What makes a good Instagram Story for influencers, media companies, and marketers?

To start, make sure you have eight or more frames and have your replies turned on, according to Conviva's 2020 Instagram Stories Benchmark Report. 

Conviva, a social and streaming media analytics company, released its third annual report on Instagram Stories in late June. The report looked at 920 top Instagram accounts, over 28,700 stories, and over 165,000 individual frames. 

"More than half of Instagram's one billion plus users are consuming Instagram Stories daily and they are one of the most powerful engagement tools in use by brands today," said Nick Cicero, Conviva's VP of strategy.

In 2020, Instagram has introduced new features to its stories like ecommerce stickers for gift cards, orders, fundraising, and donations. And stories have only gotten more important as many people have sheltered in place during the pandemic.

"There's been an exponentially higher amount of story views and likes," Instagram influencer Erica Chan Coffman told Business Insider in April.

Conviva's report found that the most effective users of Instagram Stories were accounts with 10,000 to 50,000 followers, which would fall into the category of "micro influencer." Micro influencers were previously identified as the buzziest category of influencer for 2020 in a report from the influencer-marketing agency Linqia.

Conviva also looked at how Instagram Story consumption behavior had changed from 2019 to 2020.

Here are the four key takeaways from Conviva's 2020 report on Instagram Stories:

People are sharing fewer stories in 2020, but reach and engagement are higher than in 2019.

Conviva found that the amount of Instagram Stories "decreased slightly" in 2020 compared to 2019, when looking at stories per week and frames per story. 

"Across all accounts, frames per story was down by 2.4 frames per story on average," the report said. 

But despite fewer stories are being shared, the amount of people consuming Instagram Stories went up, with reach and engagement both increasing.

Stories with 8 frames or more have better reach.

Eight frames or more is the sweet spot for story reach, according to the Conviva.

Generally, the more frames, the higher the reach — which peaked at 20 frames per story with about a 3.5% reach rate.

The average completion rate across accounts remained steadily above 70% throughout the first 20 frames of a story in 2020. 

"Despite this, only 26% of stories analyzed for this report were 8 frames or greater," Conviva said in the report.

Right now, having replies on helps increase engagement.

The replies feature, which allows users to comment or react to stories, has positively impacted reach rate across accounts, Conviva found.

With replies on, accounts saw a reach rate of 9% compared to accounts with replies turned off, which got around 6%. 

66% of accounts have their replies turned on, Conviva said.

"This is a full reversal from 2019 when 66% of accounts had replies turned off," the report said.

Users with 10,000 to 50,000 followers have the highest reach percentage.

Instagram Story reach rates decrease (as a percentage of follower count) as accounts gain more than 50,000 followers, the report said.

Conviva found that accounts with 10,000 to 50,000 followers were the most effective in terms of the percentage of the account's followers that a story generally reached.

Conviva reported a breakdown for each range: 

• 0-10,000: 12.9%
• 10,000-50,000: 13.3%
• 50,000-100,000: 9.6%
• 100,000-250,000: 7.0%
• 250,000-500,000: 6.5%
• 500,000-2 million: 4.9%
• Over 2 million: 3.7%

The higher reach rates for accounts with 10,000 to 50,000 followers is good news for micro influencer accounts — a term for influencers within the range of 5,000 to 100,000 followers.

In 2020, brands were heading toward working more closely and frequently with micro influencers versus macro (100,000 to 500,000) or mega (over 500,000) influencers.

For more information on how social-media behaviors have been changing in 2020, read these Business Insider Prime posts: 

• A new survey of 1,021 Instagram influencers shows how the social-media platform has changed in recent weeks and what areas they're leaning into: Influencers are leaning into Instagram Stories and "Live" stories according to the influencer-marketing platform Klear.
• A new 22-page report breaks down how livestream video has surged in the last month on YouTube, Twitch, and other platforms. Here are the 4 key takeaways: As consumers spend time at home in an effort to curb the spread of the novel coronavirus, many are tuning into livestreams on platforms like YouTube, Twitch, and Facebook. 
• A top social-video data firm made a 22-page report on how the coronavirus has changed viewer habits on YouTube and other platforms. Here are the 5 takeaways: Tubular Labs, a leading social-video analytics firm, looked at what types of content digital creators are uploading and users are being drawn to as countries around the world enforce social isolation.