc.) relative to how many people saw it during the selected period.
Why don't I see all the metrics listed?
Not every metric is available for every channel. If something isn't showing up, it's because that social network doesn't share that data through its API. Nothing's broken, it just varies by platform!
My Insights numbers look different from what I see in the native app — is that normal?
Totally normal! Differences in how and when each platform processes data can cause the numbers to vary. For a detailed breakdown of why, see Why your data in Buffer might differ from your native analytics.
I need more detailed analytics — where should I go?
Head to Analyze — there's a link in the top right of the Insights dashboard. You'll find multi-channel overviews, audience data, stories analytics, custom reports, and more.
How do I share feedback about Insights?
We'd genuinely love to hear from you! Since Insights is in Beta, your feedback directly shapes where we take it next. Hit Share Feedback in the top right corner of the Insights dashboard to send us your thoughts.
Need help with Insights? Send us an email at hello@buffer.com and our Advocacy team will be standing by to help.