Social media data scraping offers a great way to extract valuable information for commercial and research purposes. Instagram is most internet users' go-to social media platform and the best business data source. But, there are a few legal and technical difficulties in scraping Instagram posts, likes, comments, and more.
In a stepwise tutorial, this blog will share how to scrape Instagram data using Instagram post scraper. Let's drill into it to learn more.
What is Instagram Scraping?
It is the process of extracting social media data, like Instagram posts, likes, and comments, that users permit to share with the public. Use web scraping tools like Instagram Scraper based on your technical knowledge, and you can do it.
Businesses relying on social media data know that collecting Instagram data may be a new thing for them. By extracting data, like posts or hashtags, businesses can track online branding, perform market research and sentimental analysis, or discover influencers to collaborate with for business.
What Data Do I Scrape from Instagram?
Instagram has a wide range of data available for public access. Here are a few significant data categories you can consider scraping:
- Posts: you can extract Instagram post information, like date, URL, comments, likes, post author ID, and more.
- Hashtags or Keywords: you can scrape media or post URLs with a particular hashtag or keyword.
- User Profiles: You can scrape public profiles from Instagram with posts, images, follower count, and other engagement parameters.
Can I scrape Instagram posts legally?
You can scrape publicly available social media data from Instagram, adhering to privacy policies, data protection laws, and copyright regulations. It means you can't extract personal or intellectual property-related data from the platform.
How do you scrape an Instagram post?
So, let's come to the topic and see how to scrape Instagram post data. There are many methods and tools available to scrape Instagram post data. Here, we will use Instagram Post Scraper by Real Data API. We've perfectly designed it to get you the required data smoothly. You can try our trial plan to use Instagram Posts Scraper and see how it goes, then go for the monthly subscription plan. Check out the below steps to scrape Instagram data.
First Step: Go to Instagram Post Scraper on Store & Try It
You can head to the store page on our platform to find the required scraper. Search Instagram in the search bar to see scrapers related to Instagram data, find the Instagram post scraper, and open it.
If you don't have one, You can create an account on our platform to run the scraper with the necessary login credentials. Then, try the scraper using our trial plan. Then, you can subscribe to a monthly plan for more data. For custom data requirements, contact our team.
Second Step: Enter the Instagram Account or Username to Scrape
Enter the username or account of the Instagram user that you need to scrape. Click the +Add button to add multiple usernames for your requirements. If you are using the scraper for the first time, use the default settings to see how the scraper works.
Third Step: Select the Post Count to Scrape
It is the maximum post count for each Instagram username. Hence, if you choose four accounts and set the maximum post count to 20, you can scrape 80 posts.
Setting a maximum count to scrape the required data quickly is wise. Here, let's go with 20 as an example.
Fourth Step: Run the Scraper and Collect Data
Hit the start button to start the scraper run. While Instagram data scraper is under execution, it will keep adding the data to the output until it changes the status to Succeeded.
Fifth Step: Download the Data
Once the scraper finishes its process, you can preview and export the data from the storage tab. The storage tab will give you multiple options to download the data in formats like JSON, HTML, XML, CSV, Excel, and more.
Let us export the collected data in the Excel format:
Conclusion
Use the above five steps to scrape Instagram post data using the Instagram data scraper. For more, contact the Real Data API team.