Do you use Instagram Stories for marketing your business? If yes, make your performance better by knowing how to find metrics and evaluate the key performance indicators for these Stories. Instagram Insights is the analytic tool that helps you improve the performance of your posts so that you get a strategic edge in the market successfully!
Reasons to track Key Performance Indicators for Instagram Stories
Stories today are an integral component of Instagram. There are 800 million active users on Instagram. Out of 800 million users, at least 300 million users use Instagram Stories daily. It comes as no surprise that businesses today are following suit and using Instagram Stories to reach out to their target audience.
Instagram Stories are instant, and most users might feel that setting the key performance indicators for evaluating performance is irrelevant. Digital marketing experts reveal if you are using your time to create an Instagram Story, it makes sense to evaluate its performance as well, which makes sense.
The following are your 4 (Key Performance Indicators)KPIs to help you measure the effectiveness of your Instagram Stories with Insights on your Instagram business page.
- Reach & Impressions – Reach & Impressions are the two significant metrics that measure the size of the audience of your Stories. More people will follow your Stories more often if they like your photo posts. It is essential to understand the difference between the two.
Reach indicates the actual number of users who have seen the story. Impressions indicate the actual number of times users have viewed the story. This means if your impressions display five times by a single person, your Instagram Insights will show five impressions and one reach. This is why Instagram Stories have higher impression rates and lower reach numbers.
Now the obvious question arises- how high should your reach be?
Experts say this depends upon the size and the engagement levels of your online audience. The higher the followers, the lower the reach rates of your stories. This is a rule of thumb that applies to most of the metrics on Instagram. This means the higher the number of followers you have, the lower will be your reach rate, engagement rate, etc.
Tips on how to effectively use these metrics
In case, you see a drop in reach, examine the frequency of the publication of your story to ensure these stories are posted on a regular basis. Here, you must capitalize on using geotags and hashtags. It is wise to tag the username of a featured user in your Instagram Stories as and when appropriate.
Experts from digital marketing companies for Instagram and other social media platforms say it is crucial for you to improve real Instagram likes for your business accounts. In case you are posting Stories that are too blurred or bouncy in appeal, work on improvements. Make the production simple for you to watch. Make an effort to publish a Story that has a strong element of surprise, humor, etc. The insider perspectives of your Stories should be appealing and good.
- Story Features – Use stickers for geolocation and hashtags to increase your reach by tracking it in Reach and Impressions. If you use these elements, your Story will successfully be featured in a specific location and hashtag. In case, your Story does get featured; you can track the number of extra viewers you get.
Take note of the number of new viewers that every hashtag or sticker brings in and later use the best performing elements in these posts designed to bring in new audiences. You can also use the optimal performing elements in these posts that are designed to connect with new audiences.
- Check the taps back, taps forward and the exit rate- Taps can be confusing, however, they are quite interestingin analyzing metrics. The metrics leave the content quality open to interpretation, and it renders you with clarity from the analysis by viewing the exit rates.
If there is a high volume of taps forward, this is not very good. This should be viewed as a warning sign that the Story you posted was not interesting. This also indicates that your Story has not been appropriately composed to attract the audience.
Here, you should be creative and place stickers for the call to action in the right position. If you place CTAs too close to your screen on its right side, this leads to the opening of malicious apps.
The Taps Forward is the number of post taps that users make to view the next photo or video in the Story while the Taps Back is the option that users resort to view the previous Story.
On the contrary, a large number of Taps Back gives you a better KPI. This indicates that people liked watching the video or the story you have posted and preferred to watch it again. It also indicates when the Story comes to an end, people tap back to watch it again.
The exits or the swipe awayrepresent instances when viewers have already finished watching your story. These exits take place when users have swiped left to generally move to the other stories of the user, closed Instagram while your story was being viewed, clicked on the X located on the top right corner of the story or swiped down in the media going back to its main feed.
You may use these metrics when you deliver coherent stories in a sequence over than posting sporadic stories. You should use the taps to ascertain the different kinds of stories that are the most interesting to your audience. This will make the profile more interactive.
- Check the action on hashtags and location stickers-Aside from boosting the market reach of your post, the hashtag sticker will display how successful you are when it comes to engaging your audience and driving traffic to your account.
Instagram does not permit you to track the clicks on handles of actual users. The Insights just show you the number of sticker taps to track performance on stories. You may use this metric by tracking clicks on each sticker to check which one of them is the most effective. This helps you to generate the engagement you are looking at.
From the above, it is evident that you can use Instagram Stories as an effective way of interacting and engaging with your audience. However, always keep these KPIs in mind when you are posting your Instagram Stories.
Author’s Bio: Harris is a leading blog writer and content marketing professional with thousands of real Instagram followers for his postings. He helps small to medium scale businesses increase real Instagram likes with his online marketing tips and advice.
