How to build an Instagram Stories analytics report
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As an agency, everything you do for a client has to be backed up with data. Fortunately, Instagram is one of those social media platforms that provide useful metrics for nearly everything--and Instagram Stories is no exception.
Lets start off with a list of all the most useful Instagram Stories metrics:
- Story Completion %
- Average Views per Story
- Average Replays per Story
- Number of Accounts Reached
- Conversion Rate
- Number of Profile Visits
- Engagement Rate
Cool. Now were going to pair up objectives with their most appropriate metrics:
Objective 1: Retaining attention
Instagram Stories is a great broadcast vehicle. You get to be as creative as you want (or as creative as your clients can tolerate) and be able to tell if the audience is on board with your creativity.
The Story Completion % tracks what percentage of users complete your Story set. It's achieved by using a simple formula:
You should target a Story Completion % of at least 70%. This is a perfectly achievable bar to target because IG audiences seem to be getting more engaged with every passing year (63% average completion rate in 2017 vs 75% in 2018).
But you need to craft your Story appropriately to encourage users to watch to the end. According to our research and observations, the sweet spot for Story length is at 7 cards.
Average Replays per Story indicates how many users like your content enough to watch it again. Its calculated using this formula:
The more compelling your content, the more likely people will want to rewatch it.
Objective 2: Increasing reach
The metric % of Followers reached shows you how successful you were at drawing your followers in with your content.
This metric is derived from your total number of Instagram followers, and you should aim to reach at least 5% of your total Follower base.
You can increase your Follower reach by using Location stickers. #hashtag stickers are especially effective because your Story will show up as a result when someone searches for a specific hashtag regardless of whether they follow you or not.
Objective 3: Converting audiences
As you might expect, the metric that tracks conversions is the Conversion Rate metric.
Note that this metric only applies if you pose a question (via a Question sticker) or ask people to complete a form during a Story. The Question sticker, in this case, can serve as a funnel that collects opinions or contact information.
The best way to achieve a decent conversion rate is to use your first pages in the story to build up interest and then end with the form or Question sticker.
Objective 4: Driving audiences to your feed
You don't just want one-off visitors to your Story. You're in it to build a community of engaged followers. That's why Instagram gives you the Number of Profile Visits metric to help you track that information.
There are a couple of ways you can increase your number of feed visits. First is by sharing your own IG post as part of the story. You can link that back to your feed so users can go directly to where you want them to go.
Second is by @mentioning yourself during the story. This encourages Story visitors to click on your profile. From there you can put links or other information on your profile that you want other people to click into.
Objective 5: Building an engaged audience
Views are nice, but its better for your client's brand success if you can get people to engage. Fortunately, IG lets you easily track that through the Engagement Rate metric.
This counts users who have interacted with your Story in any way, be it responding to questions, Polls, or Emoji Sliders. So you want to use as many of those interactive stickers as possible and give them opportunities to engage.
Over time, you can use this metric and experiment with the various Story and sticker formats and find which combinations work best for your client's audience. Don't rely on a single format (even if it works) because you risk overusing it. Change things up and keep things fresh.
Want more tips and insights into Instagram Story metrics and how best to leverage them? Check out our webinar.