What’s your favorite feature on Instagram? For me, it’s Instagram Stories. It is a feature that helped me stay connected with my audience and keep them updated about what I do on my regular days. If you are like me, who loves to track how their stories are working on the internet, you must be confused about the ‘Back’ feature on Instagram.
I have always wondered What ‘Back’ means on Instagram. How does it work? How can I get an analysis for it? And much more. If you also have such questions in mind, just look at this guide. You will get answers to all your questions.
What Does ‘Back’ Mean on Instagram Stories?

In terms of Instagram stories, Back represents the situation when the user taps the left side of the screen and plays the story again to watch. There is a special Instagram story insight, ‘Taps Backward,’ that is one of the important tools to show the important content. When the back count is high, it indicates what type of content is working in your favor. When the users and the audience watch the story back to back, it shows that they like your content and you must add this type of content in the future as it grabs the attention of your followers. It can be a perfect way to find out the latest trends that resonate with the audience.
Also, read What Does ‘Seen’ Mean on Instagram? (All You Need to Know)
How to See Your Instagram Story Taps Backward?
Want to know how your story is working among your followers? Just head over to the Instagram Story Tabs. Here is a short tutorial on how to see your Instagram Story taps Backward:
- The first thing you must do is to get a professional account instead of a personal account. This is a feature that helps to know the account reach.
- Once you get a professional account and want to know how your stories are working, just go to your profile page.
- Open the profile page and at the top of your screen, there is a three horizontal lines icon.
- Click on it and scroll down to get insights optiuon.
- Tap on Insights and scroll down to select the Stories icon.
- There will be a grid of recent stories on your screen along with the various options on it.
- Click on the filter and tap on the Back option to get the backward stories insights.
- You can also choose various options depending on the need for the insights. Let’s find out the various Instagram Story metrics in the next section.
Additional Instagram Story Metrics

Let us have a look at other Instagram story metrics that help to know the growth of the Instagram account:
1. Next Story and Exits
Both are important factors that help to understand how much a story is viewed by your audience. Exit is a feature that represents how often your audience swipes out from your story. It is different from the next story. The next story tab represents how many users have directly switched on the next person’s story from your story. These two insights are important and also similar.
Please note that exits do not always show this interest in your story. In some cases, it may represent that the user could not stay on for a long duration. On the other hand, if you have added a link in the story, exits also increase if the person directly goes on the link through your story.
But if we talk about the next story, it is the matrix that suggests users are not interested in your content and are directly skipping on the next one.
Both these insight tools will help you to determine what kind of content you should use and what should be your story duration. It will help you to understand whether to add 3 or 10 slides to your story count. It also suggests areas of improvement. If you want to notice exits or next a lot in the metrics, don’t forget to create more engaging content.
2. Impressions
Impressions are the tool that helps you to know the number of times a particular story has been viewed by your audience. If your story is viewed a hundred times by a single user, it will include that too. You can find the overall exposure of your content.
3. Reach
Reach is a feature that indicates the total number of unique audiences visiting your story. It works like impressions but in the opposite manner. Reach indicates how many unique visitors have visited the story where as impressions count on every view of the story. This is a very important matrix to understand the growth of your social media.
4. Swipe-Ups
This is a social factor for stories that include calls to action. It is an important matrix for stories that have links included in it. It shows how many users have visited your link from the story measuring the conversions and engagement level.
5. Replies
Replies is a feature that helps you to track the number of users that have responded to your stories. It indicates higher engagement with the stories. When the users are highly interested in your content, it helps to get a higher number of replies on your account.
Also, read What Does Active Today Mean on Instagram? (Complete Guide)
Conclusion
When we talk about Instagram Stories, Back generally represents the situation when users tap on the left side of the screen to play their story again. If the audience is coming back to your story, again and again, it means that they like your content and want to see more. This is a matrix that you can find in the insights in your settings. You can use this metric to understand the trend of the stories also. In addition to the Back feature, many other metrics help you to analyze how stories work.
FAQs
What is a Back-on Instagram Story?
The back tab on the Instagram story shows a number of times the user has tapped on the left side of the story to watch the story again.
What is the Meaning of Following Back on Instagram?
When someone follows you and then you follow them, it is known as follows back on Instagram.