Apart from taking dope selfies and recording fun videos with friends, did you know that Snapchat can be good for business? This is thanks to Snapchat Insights, a tool that lets Snap Stars and creators with large audiences analyze their audiences.
In this article we cover everything you need to know about Snapchat Insights, including what it is and who can access it.
What Is Snapchat Insights?
Snapchat Insights is an analytic tool similar to Twitter Analytics (how to use Twitter Analytics.) With it, you can monitor the growth of your brand, the engagement your posts get, as well as information about your target audience.
To access Snapchat Insights, all you have to do is:
- Launch the Snapchat app.
- Click the Bitmoji in the upper left-hand corner of the screen.
- Tap the “Insights” button.
Did you follow the above steps, but you were unable to locate the button for Insights? Don’t panic; there is nothing wrong with the app or your phone. Right now, Snapchat has only made this feature only available to a select few users, mostly influencers. Hopefully, Insights will be made available to more Snapchat users over time.
Snapchat Insights Features to Utilize
In today’s business world, data analysis is very important for information gathering and interpreting. Snapchat Insights aims to give you this convenience by providing access to:
1. Story Views
The Story Views (YTD) shows you the total number of unique viewers who opened your Snap story. The basis for counting the viewers depends on if they viewed your post for more than one second.
If you’re worried about the app calculating one viewer more than once, you shouldn’t be. Viewers are only counted once regardless of the number of times they open your story.
The views you get are broken down into per week, per month, and per the cumulative year to date (YTD). From this, you can determine if your views have fallen or risen over a week, a month, or a year.
2. View Time
Next up is the total number of minutes your viewers watched your Snap story. The format is similar to your story views as you can view the per week, per month, and the cumulative YTD summary.
So, how do you interpret this information? When combined with story views, view time shows you how effective your content is at drawing people’s attention and keeping it.
Therefore, if you notice that your story views have dipped, you might want to consider changing your content. To find out how to go about this change, check the next feature.
3. Average View Time
Below the windows for view time and story views, there is another window. Swipe to the middle to see your average view time for each day in the week. It shows the length of time your story was watched before your viewers moved on to the next one.
The data you see has two interpretations:
- Best time of the week for you to post: Review the information you see in the average view time window. After you do that, take note of the days in which you had the highest views and target it for future posts.
- Duration of your story: How long or short your story should also depend on how long your audience views your snap.
4. Story View Percentage
Before Snapchat Insights, it was difficult for users to know the percentage of people who saw their stories from beginning to end. But, not anymore. Now, you can tell if your target audience is connecting to your content.
You must keep the percentage between 90 to 100 percent. Anything below 90 means your audience does not find your content engaging.
5. Screenshots
Apart from the views on your Snap story, how can you track the engagement of your post? Snapchat Insights incorporates a screenshot count to enable your account for this.
However, when compared to the likes, retweets, and shares on Twitter and Facebook, this feature appears a little lacking. Why? Well, because screenshots are not exactly a reliable measure for the success of a marketing initiative.
6. Subscribers
Are you curious about the gender, age group, interest, and location of your Snap followers? Then explore the “Subscribers” field.
With this feature, you can develop a focus for your content and the target audience to push it to. This is better than just pushing out random content you think a general audience would like.
7. Follower Count
Who are your followers? Are they the people that view your stories, or are they the ones that send you messages?
Snapchat aggregates your engagements and gives you a score that more or less represents your follower count. That means, your followers are not necessarily people that have added you on Snap. Instead, they are the ones that keep up with your content and interact with it.
Therefore, what you should do regularly is monitor the changes in the follower count. Has it dipped since the last month or increased? If so, backtrack to what time of the week you had the lowest or highest follower count.
After doing that, try to pinpoint the content you posted during that period to find out the reason for the change.
Other Cool Analytics Tools on Snapchat
We all know how fun geofilters can be. From illustrations to images and branded videos, it is quite easy to boost your story’s engagement with them.
But, how do you know the geofilters are responsible for the views you have? This is where the geofilter analytics tool comes in. It is quite handy for tracking the effectiveness of your post’s geofilters.
Here is how to access it:
- Log on to Snapchat on a browser of your choice.
- Click your name at the top right corner.
- Select My Geofilters.
- Choose a geofilter.
- Scroll to take a look at the metrics.
What to Do If You Can’t Access Snapchat Insights
Snapchat Insights is a powerful tool, especially if you optimize the features to craft your content. However, at the time of writing Snapchat’s analytics tool is not open to everybody. As a non-influencer, this does not mean you cannot keep track of your traffic.
While it’s nowhere near as insightful, our beginner’s guide to using Snapchat includes a section explaining how to see how many times your Snapchat stories have been viewed.
Read the full article: How to Use Snapchat Insights to Analyze Your Audience
