The Best Way to Measure Instagram Story Analytics
Measuring Instagram Story analytics can help you grow on Instagram by understanding the best formats for your individual profile performance.
Posted last year
Written by
Julia CohenPosted last year
Instagram Stories are an integral part of most successful content strategies, with over 300 million daily active accounts globally. And, aside from the mass appeal, both users and consumers see Stories as a more authentic and effective communication channel – 39% of people according to Facebook’s Analytics have become more interested in a brand or product after seeing it on an Instagram Story.
However, understanding the best strategies has been notoriously tricky, particularly due to Stories’ short lifespan, and Instagram’s choice to display Story Analytics at a limit of 30 days, making it historically difficult to compare and contrast results over time. In our most recent release, we introduced Instagram Story Analytics to our Suite (psst! They last longer than 30 days!), so in today’s article, we want to show you how to get stuck into the metrics that matter and use them to inform your overall strategy.
What Story Analytics Help With
Instagram story analytics provide data that show how viewers are interacting with your Instagram stories. These analytics are metrics that can help you pinpoint information about who and how many people have been engaging with the stories you’ve published.
At least 500 million accounts actively use Instagram on a daily basis. This leaves various opportunities for new introductions to your stories which alter multiple categories within your analytics.
Some of those examples could be your slides per impression, your total number of impressions, or your more specific contact interaction such as direct replies, and shares. There is also a wide variety of other metrics that you will need to focus on such as:
- Link clicks
- How many people exited your story
- Whether or not you have any new followers
- How many taps have you got on your call and email buttons
- Shares of that particular post
- How many people simply swiped back
All of these metrics affect your views, and your views tell a bit more than what you’ll see on your feed. They will give more insight into how your content is resonating with viewers.
This is done by analyzing the behaviors, patterns, and other specifics of your audience. For instance, the number of exits, shares, taps, and link clicks your story received from your audience will help you to drive how you can better structure your overall content strategy.
According to Facebook, 42% of people claimed that Instagram helps them to discover new products and services while around 44% said Instagram helps them to find out specific information about those products and services.
The thing is, trying to navigate the best way to break down your Story analytics can be daunting for anyone with an active account and a busy schedule. This is especially true given the fact that Instagram stories only last that long for 24 hours.
These factors make it difficult to form proper projections to help you better understand your overall analytics. Accessing a few key metrics is the first step. One of the first things you can do is to start by ensuring you aren’t losing valuable data within 30 days by using Flick to access real-time data, across any period.
How to Access Instagram Story Metrics
Before you can start measuring, let’s make sure you’re going to the right place. If you want to check your Instagram story metrics you’re going to need to make sure that you have a Creator or Instagram business account.
- Open up your Instagram app
- Click on your profile
- Tap that menu icon in your upper right corner and find “insights”
- Scroll down where you can see your stories and click “see all”
- Now, click any interaction to view an overview of the actions that are taken on your stories
An Example Used From Elisedarma
How to Measure Instagram Story Analytics 📈
Completion Rate
The Completion Rate is one of the most significant metrics that you can use to measure the success of your Instagram Stories because it allows you to determine how engaging your Stories are. The Completion Rate % shows how much of your total Story was watched by your viewers, based on the people that watched the entire Story, vs. those that dropped off. Comparing the Completion Rate of different types of Instagram Stories can help determine which Stories make people actively want to stick around and engage, and which Stories people tend to exit. You can use this to inform the kinds of Stories that you post in the future, test and learn the formats that work, and compare similar formats on different topics, to understand what your audience wants to see.
Engagement Rate
Your completion rate and your engagement rate are quite different. Your completion rate simply represents how many people actually watched your Instagram story all the way through. Your engagement rate helps users to see how many people are interacting with all of your content. This includes the number of comments you received, the number of likes on your Story, and the number of shares and followers you have.
You can determine your Story rate metrics by following this formula;
(# of people who viewed the first segment / # of people who viewed the last segment in your story) x 100 = %
So, what this means is that if you have around 500 followers and you made 84 interactions so far with a post, your rate percentage would be 17%. This is probably the easiest way to develop interaction trends.
Why is your engagement rate important? Remember how we mentioned that your completion rate helps to determine which of your Stories people are sticking around to engage with?
Determining your actual engagement rate will help you to better make comparisons for future Stories. With this, you’re going to want to know how many people are engaging with what you’re creating. This means understanding who is commenting, who is liking, who is sharing what you’ve made, and when your content sees the most interaction.
Knowing who is saving or enjoying your content will help you to develop a more specific plan for strategy implementation.
Slides Per Impression
The Slides per Impression indicates the average number of slides a viewer will watch before exiting your Story. Similarly to the Completion Rate, you can use this to understand the sweet spot in terms of how many slides you should feature on any given Story on any given day. There is so much information on social media about the right Instagram schedule, the right number of times to post to be successful, and the right content formats you should be using, but the truth is – this differs from account to account.
While it’s important to be consistent, a Story containing 10 slides might work for one person, but not for you. Each niche and each Instagrammer has a different audience, with different responses, interests, and nuances, so it’s important to look at your own data to decipher what actually works.
By looking at the Slides per Impression, you can do just that. It will show you the average number of slides you can use on a Story before most viewers drop off or “lose interest.” This is essential, as it also ties directly in with your Completion Rate and can help increase performance metrics if you get it right.
Total Impressions
Total Impressions are the total number of times your Stories were viewed in the selected timeframe. This is a way of determining the percentage of your following that actually view your Stories. By monitoring how this metric changes day by day, or at different posting times, you can get a better understanding of when your audience is online, and what portion of them actively engage with and view your Stories. This metric also may change according to the types of Stories you post, so you can also understand which posts are shared more or are just holistically more popular.
If you want to give it a shot, divide the number of likes and the number of comments you received by your total number of followers. Then, multiply it by 100 and you’ve got your impression rate.
💡 Pro Tip: If your Story Impressions are relatively low as a portion of your overall following, you can consider driving your existing audience to your Story posts by mentioning them in a feed caption with a CTA to the type of content you cover in your Story that they can’t view anywhere else!
Stories Made
Use the Stories Made metric to keep track of the number of Stories you post and whether or not this impacts other key performance metrics such as Following, Engagement, Swipe Ups (if applicable), Profile Visits, and more! This will allow you to assess whether your Stories directly impact your potential to grow and engage your audience. You can also use it to keep track of consistency and whether the more Stories you make, the more your other metrics also increase.
If you want to learn more about our all-new IGTV and Instagram Story Analytics, click the banner below! Be sure to check out our guide on all things Instagram Analytics to help you figure out your online strategy.
Story Views
Now that we know a bit more about using the stories made metric, you’re still going to want to pay close attention to those actual views. Your views and other metrics can help inform what types of content resonate with your audience the most.
Instagram’s insights offer a look at what content your followers are likely to engage with and how they will engage with it. The feature offers an overview of the content you shared.
With 62% of users logging in at least once a day, your Story views are an important metric to help you understand if you are reaching those users when they are online.
With your story views, there are also a few other areas that you could benefit from keeping track of. A good example is your watch-through rate for each of your stories. Your watch-through rate will look a little like this:
Overall Growth
Your Instagram story growth is going to allow you to determine what is, and what isn’t working for you. Understanding how your channel grows will help you to understand what content your audience is resonating the most with.
Influencers will often monitor their follower growth over time which you can determine by the following:
(Time 1 – Time 2 / Time 2) x 100= Overall Growth %
Take this as an example, let’s say you stopped around February and had 2,000 followers at that time. Then around July, you had 1700 followers. This means your growth rate of followers would be 17.6% Don’t forget, the same rule applies for clicks and engagement over time.
How to Use These Instagram Story Analytics to Improve Your Content Strategy
There are a few ways you can use your story analytics to maximize your engagement with your content strategy.
Trial and Error
The same strategies won’t work for everyone. Luckily, Instagram stories are a great way to do that. One of the best ways to approach this is to search for content similar to yours and assess how other users’ stories are performing compared to your own. If you notice content that’s engaging well with users and has a high number of likes and viewers try to put your own spin on it. Take an approach that’s working for others and make it work for you.
For example, you might notice that some channels have makeup tutorials with high amounts of engagement. You could take an idea like this and do comparison tutorials where you create the same look but with different products. Or, you could engage your viewers by producing a poll and asking them what makeup looks they want to learn how to do themselves. Then, you give them what they want.
Factor In Feedback
Feedback is one of the best ways to enhance your content strategy. You could do a few things like:
- Create a poll
- Create a Q/A story
- Reading the comments that were left on your story
- Monitor your mentions
Aside from these methods, you could have a feedback session or even encourage your viewers to send you direct messages based on what you want to know.
Pay Attention to Your Reach
Your reach is vital because it shows you how many people are actually seeing your content. Your reach will also reveal how users are finding your content. Location stickers and specific hashtags are great ways to get your content onto the Explore Page.
This will help you to extend who you’re reaching and increase the ways you’re reaching them. The impressions you make and the number of times your story is being seen are metrics that will help guide a successful content strategy.
Learn the Preferences of Your Audience
As a creator, you’re creating your content for your audience. Find out exactly what they want by paying attention to their preferences through your analytics. You can use your Insights to make this a bit easier.
Growth Insights might be the best Instagram tool in your arsenal. This feature allows users to see which of their stories, as well as their posts specifically help them to gain the most followers. When you go into your insights you will notice that you can break down your audience and get more from each post.
Increase Your Impression Rate
Your impression rate is the number of times that your story was viewed overall. So think about it like this, if you post an Instagram Story that reached around 4 people who collectively viewed the story 12 times, your growth insights will display that you’ve reached 4 people and that you have 12 impressions.
If each one of those people viewed your story 12 times each, your growth insights would show that you still have reached 4 people but that you now have 48 impressions.
This is quite powerful given the fact that the simplest metrics often hold the most weight. After tapping on the story you want more information on, swipe up to expand the metrics and tap the chart icon to display your Insights for that specific story.
Better yet, if you want to see how other accounts are performing and do a comparison to help you get the most from posting, using the Benchmark feature that Flick offers, can help identify those performance differences like your reach rate.
Flick can also help with that especially if you want to explore other ways to drive more traffic to your content so that you can broaden your reach. One way that we do this is by focusing on Instagram SEO. We help with this by sharing how you can easily use SEO strategies to enhance your Instagram account.
While Instagram story analytics allow a dashboard of multiple metrics, your growth insights will often get you farther. Paying close attention to this main area of your analytics will help you to develop patterns. With that and Instagram Story monitoring, you can often use other tactics that will make the process easy to navigate and keep up with. Flick is one of the best options for that.
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