Are Your Instagram Stories Doing Well? Here's How to Measure Their ROI. Learn the relevant metrics to ensure your Stories are a hit with your users.
By Syed Balkhi Edited by Dan Bova
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
Instagram Stories are incredibly popular. In fact, this feature was a hit as soon as it launched. According to Social Report, Instagram Stories surpassed its competition, Snapchat, by acquiring 250 million daily active users within a year of its launch. All of this makes it clear that an Instagram Stories strategy is an important one for your own social media marketing.
Related: What Makes an Instagram Stories Ad Fly? Answer: These 5 Elements.
If you've already started creating IStories for your business, congratulations, you're ahead of the game! But how do you know if what you create is actually reaching your target audience and encouraging them to engage, visit your website or buy from you?
After all, you don't want to waste your time creating Instagram Stories that don't bring you any results -- especially since they disappear in 24 hours. That's why it's important to track the metrics of your Stories so you can see if you're getting enough return on investment.
And the good news here is that determining the success numbers for your Stories isn't difficult. Here's how to measure the ROI of your Instagram Stories.
Know the difference between "reach" and "impressions."
First, you'll want to look at the size of the audience you're reaching with your Instagram Stories. These metrics specify reach and impressions. The difference between those two elements is that reach is the exact number of users (individual Instagram accounts) who have seen your Instagram Story. Impressions is the exact number of times your Instagram Story has been viewed. This distinction is important because the same user just might view your Instagram Story multiple times.
To determine how many of your followers are viewing your Instagram Stories, take the total reach number and divide it by the total number of followers you have. Then, multiply that number by 100 to get the percentage of your followers that are watching your Instagram Stories.
Measure interactions.
Your main goal in posting Instagram Stories is to get interactions. Although users can't comment on an Instagram Story, there are a number of ways they can still interact. These include visiting your Instagram profile, clicking on your website link in your bio and tapping on the email or call button on your profile. These actions can be measured.
Related: 3 Great Ways to Use Instagram Stories to Market Your Business
In general, it's important to track the interactions metric to determine if your Instagram Stories are encouraging users to take action. For instance, if your interactions on your Instagram Stories are low, you might need to improve your call to action in order to increase clicks.
Evaluate engagement.
Aside from interactions, you can also evaluate Instagram engagement. These two factors may seem one and the same, but "engagement" refers to swipe-ups and replies. For measuring ROI, the most important Instagram Story feature is the swipe-up call to action. When users swipe up on your Story, they're taken straight to your website. According to Swipe.io, swipe-through rates average between 15 and 25 percent -- which is a killer conversion rate.
You can also look at the number of direct messages you receive after posting an Instagram Story. The more DMs you get as a result of your Story, the more engaging it was to viewers.
Calculate the completion rate.
When creating Instagram Stories, you also want to make sure users are watching all the way through. That's where the completion rate comes in. Completion rate is a bit more difficult to calculate. To calculate it, take the number of viewers for your last Story, divide it by the number of viewers of your first Story and put the result into a percentage to get your completion rate.
If your completion rate is low, perhaps it's because your Instagram Stories aren't getting to the point fast enough or the content just isn't interesting to viewers. Calculating your completion rate will allow you to see which kind of content is most engaging to your followers so you can grab their attention to the fullest.
Discover the discovery metric.
Unlike reach and impressions, the "discovery metric" shows you how many users were not following you when they first saw your Instagram Story. It also shows the way in which your Story was discovered the most, whether that was search, the user's home feed, hashtags, location tag or on your profile.
By tracking the discovery metric, you can see how far and well you're broadening your reach. After all, you don't want to just reach your own followers, you want to reach as many Instagram users as possible.
Related: How to Use the New Shopping Feature in Instagram Stories to Radically Boost Your Sales
Over to you
Don't leave the success of your Instagram Stories to chance. With these metrics and tips for how to measure the ROI of your Instagram Stories, you can ensure your own Stories are a hit with users. You can access all of these metrics from your Instagram Insights. Keep tweaking until you come up with the magic Instagram Story formula that boosts your business's conversions.
