Using Instagram's New Retention Graph Feature (2025)
- max08210
- Nov 27
- 4 min read
About The Author: William Shoe
Founder at IconDesk.
Over the past decade, I’ve helped talent managers and agencies across the UK, Europe, and the US build successful talent brands and secure high-value partnerships.
Having worked at LVMH, and run my own talent agency (Talent Village), I know first-hand the daily challenges that talent managers face today – and what it takes to succeed. I believe that the pillar of great talent management is not only in representing talent, but helping them to actually grow their audiences and achieve more than they could have without you.
Understanding Viewer Attention
Think of attention (on your video) like a leaky bucket. 🪣
Initially, the bucket is full (everyone is watching) - but people drop off.
If people lose attention at certain moments in a video, they leak away. They scroll.
Retention hacking is about finding the leaks (boring moments) and plugging them so more people watch to the end. This boosts engagement and pushes your content to more people.
Make sense?
As a talent manager, you can quickly use retention graphs to find the cracks and guide your talent to fix those holes in your bucket.
Retention Graphs: The Ultimate Tool For Talent Managers
A video retention graph shows how much of your video people actually watch over time. It tracks viewer engagement second-by-second—visualising:
Where people drop off
Which moments keep viewers hooked
When they rewind or replay
It’s a powerful tool for talent managers, as they can quickly diagnose what’s working (and what isn’t) for their talent’s social media videos.
Here is a snapshot of Instagram's new retention graph:What insights do you notice from this graph? 🤔
This video has a strong hook, and gradual decline in attention (very positive!). Around half way through the video, we do see a drop in engagement - introducing a re-hook here could help increase the videos performance.
Below we will run through various scenarios you may encounter - and then explain how you can use this as a talent manager in practice.
👉 Flat lines mean viewers have high engagement all the way through.
👉 If the drop-off is within the first 3 seconds - you need a stronger hook. Next week, we will dive into specific strategies for making hooks that retain viewers.
👉 Gradual decline means viewers loose interest over time - which is standard but we want to minimise this.
👉 Spikes appear when more viewers are watching, re-watching or sharing those parts of your video.
👉 Dips mean viewers are abandoning or skipping at that specific part of your video.
Improving content strategy for influencers: A Talent Management Guide
So, once we have identified where viewers are dropping off - how do we fix these issues in our content?
Here are a few ways to fix any drop-off during your videos:
Insert a pattern interrupt (unexpected visual or audio)
Re-hook the audience (“This is what’s coming next!”)
Cut out a boring clip that isn’t engaging audiences
Gradual decline:
Adding micro-hooks every 3–7 seconds to re-engage.
Tightening pacing (cut pauses, filler, repeated words).
Introducing new visuals or scene changes.
Adding light storytelling structure (setup → tension → payoff).
Positive Indicators
If you see spikes in videos, this means certain moments were SO interesting people rewatched or shared your content - this insight should be noted and used to strengthen your other content.
Once you have identified what caused the spike, use these 3 tactics to leverage it:
Creating more content around that “moment.”
Turning spike clips into short-form content.
Using it as your hook for future videos.
Strong hooks:
If you don’t see a sudden drop-off (less than 15%) - you have a very strong hook. Breakdown what you did to hook audiences:
Any visual hooks
Auditory hooks
Unusual, surprising, or unexpected content
Re-use this to engineer future hooks.
Talent Manager Workflow
Here is a weekly meeting workflow for talent managers to support your talent:
Take 5 minutes to screenshot & analyse retention graphs of your talents’ 3 latest reels, using this newsletter as a benchmark.
Highlight these in a weekly 1:1
Ask your talent to fix & re-post the 3 videos
Check the new retention for improvement - if so - you’ve just helped your creator grow!
—> Suddenly you’re providing deep value to them as a creator, and helping them to develop their influence rather than just helping them leverage it.
IconDesk - The Ultimate Talent Management Tools
Ready to manage your talent with data-driven precision?
IconDesk helps talent managers streamline posting schedules, track audience shifts, and deliver insights brands actually care about. One key feature is the ability to gain instant access to your talents' social media metrics, unlocking a new level of strategic overseight for managers:
Ready to level up your talent management?
👉 Book a demo with IconDesk today and see how top agencies shape smarter influencer growth.
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