Creating compelling Instagram Stories leads to increased engagement with your audience. But how do you know the performance of your Stories and the best ways to improve?
Instagram Stories analytics provide the insights you need to get the most from your Stories. Read on to learn how these analytics can help level up your Instagram.

What are Instagram Story Analytics?

Instagram Stories analytics offer insights into the performance of your stories. They let you know the number of people who have seen your Instagram Stories, what your audience clicks on, how quickly they move on by tapping forward or exit, and more.
The Stories are only available for 24 hours, meaning that when you post a Story today, it won’t be seen tomorrow. However, just because the Story disappears quickly doesn’t mean it cannot have a long-lasting impact on your campaign.

Why You Should Track Instagram Story Analytics

Tracking Instagram Story analytics helps you get insights that can help improve your Instagram campaign. The data provided by Instagram Stories analytics helps you optimize your content to achieve your goals. The analytics can help in the following ways.

Learn How the Stories are Being Consumed

Knowing the performance of your Stories over time helps you to identify the best-performing posts. Through the analytics, you learn what your audience wants to see in your content.
For instance, if you get more engagements from your Instagram Stories, it means your content is being consumed positively, signaling strong loyalty and relationships with your audience. On the other hand, if your Stories don’t engage, you need to improve them to get more positive responses.
If you note that some Stories outperform others, look for ways to recreate them for more engagement and conversions.

Understand Your Target Audience

Instagram Story analytics provide metrics based on the demographics of your audience. This allows you to analyze the data based on factors such as location, age, language, and more. With this information, you gain more understanding of your audience and fine-tune your Stories for improved engagement.
The data also helps you determine whether you are targeting the right audience with your Stories.

Save Resources and Time

Story analytics offer insights that allow you to save time and resources on your Instagram campaign. The data provided lets you know the Stories your audience find helpful and the ones that need improvement.
Instead of dividing your resources and efforts among all aspects of your campaign, you can distribute your resources and time more efficiently.

Optimize Your Story Publishing Schedule

Instagram Story analytics allow you to know the best time to post your Stories to reach your audience and increase engagement rates. They let you know when most of your audience is active, so you can publish Stories at such optimal times and maximize engagement.
You can also track individual Story performance. This gives you insights into the type of Stories performing best at different times of the week or day. With this data, you can adjust your publishing schedule to post specific Stories when they have a likelihood of driving more engagement.

Types of Analytics for Instagram Stories

Analytics for Instagram Stories provide various metrics that matter when you build your campaign strategy. There are several analytics you need to understand to amplify the performance of your Instagram Stories. Here are some of these analytics for Instagram Stories.

Discovery Metrics

Discovery metrics offer insights into the number of people who see your Stories and their location. You can take advantage of the discovery metrics by using the geotags for all your Instagram Stories. This ensures that every time a follower looks up a certain location, your Stories also show up and get discovered.
Discovery metrics also allow you to use the most relevant hashtags to allow your Stories to be discovered and gain outreach. The major Instagram metrics you will see under the discovery metrics include mentions, reach, and impressions.

Impressions

Impressions show the number of times your followers viewed your Stories on Instagram. This directs you to the type of Stories you should focus on more. You should use Stories that enjoy more impressions for the best campaign results.

Reach

Reach refers to the times your Instagram Stories were viewed by individual followers. The metric helps you know the size of your audience, which is important for your Instagram strategy.

Mentions

Mentions refer to the times that your followers have conversations around your business. The metric shows all the conversations around hashtags and keywords related to your Instagram Stories.
This is important as it shows the sentiment your audience has regarding your Stories or brand.

Engagement Metrics

The engagement metrics show how your audience interacts with your Instagram Stories.
The metrics help you identify the Stories that drive more engagement and try to create Stories focusing more on them. You also see which times your Stories get the most engagement, enabling you to post when most of your followers are active.
The major engagement metrics you get for your Instagram Stories include:

Likes

The number of likes shows whether your Stories are gaining more traction and making your audience take action. You should monitor to know the Stories with more likes and create your strategy accordingly.

Comments

The comments show how well your followers receive your Instagram Stories. If they give views, feedback, or ask questions about your Stories, it shows they connect with the content, making them compelled to interact.

Shares

Shares show the number of times that people shared your Stories with other users. A high number of shares show that people are interacting with your Stories. It is also a positive indication that your Stories are appealing, compelling your followers to share with others.

Navigation Metrics

Navigation analytics show how your audience views your Instagram Stories. The analytics consist of 4 crucial metrics.

Back Taps

Back taps is the number of times a user rewatches your past Stories. This is a good sign that your content has created an impact, making them compelled to watch or participate again.

Forward Taps

Forward is the number of times a user moves to your next Story. Though many forward taps are normal, they can also show that your Stories weren’t interesting for them to wait to finish.
If your Stories have a similar number of viewers, you can use the forward taps metrics to know the more interesting ones.

Next Story Swipes

This is when a follower slides your Story to stop watching and moves to the next person. The metric tells you when many people decide to move to other users, so you can identify which Stories to avoid in the future. It also tells you the number of Stories to add at any specific point.

Exit Story Taps

This indicates when your audience stops watching your Instagram Stories.
This may not indicate that your stories aren’t compelling because users can exit to focus on other matters. Don’t focus as much on this metric when gauging the impact of your stories. However, if many people exit a Story at the same time, it may indicate it needs improvement.

How to Check Your Instagram Story Analytics

Instagram Story analytics pinpoint who is and how many people are engaging with your Stories. You should regularly check the data to understand your account performance. With the analytics, you will learn your Stories’ engagement rate, completion rate, slides per impression, total impressions, Story views, and more.
Here are ways to check Instagram Story analytics.

Story Analytics in Instagram Insights

Instagram Insights is the native Instagram analytics tool that is available for free for all business and creator accounts. It allows you to understand your Instagram Story performance and learn more about your audience based on how they engage with the Stories.
With Instagram Insights, you can learn about:

Reach

Reach indicates the number of accounts that have seen your Instagram Story. The data provided lets you know the number of users watching each piece of Story you publish. If your reach is declining, you should restrategize your Stories.

Impressions

Impressions show all the views a specific Instagram Story gets. The metric will help you know if a user has watched your Story severally. The metric indicates whether your audience finds your Stories engaging and valuable.

Engagement

This metric shows the number of followers who have seen and interacted with your Instagram Stories in different ways. The interactions include saves, likes, replies, shares, and comments. The “Top Content” section shows you the Stories with the highest engagement.
Other Instagram Story metrics you get with Instagram Insights include exit, forward, next Story, and backward, which helps you know about your audience’s interest in your Stories.

Third-party Instagram Analytics Tools

Third-party Instagram analytics tools provide more comprehensive insights into your Instagram Story performance.
They offer reliable data showing what your audience wants to see in your Instagram Stories. The tools provide sentiment analysis, hashtag tracking, competitor analysis, engagement rate, industry trends, audience demographics, and optimal Story posing time.
With the tools, you learn the following.

Audience behavior

The tools apply behavioral analytics that lets you know when and how your follower reacts to your Stories. Instagram Stories analytics apps also show your audience engagement patterns, peak activity times, and preferences to allow you to get the most from your Instagram campaign.

Story optimization

Third-party Instagram analytics tools provide data that helps refine your Story strategy. You identify what resonates with your audience and the top-performing Stories. This allows you to know the type of Stories to create for improved connection with your audience.
The tools also provide Instagram hashtag analytics that allow you to identify the hashtags to use more in your Stories to maximize engagement and reach.

The Limitations of Instagram’s Native Analytics

Instagram’s native analytics offer important metrics but have limited analytical capabilities.
Instagram Insights doesn’t have advanced features, making it difficult to perform more comprehensive analysis like you do with third-party tools. For example, the analytics cannot analyze the top Instagram hashtags.
Other limitations include:

Does Not Provide Competitor Analysis

Instagram’s Native Analytics doesn’t allow you to perform competitor analysis, so you can’t see what is working and not working for your competitor’s Stories.

Short-term Insights

Instagram Insights provides your Story performance data for only 90 days.
You won’t be able to compare past performance with the current results, making it impossible to see your growth.

Conclusion: Use a Powerful Tool for Instagram Content Analytics and More

Using a powerful tool like SocialDog for Instagram posts and analytics can bolster your social media campaigns.
The post management feature allows you to create Instagram posts and schedule them to be published when your audience is most active online. This ensures your content gets more interactions, such as likes, replies, shares, comments, and more.
With SocialDog’s insights you know your audience’s interests and preferences, so you’re not creating content with guesswork.
Try all the SocialDog’s features for 7 days with the Enterprise Plan.