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You’re on the team for Instagram, and Stories engagement is doing well, but post engagement is going down. What would you do?

  • Related to Problem Solving
  • For Growth PM
  Meta
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Answers (2)

I’d like to start with what is Instagram.
Instagram is a part of Meta’s platform, whereas Meta’s mission is to build community and connect everyone on the planet. Instagram is a place where users can capture and share the moments and also connect with their friends, families, and influencers/celebrities.

Check with the interviewer if that’s the correct understanding.

Understand that Stories is one of the recent features launched to share the day’s highlights with your followers (basically friends and families). The story stays for 24 hours after which it disappears, user can however highlight their stories in their profile if they want.

Insta posts are basically pictures, and videos (reels) that users want to share with their followership.

Check with the interviewer on the same explanation.

I’d like to talk a bit about the business model for Instagram, and how Instagram earns revenue basically through ads. If I were the PM for Instagram, I’d want users to spend more time so that it creates room for showing more ads to the users, thus directly impacting the revenue.

Check with the interviewer around the same.

Next, I’d like to understand the context a bit better and will ask a few clarifying questions about this scenario around decreasing engagement with posts.

  • Is there a target metric that we want to improve or optimize?
  • What does it mean when we say engagement for stories is doing well vs. engagement for posts is going down?
  • Since when are we observing this trend? Has it been going on for some time, or recently, or coincides with the launch of Instagram stories?
    • Does the timeline also coincide with any feature release or update?
  • Is this happening on mobile or desktop or both?
  • Is this happening in a particular geography or across geography?
  • Is it happening for a particular platform i.e., iOS, Android, Windows, MacOS, etc.,
  • Is it happening for any cohort of users or across all users?
  • Is there a change in the following metrics:
    • Total time spent per user (pre-launch and post-launch of stories)
    • Avg. time spent per user (pre and post-stories)
    • No. of sessions per day (pre and post-stories)
    • Avg. time spent per user per session (pre and post-stories)
    • No. of posts overall and at the user level (pre and post-stories)
    • No. of stories posted overall and at the user level (pre and post-stories)
    • Decrease or increase in the revenue (pre and post-stories)

 

Assume the answer to the above is the following:

  • The target metric is “Time spent per user per day”
  • Change is gradual and coincides with the launch of stories
  • This phenomenon is across geo, devices, platforms, and all users
  • With respect to the metrics asked above, the responses are
    • The Total and Avg. time spent per user on Instagram are the same
    • The number of sessions per user is the same
    • No. of posts has declined but no. of stories posted has increased significantly
    • The reactions, shared on posts have reduced but on stories they are increasing
    • Revenue has not changed significantly

Based on the above discussion it seems that users have adopted the stories feature quite well and some of the user traffic that was previously engaging with the posts has now shifted to stories.

Overall the health of the app looks good to me, however now that I know users are engaging with stories more often I’d like to prioritize some features to improve the engagement of stories. Since this discussion is not part of the scope, hence I’m omitting this for now.
Could someone review this please and help me polish my answers.

PRODUCT DESCRIPTION:

Instagram is a renowned social networking platform that facilitates connections and interactions among users, resulting in varied levels of engagement. Upon closer examination of the issue at hand, it appears that one specific aspect of engagement (engagement on posts) is experiencing a decline.

CLARIFICATION QUESTIONS:

1. Is the decline in Post Engagement affecting user retention on Instagram?

Interviewer: Your decision on this matter, while considering the objective.

2. Have there been any noticeable shifts in metrics regarding new users versus returning users?

Interviewer: You’ll need to make some assumptions and analyze accordingly.

3. Should I base my assumptions on Instagram for personal use or Instagram for Business?

Interviewer: It’s up to you to decide. For the sake of this conversation, let’s select Instagram for Individual

4. When you mention “engagement,” which specific metrics are showing a decline? Are we talking about any specific like opens, views, clicks, or CTR?

Interviewer: You’ll need to investigate and determine this.

ASSUMPTIONS:

Instagram is very popular, and most new users probably join because their friends recommend it or because they see famous people using it. When they first join, they usually start by sending friend requests or following famous people, liking and commenting on posts, knowing more about them & posts are just below Follow button as well, then watching short updates called “stories.” This matches a common trend in the industry, where over 50% of users scroll through their feeds from top to bottom to get a complete grasp of the user or content. In other words, they want to engage with the details right from the start during their initial interactions.

Conversely, returning users already have established connections with friends, celebrities, or brands they follow, leading them to invest less attention and interaction and thus, left ro right approach to change context frequently. This observation corresponds of the problem statement where engagement with stories remains strong. Therefore, if we must prioritize our efforts, it makes sense to initially focus on improving the experience for new users.

OBJECTIVE:

Since, I always like to pick the objective out of AAAERRR (Acquisition, activation, etc) & already the problem is narrowed it down to Engagement per se from your end. Also, most of the times, engagement linked with retention, if poor retention were the issue, it would likely have affected Stories engagement as well. However, since this isn’t the case, we can reasonably assume that retention is satisfactory.

TOP USER GROUPS AND JOURNEY:

Individuals:

1. User activated
2. Instagram suggests users to follow based on their Facebook profiles or popularity.
3. Send follow requests to private profiles, typically friends or celebrities
4. Send messages to private profiles or celebrities.
5. View videos/images (posts) of accepted private profiles or celebrities.
6. View stories after request acceptance or public profile viewing.
7: User might wait for the response
8. User close the App
9. User relaunch the App

 

Businesses (let’s note that businesses are a relevant user group. However, in our current discussion, we won’t be addressing their specific needs. In practice, though, businesses are an important user segment that requires consideration):

1. Perform the same actions as individuals.
2. Utilize Ad Manager for brand promotion, such as story and post reach.

 

SOLVING AND BREAKING IT DOWN:

I will categorize potential causes into internal and external factors:

 

Internal Factors:

Technology:

1.Evaluate post loading times to identify any delays compared to historical data.

2.Typically, when you begin browsing on most social media platforms, they load the next 4-5 pieces of content after you’ve viewed the initial set. We should investigate if there is a decline in performance after this initial set, as there may be an issue with a Content Delivery Network (CDN) or caching causing disruptions.

3.Are these issues occurring on particular operating systems or device brands? It’s possible that a significant number of new users are using Android, and there could be a glitch specific to certain Android devices, such as high selling Samsung. We should consider narrowing down the investigation to identify if this is an OS or device-specific problem.

Platform:

Is there a notable increase in the type of media being shared? For example, while short videos are typically a highly engaging media format, we might be witnessing a surge in the sharing of text or image-based content. It’s important to note that video content tends to generate three times more engagement than text or other formats, so this could be one of the contributing factors.

Metrics
Investigate specific engagement metrics, starting with opens and progressing to views, 5s views, clicks, and CTR to pinpoint where the decline is occurring.

Other Features and Cannibalization:

We need to look into whether any other teams have introduced new features that could be directly influencing post engagement. For example, if the Insta stories team has introduced a feature where WhatsApp Status and Insta stories collaborate, meaning that if your WhatsApp is linked with your Instagram ID, your Status will automatically be displayed on Instagram, or vice versa. This could potentially prompt users to shift their attention more towards Stories, even if they were previously using both features. It’s crucial to organize a stakeholder discussion involving all relevant teams to address this matter..
External Factors:

Time:
Determine whether the decline is gradual or sudden, which can provide insights into the root cause.

Region:
Will refine my approach to identify the specific region where this issue is occurring. Initially, I will analyze the global average, and then I will segment regions into the top 5, top 10, and top 20, comparing the metrics within these groups to assist in pinpointing the problem area.

Industry: Assess if the decline is industry-wide or unique to Instagram.

Competitors:

I’d like to investigate whether a competitor has introduced features that resemble those relevant to our target audience and the types of posts we create. For example, if Facebook has introduced a feature that allows automatic comment generation using AI and making comments based on your relationship with followers or friends, this feature could be highly engaging and viral. People may be drawn to explore this feature and directly competing with posts , and it could have an impact on our platform.