As video explodes in popularity for viewer consumption, social networking platform Instagram has made the format more accessible to those with smaller budgets, and even with no budgets whatsoever.
Launched back in August 2016, Instagram Stories are now one of the easiest and best ways to connect with your readers.
Boston, MA-based video marketing platform Wave.Video[1] has partnered with Socialinsider[2] to analyze 661,565 Stories and 64,571 Story Ads.
It wanted to see what brings results to businesses on Instagram, which formats work better, and to see how audience behaviour has been changing from April 2019 to September 2020.
Instagram Stories are pieces of content posted from a given account within the past 24 hours. One in three of the most viewed stories come from businesses[3].
The study showed that brands need to publish five stories per day[4] to keep their customers engaged. These customers might drop off the video for the first couple of stories, but after the fourth or fifth story, will stay until the end.
Larger brands have the resources to post more frequently. Brands with over 100,000 followers post on average 14 - 15 stories per month, and brands with 50k to 100k followers post around 10-11 stories per month.
Brands with 10k to 50k followers post 7-8 stories per month, and brands with fewer than 5,000 followers post on average 3 stories per month
Brands with more followers manage to retain their viewers. If a brand has fewer than 10,000 followers then they struggle to retain viewers and suffer a 6.37% exit rate from their stories.
However, brand profiles with under 5,000 followers have the highest reach rates with a 9.54% average reach rate. Large profiles