Note: For the purposes of this post, we call individual clips Stories and an entire collection of Stories a Set.

Since Instagram Stories was launched in August 2016, marketers and individuals are learning that the feed isn't the only way to reach people, that you can reach a lot more if you invest time and effort into Stories.Peter Drucker said that You cant manage what you dont measure. Depending on your goals and objectives, there are metrics that you can use to measure your success and tactics that you can use to improve.One of the biggest mistakes that people make when attempting to market on Instagram is that they post without much of a strategy. Its important to define OKR (Objectives and Key Results) in order to have a goal, make a plan, and gauge success against those objectives.Example:

I want to achieve this Objective with IG Stories as measured by these Key Results.

I want to achieve the objective of building an engaged community with IG Stories as measured by an 80% Stories completion rate and 10% engagement rate.

If youre on a journey without a destination then youre just wandering, and thats a waste of time and effort. Define some clear goals and make a plan for how to achieve them. Lean into your data, dont post randomly, and regularly go back to your objectives to see if youre on track and if they need to be adjusted.The very first thing that wed recommend you do is convert your Instagram account to a business profile. Doing so will give you so much more data to work and insights that you can use to better plan future content.

1. Find your insights by swiping to the left on your profile (or tap the menu button in the top-right corner) and tapping Insights.
2. Tap on the Content tab to access analytics about your content.
3. Tap on a particular Story and swipe up to view the various metrics.

From there, youll be able to see the following metrics:

• Profile visits
• Website clicks
• Directions
• Accounts reached
• Impressions

[metrics screenshot]

• Follows
• Back
• Forwards
• Next Story
• Exited

[metrics screenshot]If youre not familiar with them, some of these terms may seem similar. The difference between Accounts Reached and Impressions is that the former is the number of different accounts that view your Stories and the latter is the number of different views that may include views from the same accounts. The difference between Exited and Next Story is that the former is when people swipe down to stop watching your Story and the latter is when someone swipes to the left to move to the next persons. Again, these may seem similar, but any extra insight into how people interact with your content can be helpful.They provide all of these different types of data but which should you pay attention to? It depends on your OKR. Your goal should and will determine how you use this data to plan better when creating more data in the future.

Objective 1: Retaining Attention

In the world of marketing and social media, attention is most peoples primary goal because you first need peoples attention before you can do anything else. The longer that you keep peoples attention, the better your chance of converting or engaging them. There are a couple of different ways to monitor retention, based on your goals.

Average Views Per Story

We all count the views, likes, followers, shares, and comments and they each have their place in marketing. Counting views is important because it gives us a more general overview of how our content is doing and how well its reaching people. The stats on any individual day or Story will fluctuate, which is why we look at and compare averages.You calculate your Average Views Per Story by taking the number of impressions you get for a Set and dividing it by the number of Stories that you posted in that Set.[formula]

Average Completion Rate

If the Average Number of Views is an indication of how your content is being received, the Average Completion Rate tells you unambiguously. Viewers would not watch to the end of your Set if they werent enjoying and/or getting value out of your content. If you notice that most people arent making it to the end, youll know that you need to do a better job of grabbing peoples attention or put important information earlier.You calculate the Average Completion Rate by dividing the number of accounts reached at the end of your Set by the number of accounts reached at the beginning.[formula]You should aim for greater than 70% Completion Rate and be aware of your total Set length so as not to deter people by having one thats too long. Aim for about seven Stories per Set.Be honest Would you watch this entire Set?[a lot of Stories screenshot]

Average Replays Per Story

Getting eyes on your Stories is great to strive for since views lead to everything else, but information retention is even more important in another way. You dont just want people to watch, you want to provide value that people will want to watch, re-watch, and come back for more.Maybe its a clever joke, or you captured an amazing moment, or you used your Set to tell an interconnected story. Whether its for entertainment or practical value, the number of replays that a Story or Set gets will be a really good indication of the things that your followers like the most.You calculate the Average Number of Replays by dividing the number of tap backs by the number of Stories in your Set.[formula]A great tip is to use a Set to create a tutorial or step-by-step guide. Viewers will hopefully find it valuable and, if they do, theyll be more likely to watch it through to the end and/or watch it over a couple of times.[cookie walkthrough image]

Objective 2: Reaching More People

Not only is it important to keep the attention of followers that we already have, but its just as important to gain the attention of new followers. Thats how we grow and get new potential leads.

Percentage of Followers Reached

A good way to gauge the quality of your content over time is not only by the number of new followers that you get but also by the number of existing followers that come back time and time again. Percentage of Followers Reached tells you the number of your existing followers that your Story was able to reach and its a good idea to aim for greater than 5%. You calculate it by dividing the number of accounts who watched your Story by the number of followers that you currently have.[formula]Here are some tips on how we use Stickers to reach more potential followers:

• Hashtags allow you to be discovered when people are searching for that hashtag. Whether you use hashtags as a sticker or as text, the effect is the same.
• Mentioning someone elses username (a friend or partner whos involved) can give them exposure to your followers but then they can also share your Story, putting you in front of their followers.
• Having stickers and text plastered all over your Story can sometimes be off-putting, so change the colour to have them blend into the background.

Objective 3: Converting Your Audience

As we mentioned earlier, you first need the attention of an audience in order to be able to convert them into customers, members, or subscribers. Once they are watching your Stories, though, how do you do this?Use the first few Stories in your Set to build interest or anticipation for what you have going on. If its a webinar, introduce the host(s), the topic, the benefits, etc. Then, treat the final Story (one where you have a call to action) as if it were a landing page on a website.You can use stickers, the swipe up feature, or Direct Messaging to make the transition from follower to customer a lot easier. For instance, if you want to get people to sign up for your webinar but you dont have the swipe up feature (which you get at 10,000 followers), you can use the Question sticker to ask anyone interested to reply with their email addresses.[CTA sign up screenshot gif]

Conversion Rate

This tells you the percentage of viewers who completed the CTA (Call to Action). A CTA in Instagram Stories is very similar to one youd find anywhere else. It might be in a different format than youre used to but the goal is the same, depending on your objective; answering a poll, asking a question, visiting a webpage, visiting your profile, or sending you a message.You calculate the Conversion Rate by dividing the number of accounts reached by the number of people who completed the CTA.[formula]

Objective 4: Driving Audience to Your Profile/Feed

With the way the algorithm works sometimes, you may not always get all of your followers seeing all of your posts, so it may be a good idea to occasionally broadcast a new or important post as a Story to get them to take a closer look. It can also be useful for when a non-follower finds you (like via a hashtag search, as we mentioned earlier) and you can get them to visit your profile and follow you.To catch peoples attention on these types of posts, consider adding a GIF or mentioning your own username in the Story.[Tap Here screenshot gif]

Building an Engaged Audience

All of the other metrics that weve discussed are great and can give you direction, but the real value is in engagement. Thats how you really connect with people. Liking, commenting, and responding to questions, polls, and emoji sliders are all ways to get people to engage with you and get them one step closer to converting. And, if conversion isnt your main focus, engagement still creates a more interested and dedicated community.

Engagement Rate

This is the percentage of viewers that engaged with your Stories through stickers (responding to questions, polls, or emoji sliders) or replied via DM directly to a Story. This is calculated by dividing the number of engagements by the number of accounts reached.[formula]The insights that this provides can also tell you which types of posts or post formats are resonating more with your audience (or which ones arent) so that you can know which posts to stick to or stay away from in the future. Its wise to not rely too heavily on the stuff that works, though. Spread it out and mix in a variety of types of posts, even if they dont do as well. You dont want your posts to get stale or boring.You can use stickers to allow your audience to participate in the storytelling process. You can also add variety by replacing text in polls with emojis.Another great tip is that you can use question stickers to get the person's username so that you can follow up later.[Airbnb story]Heres a great use of sticker engagement Airbnb asked people to guess a particular location. They used the first couple of Stories to pique interest and give a hint, then they used a poll to get people to guess the location, then used a location sticker to provide the answer. We guarantee that they had a lot of engagement and even more attention on that Set.We have seen engagement rates going down across all major social networks over the past several years. Pages are still posting content but fewer and fewer people are engaging with those posts. Some people are just using social media more passively but other people are becoming more apprehensive as we learn more about how our data is being used or monitored.One area of social media where weve been watching engagement go up over the past several years is Instagram Stories. From its engaging nature of the format to the implementation of a lot of new, interactive features from Instagram, Stories have been trailing up in terms of users interacting with each other.[completion stats chart]This is according to research published by Buffer and we saw the same thing when we analyzed our own analytics.We created an Instagram Story Analytics Template that you can use to track the metrics and analytics of your Stories and Sets over time.[graphs from spreadsheet]

Click here to download!

Conclusion

How can you gauge success if you dont have a goal? You need to set objectives for your marketing efforts and then measure your progress against them. Its important to do this at the end, but its even more important to do it along the way. Marketing using Instagram Stories is no different. There are so many different metrics that you can and should use to strategically plan your content. Once you have some data, there are tactics that you can use to improve and/or readjust that strategy.Each metric also has some tips, tactics, and hacks that you can use to increase your reach, retention, conversion, and engagement. You can utilize hashtags to reach new audiences searching for different topics. You can mention other accounts to help you both get some more exposure. You can use question stickers to get peoples contact information, or simply to get a conversation started. Of course, wed advise you to use any and all of the above in a variety of different ways. Not all strategies are going to work for the same people at the same time on the same audiences. Your efforts should be tailored to match your OKR in order to return the best KPI (Key Performance Indicators). Play around with them and see what works for you and youre guaranteed to see improvements across the board.