[FAQ]

I’ve been posting Instagram Stories pretty consistently, but when I open the Insights, I’m not really sure what I’m supposed to be looking at. I see numbers for “Reach,” “Impressions,” “Exits,” and “Sticker Taps,” but I don’t know which ones are actually important.

I want to figure out if my audience is actually engaged or if they’re just tapping through my content without paying attention.

What are the key metrics you all track in your Story Insights to determine if a Story was a “success” or not? I want to stop just posting and hoping, and actually start making content that I know my followers like.

[Jeff Bullas]

This is a critical question for building a smart content strategy.

Quick Answer: You must ignore vanity metrics like Reach and Impressions, and focus only on the action-based metrics for your content: Replies, Sticker Taps, and Exits.

These specific metrics are the only ones that tell you what your audience is actually doing in response to your image and video content.

It’s easy to get lost in all the data, but most of it doesn’t help you make decisions. The most important metric for any Instagram Story is ‘Replies’. A reply is a direct, text-based conversation starter and the strongest signal of engagement you can get. Your next most important metrics are ‘Sticker Taps’ and ‘Link Clicks’ as these show you that a viewer took a specific, physical action on your content. The final metric you must track is negative: ‘Exits’. This number shows you exactly which piece of video or image content made someone abandon your Stories entirely. You should analyse your ‘Exit’ rate on every single Story frame; if a particular format is causing people to leave, stop making it.

Cheers,
Jeff

[Author]

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