Instagram Collab posts are one of the most common sources of confusion in social media reporting - the numbers look different from what you're used to, and it's not always obvious why.
Here's everything you need to know about how Socialinsider handles them.
What is a Collab post?
A Collab post is a single piece of content co-authored by two or more Instagram accounts. Instagram publishes it to every collaborator's profile at once, and - this is the important part - the metrics you see are the combined performance across all collaborators' audiences, not just your own.
Supported formats: Feed Images, Reels, and Carousels. Stories are not supported by Meta as collab posts.
❗️Note: If a Collab post's likes or views look unusually high compared to your other content, this is expected. You're seeing reach from every collaborator's audience combined.
How Collab posts show up in Socialinsider
Instagram Collab posts are one of those features that look simple in the Instagram app, but become much more complicated when you try to track them through analytics.
In the app, a Collab post can appear on two profiles, list two accounts as authors, and collect shared engagement. But through the Instagram API, things do not always work the same way.
That is why a Collab post may be visible on Instagram, but not always available in Socialinsider.
→ Collab posts for connected accounts
If your connected Instagram account publishes or participates in a collab post, here's what you'll see in Socialinsider:
The post appears in your Posts section with a Collab badge on the post card, so you can spot it at a glance
You can also see more details about the original publisher of the post.
2. All metrics are visible (likes, comments, shares, saves, reposts, and views) reflecting the full combined performance
3. The post counts toward your profile's overall totals, including engagement rate calculations
→ Collab posts for competitors' accounts
There are two scenarios here:
scenario 1: the competitor account published the original post
scenario 2: the competitor account is only a collaborator
And depending on which profiles you add to Socialinsider, you will see different things.
Basically, if the Instagram profile added to Socialinsider is the original owner of the Collab post, the post will appear in the dashboard (scenario 1).
In this case, Socialinsider can usually retrieve the post similarly to other owned Instagram media, depending on the permissions and data available through the API.
But if the Instagram profile added to Socialinsider is only a collaborator on the post, then the post will not appear in the dashboard (scenario 2).
As an example, we can take the first post shared in this guide. On their Instagram feed, the band Gorillaz has a Collab post (carousel) from June 20.
You can see the authors being both Gorillaz and Defender. These are two separate Instagram accounts.
In Socialinsider, this post doesn't appear in the Gorillaz account.
However, for the Defender account, I can see the post in the Socialinsider dashboard.
The post appears here because Defender is the account that published the original post on Instagram. As a collaborator, Gorillaz won't have the post in the Socialinsider view.
So, in other words, it really depends on who publishes the original post and who's profile are you adding to Socialinsider.
API limitations
The most important reason is also the simplest: If Meta does not expose a Collab post through the official Instagram API, Socialinsider cannot retrieve it.
Socialinsider does not bypass Meta’s API limitations. The platform can only show the posts, metrics, and collaborator information that Meta makes available through the official API.