Now with over 500 million daily active users, Instagram Stories is fast becoming an essential consideration for all social media marketers and businesses looking to make the most of social connection.
Instagram itself has grown to become one of the biggest social platforms in the world, and users now come to the app for a wide range of purposes, including product discovery. Indeed, according to Instagram, 80% of its users follow at least one business account, while 81% of users say that Instagram helps them research products and services.
There's no mistaking the potential of Instagram, and Instagram Stories - but like all social platforms, if you want to maximize your use of the option, you have to conduct a thorough analysis, and gain and understanding of what your followers want from your brand.
Instagram Stories with Data Analytics
There's a range of ways to glean more insight into what people respond best to within Instagram Stories.
The first is your native analytics - from the Instagram app, you can get data on your profile discovery, swipe up clicks and interactions within your Stories.
For more in-depth analysis, there's also a range of third-party tools that you can use to dig further into your Stories engagement.
Here are five of the top Instagram Stories analytics tools to consider in your process.
1. Socialinsider
Socialinsider is an Instagram analytics tool which can help you better understand your Stories performance. Socialinsider can provide data on:
- What types of Stories perform best on Instagram
- The best days and times to publish Stories based on reach and impressions.
- The top performing hashtags by impressions used in Stories as text, and not stickers.
- How many people viewed your Stories
Additionally, with Socialinsider you can explore your Instagram content KPIs, and create benchmarks for your industry, or even analyze influencers’ content.
Pricing starts at $59 per month, but you can start a 7-day free trial here.
2. Later
Later is an Instagram scheduling tool which also provides insights into the performance of your Instagram content.
This tool offers analysis in various areas:
- Overall impressions
- Post and Stories reach
- Best days/times to post
- Stories completion rates
Later will also calculate the top seven best posting times in different time zones, which is great for those working in multiple regions. It'll also provide data on the best performing time zones overall, so you can better focus your efforts.
Later is a freemium product, meaning you can check it out for free then upgrade as required. You can create an account here.
3. Iconosquare
While it also provides scheduling capacity, Iconosquare can analyze the details of your Instagram Stories performance and give you feedback on your activity, including profile visits, website clicks, and your reach/impressions.
All of the data is presented in clearly outlined, easy to interpret graphs, with figures detailing the performance of every aspect
In addition to your Stories performance, Iconosquare will also give you insight into your Instagram content performance overall. With Iconosquare, the focus is on both brand growth and conversion rate improvement. You'll get detailed feedback on your content, including comments, reach, impression, likes, saves and clicks, among other data points.
Iconosquare also provides insight on post/Stories performance by demographic, and can also display your paid ad reach based on location, age, gender among other metrics. Iconosquare also provides data on hashtag performance, further informing your platform approach.
Pricing starts at $59 per month for tracking two social profiles. You can start a trial here.
4. Quintly
Like most of the other tools, Quintly will dive into the details of your Instagram performance, including data on both Stories and regular posts. Quintly can provide insight into reach, impressions, conversions and bounce rates for your content.
Quintly aims to help you understand the performance of each story, so that you can make better campaign decisions. You can also get more information about your specific target audience, the best posting times and hashtag tracking.
Custom plans start at $300 per month - you can contact Quintly for pricing here.
5. Sprout Social
If you're looking to get more in-depth understanding of how people are responding to specific elements of your Instagram Stories, Sprout Social can help.
You can use Sprout Social to determine :
- Taps Forward - The number of times an Instagram user has tapped to move forward on your Instagram story post
- Taps Backward - The number of times an Instagram user has swiped to go back and view each story frame again.
- Exits - The number of times Instagram users swiped down to stop viewing your story
- Replies - The number of replies per post/Story
Pricing starts at $99 per month, and you can sign up for a free 30-day trial here.
As noted, Stories is fast becoming an essential consideration for digital marketing, and with new features like Shopping Tags, and 'Checkout' on the way, it only looks set to become even more important.
Using Instagram analytics tools will help you understand the performance of each Story, and how your target market is reacting to your efforts. Based on this, you can create a more informed, effective Stories strategy, and maximize your process.
