How would you set goals and measure success of Instagram stories? What will happen if too many stories are getting created instead of posts?
Why FB decided to launch instagram at first place?
Meta- Carlos Dubois
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- Layout the approach: I’m gonna talk about meta mission and how instagram & IG stories fit into it and why it matters. Then, talk about stakeholders and what matters to them. Then, I’m gonna go to metrics and choose a northstar.
- Meta’s mission is to bring the world closer together, connect them and provide them tools to build communities. Instagram connects people globally in a fun way via video, live, pictures and chat . IG stories are a 15 sec content (video/picture/polling/text) that expire within 24 hours and help people to share their daily routines/lives and build stronger relationships with their friends and followers. In that sense instagram stories are important and fit perfectly into Meta’s mission.
Instagram is a mature product so are the stories. Thinking about product cycle: adoption, engagement, retention, monetization, I tend to define engagement as the main goal here because the more engaged the users the more opportunities to incentivize them to come back and come up with more effective monetization strategies. Moving on, I’m gonna talk about user segments/stakeholders:
- Stakeholders:
- Creators: they want their contents to be seen, have high reach, have an engaged audience, build a community of their own and monetize that at some point.
- Individuals
- Influencers(micro and macro)
- Businesses / Advertisers
- Viewers: see relevant contents, be able to engage with a content of their interest, ..
- All instagram users
- Creators: they want their contents to be seen, have high reach, have an engaged audience, build a community of their own and monetize that at some point.
Connecting these two users together defines success for the users and instagram stories.
4. Metrics:
User journey for creators:
- Take live video, or choose from your gallery, take a photo, write some text, or share a post into a story, attach some actions, tag some friends. Then create a story. Metrics:
- % of active users who create at least 1 story per day
- Avg # of stories posted on D/W basis per active user
- Avg % reactions/emojis VS Avg % of comments VS Avg % of likes per story per active user on a D/W basis
- Frequency of creating stories per active user per D/W
- Avg % of followers viewing stories per active user
- % of viewers who watch at least 7 second of a story
- Avg % of reach per active user (what percentage of their followers see a new story)
User journey for Viewer:
- They see a new story popped up from their followings.
- Click and open and watch/skip the stories.
- Engage: Take action: comment, like, reaction, attending questions/polling, …
Metrics for viewers:
- Avg # of viewers per story per active user
- Avg % of viewers who watched at least 1 story to the end per active user
- Avg % of viewers who see at least 3 stories per day
Guardrail metrics:
- Avg % of skipped stories per D/W per active user
- % of complaints/ reports stories per D/W per active user
- % of negative feedbacks per D/W per active user
- Avg time to upload a new story (SLA) per active story per story
5. Northstar Metric : (engagement)
- % of active users who create at least 1 story per day
- Avg # of viewers per story per active user
To recap, overall I think IG stories are very aligned with instagram and meta mission to bring people closer and communicate with each other in a fun way. The IG story is a mature product; therefore, I focused more on engaging the current users and came up with two northstar metrics. This is how I’d think of metrics.
To answer the second part of the question: I’d tend to look at it as an opportunity. Meaning if too many stories are created, that means users are more engaged with this capability rather than permanent posts. Even though I think users will still use the permanent posts as a way to record their special memories/moments; they love to engage with their audience/friends/families in a more real time manner and stories provide them with that quality. For instagram, there are lots of opportunities to keep users engaged, drive revenue through relevant ads, and make the experience more exciting for the users to come back to the platform every single day.