Instagram Stories and Mentions
Description
The Instagram Stories and Mentions connector collects story performance and @-mention activity from your Instagram Professional Account. Meta pushes these events to Improvado as they happen, which is what lets story insights be captured inside the 24-hour window Meta keeps them in.
It provides four report types:
- Stories and Story Insights — your published stories and their performance: views, reach, impressions, replies, navigation, shares, profile visits, profile activity, follows and total interactions.
- Mentioned Media and Mentioned Comments — posts and comments in which another account tagged yours.
Because the connection is event-driven, it covers activity from the moment it goes Active onward — it does not backfill stories or mentions from before it was connected. See Limits for the retention window and for how this connector's story data differs from the Instagram Organic connector's.
Setup guide
Follow our setup guide to connect Instagram Stories and Mentions to Improvado.
- Click the Make a new Connection on the Connections page.
Categories on the Data sources page group all available platforms. Use a search to find the required one. - Click on the Instagram Stories and Mentions tile.
- Authorize your Facebook account via OAuth. Before authorization, please, make sure that you are signed in to the account you want to extract data from.
- Choose the Businesses/Pages/Accounts you want Improvado to access:
| Permission | Additional information |
|---|---|
| Opt in to all current and future Businesses | This gives Improvado access to your current Businesses, in addition to any Business you create in the future |
| Opt in to all current and future Pages | This gives Improvado access to your current Pages, in addition to any Page you create in the future. |
| Opt in to all current and future Instagram Accounts | This gives Improvado access to your current Instagram Accounts, in addition to any Instagram Account you create in the future. |
- Grant Improvado your permission to:
| Permission | Additional information |
|---|---|
| Access | profile and posts from the Instagram account connected to your Page |
| insights for the Instagram account connected to your Page | |
| Manage | Your business |
| comments for the Instagram account connected to your Page | |
| accounts, settings, and webhooks for a Page | |
| Read | content posted on the Page |
| Show | a list of the Pages you manage |
Note: All required permissions are mandatory. If you limit any permission - it could cause connection errors!
- After the connection is completed, the Instagram Stories and Mentions connection will appear in your Connected sources list.
- When the connection status is Active, and the account status column shows a number of accounts, you can move on to data extraction.
- To extract data from the connected sources, check the instruction on how to set up data extraction.
Schema information
The schema information shows all report types you can use to extract data from Instagram Stories and Mentions.
Limits
Story metrics exist for 24 hours only
Meta returns insights for a story during the first 24 hours of its life and not afterwards. Their platform documentation states it directly: “Notifications for story_insights events will only show metrics for the first 24 hours, before the story expires, even if the story is a highlight.”
Two consequences follow, and neither has a workaround on the Improvado side:
- Story metrics cannot be backfilled. Connecting the account today will not bring in performance for stories that ran last week. Extraction has to be in place while the stories are live.
- Adding a story to a highlight does not extend the window. The highlight keeps the story visible to people, but its metrics stop being retrievable at the same 24-hour mark.
Once the connection is Active, Improvado retains the story data it has received for up to 59 days, so a re-extraction over that window is possible. The 59-day depth applies to data collected after connecting; it is not a way to reach back before it.
Which story metrics are available
Two connectors carry a Story Insights report, and they are not identical:
- Instagram Stories and Mentions (this connector) keys on Media ID and carries views, reach, impressions, replies, navigation, shares, profile visits, profile activity, follows and total interactions. Being event-driven, it receives insights while the story is still live.
- Instagram Organic carries views, reach, replies, navigation, shares, total interactions, follows, profile visits, profile activity, link clicks, likes and comments — no impressions — alongside story properties such as caption, permalink, media type and thumbnail URL.
Anything outside those lists — sticker taps is the one asked for most often — is not returned by the Instagram API, so it cannot be extracted by Improvado or by any other tool reading the same endpoint. Numbers can also sit below what the Instagram app shows, because the app keeps counting after the API window has closed.
Release notes
You can find information about the latest API changes in the official Release notes.
Troubleshooting
Having trouble with your setup? Find solutions to common issues →
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