In this article, we'll go over everything you can do in the Stories tab of the Instagram Insights section of Rival IQ, which helps you understand how the activity and engagement for your Stories change over time.

Since Instagram doesn't give us access to historical Stories data, this tab might be empty when you first connect. Your Stories data will begin to accumulate going forward.

In Rival IQ, a group of photo or video frames posted in the same 24-hour period creates a Story. You can use the time zone picker to align your Stories reporting.

The At a Glance panel will tell you how many Stories you posted in the selected date range, the average frames in each Story (Frames/Story), the average unique accounts you reach in each Story (Average Peak Reach), and the average percentage of your viewers that finish any Story from the beginning to end (Average Retention Rate).

Peak Reach is the highest reach you received in a Story, so Avg Peak Reach is the average of peak reach across all Stories in the time period. Retention Rate is calculated by the reach on last frame of a Story, divided by the reach on the first frame of a Story. View more stories definitions here.

The Stories panel displays the frames grouped by the 24-hour Story they were posted in. The blue pill at the bottom left of each Story shows how many frames are in the Story.

Clicking "View More" on this panel allows you to change the layout. You can leave this as a grid of all Stories, or change it to a grid of all frames posted. You can also change the layout to a list view, and change how the stories/frames are sorted.

When viewing by frames, you’ll notice the bottom left of a Story grid will show the story order of that photo or video within its Day. 

Click on a frame to view a modal of its details. 

Click on a Story to dive into a dashboard about the frames posted in that Story. For this example, we're looking at 5 frames posted on Sept 5, 2018. In the At a Glance panel, we summarize how the frames on this day performed, and compare the metrics to the average of the other Stories in the time period. You can zoom into each of the individual photos or videos in this Story by clicking on them or clicking View More. 

The Post Type chart breaks down the types of frames or stories posted on this day.

The Reach & Impressions panel for a single Story shows you how views progressed through the story. In this example, each frame was viewed more than once because there are more impressions than reach on each story. 

The Completion Rate panel analyzes the completions of the set of frames. A completion is an impression without an exit, and Completion Rate is the percentage of impressions without exits, divided by impressions. Here, the 2nd and 9th frames of the Story had the worst Completion Rate, meaning most viewers exited the entire Story from these frames. The Retention Rate (reach on the last frame divided by reach on the first frame) measures the attention you retained through this Story.

The Peak Reach panel helps visualize the high unique reach on each Story by day. Use this you can see if you’re growing your Story engagement, or identify a Story was seen by a lot more people.

The Retention Rate panel summarizes how captivating your Stories are in terms of how many frames you post in each Story. In this example, almost 50% fewer people see the 10th or 11th frame, so many we should keep our Stories shorter, or post the most important parts at the beginning!

The Hashtags panel summarizes the hashtags used in captions in your Stories and how the hashtag may have affected your reach. Hover over each row to dive into the stories using a particular hashtag.

The Frame Type panel compares how viewers engage with photo vs video frames. When we find actionable insights, we’ll display it on the right side of the panel.

Taps Forward Rate is the percentage of taps forward to impressions, so you can see which frame type your viewers skip over more. The Exit Rate is the percentage of exits to impressions, so you can identify which frame type your viewers frequently exit out of. Full View Rate is the percentage of impressions without exits nor taps forward, to impressions, so you can identify what was fully engaging.

The Publish Time panel compares when your frames were posted to the reach received on the frame. This panel helps you see if publish time can change viewing patterns.

You can also filter stories and frames by searching within captions. For example, if I search "#inbound18", the dashboard filters to show only Stories that have that caption. Here, there is 1 frame within 1 Story where that hashtag was used.

Follow these links to view more Instagram Insights guides:

Or, read more about Instagram Insights data history limitations and Instagram Insights definitions.